professors knew it, but they do not dare to
put their seal on anybody's education unless it is mixed in exact
proportions--so much Latin, so much Greek, so much mathematics. The
professors don't like a man to travel any road but theirs. It is a
reflection on their own education. Why, I learned more out of some of the
old German books in the library than out of all their teaching."

"But why didn't you graduate? It would have sounded so nice to be able to
say that you had graduated. That's what I sent you for, you know, and I
don't see what you got by going if you haven't graduated."

"Why, mother, I got an education. I thought that was what a
college was for."

"But how will anybody know that you're well-educated, I'd like to know,
when you can't say that you've graduated?" answered the mother
petulantly.

"Whether they know it or not, I am."

"I should think they'd know it just to look at him," said Katy, who
thought that Albert's erudition must be as apparent to everybody as
to herself.

Mr. Plausaby quietly remarked that he had no doubt Albert had improved
his time at school, a remark which for some undefined reason vexed Albert
more than his mother's censures.

"Well," said his mother, "a body never has any satisfaction with boys
that have got notions. Deliver me from notions. Your father had notions.
If it hadn't been for that, we might all of us have been rich to-day.
But notions kept us down. That's what I like about Mr. Plausaby. He
hasn't a single notion to bother a body with. But, I think, notions run
in the blood, and, I suppose, you'll always be putting some fool notion
or other in your own way. I meant you to be a lawyer, but I s'pose you've
got something against that, though it was your own father's calling."

"I'd about as soon be a thief as a lawyer," Albert broke out in his
irritation.

"Well, that's a nice way to speak about your father's profession, I'm
sure," said his mother. "But that's what comes of notions. I don't care
much, though, if you a'n't a lawyer. Doctors make more than lawyers do,
and you can't have any notions against being a doctor."

"What, and drug people? Doctors are quacks. They know that drugs are good
for nothing, and yet they go on dosing everybody to make money. It people
would bathe, and live in the open air, and get up early, and harden
themselves to endure changes of climate, and not violate God's decalogue
written in their own muscles and nerves and head and sto