wagon; Tom, me and him slept all the way here. Poor Mrs.
Palmer set up all night beside Jake on the seat. If she ain't
got the newralgy she'll katch it sure. Mrs. Palmer wouldn't get
out of the wagon to eat breakfast when we stopped on the road at
a country house, and Palmer spoke real cross to her and she
cried. It's the only time I've seen Jake's face without a smile
and he looks a different man when he ain't smiling. I like Jake
and he likes me. He wants to see Pap.

Reverend Gideon met us here. Palmer forgot his clothes and I
heard him tell Gideon they'd have to go, he had flung the keys
in the well and if Gideon went back after his clothes they was
liable to fling him in jail.

I believe Palmer's run off owing everybody. This thing's bound
to make money. I'm sorry I came for twenty a month. If he does
well he'll have to raise me.

Your affectionate son,
ALFRED GRIFFITH HATFIELD.

P. S. The hound was to be a dog, not another kind.

Palmer, the wife and Gideon, were a source of much speculation to
Alfred; he could not fix their standing in his mind. The facts were that
Palmer was one of those soldiers of fortune who had experimented with
many things and failed in everything. He fitted Dryden's description of:

"A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."

The only aim Palmer seemed to have in life was to create the impression
that he might have been worse. Store clerk, school teacher, politician,
preacher, scene painter, amateur showman; such were the pursuits he had
been engaged in, not successful in any of them. Abusive of all, save
that one he was engaged in, blaming the world for his failures. He
respected no man or woman. He approached no man save with a selfish
motive; could he but injure those with whom he dealt he was happy,
though he did not profit thereby. Yet he did not so speak, but all his
actions conveyed this impression of the man to Alfred. And thus his
character was impressed on the boy's intuitive mind as strongly as were
the scenes on the canvas of the panorama.

[Illustration: Palmer]

The wife was only another of that type of woman who has blasted a life,
one full of hope, by clingi