t
iconoclast, and the arguments which followed were often heated and
sometimes fiercely personal.

After they had quite finished with the paper, I sometimes secured it for
myself, and hurrying back to my office in the elevator pored over it
with intense zeal. Undoubtedly my father as well as I was profoundly
influenced by "The Mistakes of Moses." The faith in which we had been
reared had already grown dim, and under the light of Ingersoll's
remorseless humor most of our superstitions vanished. I do not think my
father's essential Christianity was in any degree diminished, he merely
lost his respect for certain outworn traditions and empty creeds.

My work consisted in receiving the grain and keeping the elevator going
and as I weighed the sacks, made out checks for the payment and kept the
books--in all ways taking a man's place,--I lost all sense of being a
boy.

The motive power of our hoisting machinery was a blind horse, a handsome
fellow weighing some fifteen hundred pounds, and it was not long before
he filled a large space in my thoughts. There was something appealing
in his sightless eyes, and I never watched him (as he patiently went his
rounds in the dusty shed) without pity. He had a habit of kicking the
wall with his right hind foot at a certain precise point as he circled,
and a deep hollow in the sill attested his accuracy. He seemed to do
this purposely--to keep count, as I imagined, of his dreary circling
through sunless days.

A part of my duty was to watch the fanning mill (in the high cupola) in
order that the sieves should not clog. Three flights of stairs led to
the mill and these had to be mounted many times each day. I always ran
up the steps when the mill required my attention, but in coming down I
usually swung from beam to beam, dropping from footway to footway like a
monkey from a tall tree. My mother in seeing me do this called out in
terror, but I assured her that there was not the slightest danger--and
this was true, for I was both sure-footed and sure-handed in those days.

This was a golden summer for us all. My mother found time to read. My
father enjoyed companionship with the leading citizens of the town,
while Franklin, as first assistant in a candy store, professed himself
to be entirely content. My own holidays were spent in fishing or in
roving the woods with Mitchell and George, but on Sundays the entire
family dressed for church as for a solemn social function, fully alive