aker man might have succumbed beneath, I had absorbed into myself, and
was now making use of as I had made use of every incident, bad or good,
in my life. I passed on, I accumulated, but I did not squander. Little
things, as well as great things, served me for material, and during
those first years of my recovery, I became by far the most brilliant
figure in my world of finance. "Pile all the bu'sted stocks in the
market on his shoulders, and he'll still come out on top," chuckled the
General. "The best thing that ever happened to you, Ben, barring the
toting of potatoes, was the blow on the head that sent you under water.
A little fellow would have drowned, but you knew how to float."

"I'd agree with you about its being the best thing, except--except for
Sally."

"What's the matter with Sally? Is she going cracked? You know I always
said she was the image of her aunt--Miss Matoaca Bland."

"She has never recovered. Her health seems to have given way."

"She needs coddling, that's the manner of women and babies. Do you
coddle her? It's worth while, though some men don't know how to do it.
Lord, Lord, I remember when my poor mother was on her death-bed and my
father got on his knees and asked her if he'd been a good husband (she
was his third wife and died of her tenth child), she looked at him with
a kind of gentle resentment and replied: 'You were a saint, I suppose,
Samuel, but I'd rather have had a sinner that would have coddled me.'
She was the prim, flat-bosomed type, too, just like Miss Mitty Bland,
and my father said afterwards, crying like a baby, that he had so much
respect for her he would as soon have thought of trying to coddle a
Lombardy poplar. Poplar or mimosa tree, I tell you, they are all made
that way, every last one of them--and nothing on earth made poor Miss
Matoaca a fire-eater and a disturber of the peace except that she didn't
have a man to coddle her."

"I give Sally everything under heaven I can think of, but she doesn't
appear to want it."

"Keep on giving, it's the only way. You'll see her begin to pick up
presently before you know it. They ain't rational, my boy, that's the
whole truth about 'em, they ain't rational. If Miss Matoaca had belonged
to a rational sex, do you think she'd have killed herself trying to get
on an equality with us? You can't make a pullet into a rooster by
teaching it to crow, as my old mammy used to say." For a minute he was
silent, and appeared to be meditat