t always good
little boys, because those were the good old times when everything was
better than it is now, but never mind that. Well, once upon a time, on
Holliday's Hill, they were blasting out rock, and a man was drilling for
a blast. He sat there and drilled and drilled and drilled perseveringly
until he had a hole down deep enough for the blast. Then he put in the
powder and tamped and tamped it down, but maybe he tamped it a little too
hard, for the blast went off and he went up into the air, and we watched
him. He went up higher and higher and got smaller and smaller. First he
looked as big as a child, then as big as a dog, then as big as a kitten,
then as big as a bird, and finally he went out of sight. John Briggs was
with me, and we watched the place where he went out of sight, and by and
by we saw him coming down first as big as a bird, then as big as a
kitten, then as big as a dog, then as big as a child, and then he was a
man again, and landed right in his seat and went to drilling just
persevering, you see, and sticking to his work. Little boys and girls,
that's the secret of success, just like that poor but honest workman on
Holliday's Hill. Of course you won't always be appreciated. He wasn't.
His employer was a hard man, and on Saturday night when he paid him he
docked him fifteen minutes for the time he was up in the air--but never
mind, he had his reward.

He told all this in his solemn, grave way, though the Sunday-school was
in a storm of enjoyment when he finished. There still remains a doubt in
Hannibal as to its perfect suitability, but there is no doubt as to its
acceptability.

That Sunday afternoon, with John Briggs, he walked over Holliday's Hill
--the Cardiff Hill of Tom Sawyer. It was jest such a Sunday as that one
when they had so nearly demolished the negro driver and had damaged a
cooper-shop. They calculated that nearly three thousand Sundays had
passed since then, and now here they were once more, two old men with the
hills still fresh and green, the river still sweeping by and rippling in
the sun. Standing there together and looking across to the low-lying
Illinois shore, and to the green islands where they had played, and to
Lover's Leap on the south, the man who had been Sam Clemens said:

"John, that is one of the loveliest sights I ever saw. Down there by the
island is the place we used to swim, and yonder is where a man was
drowned, and there's where the steamboat sank. Down th