He suggested an arrangement to her,
by which she should come and live in the same house with
him and take personal charge of his clothes and his meals.
She was to receive in return her board and washing, about
seventy-five cents a week in ready money, and Smith was
to be her slave.

After Smith had been this woman's slave for some time,
baby fingers stole across his life, then another set of
them, and then more and more till the house was full of
them. The woman's mother began to steal across his life
too, and every time she came Smith had hydrophobia
frightfully. Strangely enough there was no little prattler
that was taken from his life and became a saddened,
hallowed memory to him. Oh, no! The little Smiths were
not that kind of prattler. The whole nine grew up into
tall, lank boys with massive mouths and great sweeping
ears like their father's, and no talent for anything.

The life of Smith never seemed to bring him to any of
those great turning-points that occurred in the lives of
the great. True, the passing years brought some change
of fortune. He was moved up in his dry-goods establishment
from the ribbon counter to the collar counter, from the
collar counter to the gents' panting counter, and from
the gents' panting to the gents' fancy shirting. Then,
as he grew aged and inefficient, they moved him down
again from the gents' fancy shirting to the gents' panting,
and so on to the ribbon counter. And when he grew quite
old they dismissed him and got a boy with a four-inch
mouth and sandy-coloured hair, who did all Smith could
do for half the money. That was John Smith's mercantile
career: it won't stand comparison with Mr. Gladstone's,
but it's not unlike your own.

Smith lived for five years after this. His sons kept him.
They didn't want to, but they had to. In his old age the
brightness of his mind and his fund of anecdote were not
the delight of all who dropped in to see him. He told
seven stories and he knew six jokes. The stories were
long things all about himself, and the jokes were about
a commercial traveller and a Methodist minister. But
nobody dropped in to see him, anyway, so it didn't matter.

At sixty-five Smith was taken ill, and, receiving proper
treatment, he died. There was a tombstone put up over
him, with a hand pointing north-north-east.

But I doubt if he ever got there. He was too like us.

On Collecting Things

Like most other men I have from time to time been stricken