“Very likely,” said the mother, dryly. “Our experiences have a great deal to do with forming our opinions. But I am not dissatisfied with my son’s ideas. I suppose Reuben got a good many of his ideas from his father: he’s his father all over again. My husband thought slavery was wrong, and he went into the war to fight against it. He used to say when the war was over that the negroes were emancipated, but slavery was not abolished yet.” “What in the world did he mean by that?” demanded Mrs. Makely. “Something you wouldn’t understand as we do. I tried to carry on the farm after he first went, and before Reuben was large enough to help me much and ought to be in school, and I suppose I overdid. At any rate, that was when I had my first shock of paralysis. I never was very strong, and I presume my health was weakened by my teaching school so much, and studying, before I was married. But that doesn’t matter now, and hasn’t for many a year. The place was clear of debt then, but I had to get a mortgage put on it. The savings-bank down in the village took it, and we’ve been paying the interest ever since. My husband died paying it, and my son will pay it all my life, and then I suppose the bank will foreclose. The treasurer was an old playmate of my husband’s, and he said that as long as either of us lived the mortgage could lie.” “How splendid of him!” said Mrs. Makely. “I should think you had been very fortunate.” “I said that you would not see it as we do,” said the invalid, patiently. The Altrurian asked: “Are there mortgages on many of the farms in the neighborhood?” “Nearly all,” said Mrs. Camp. “We seem to own them, but in fact they own us.” Mrs. Makely hastened to say: “My husband thinks it’s the best way to have your property. If you mortgage it close up, you have all your capital free, and you can keep turning it over. That’s what you ought to do, Mrs. Camp. But what was the slavery that Captain Camp said was not abolished yet?” The invalid looked at her a moment without replying, and just then the door of the kitchen opened, and Young Camp came in and began to gather some food from the table on a plate. “Why don’t you bring him to the table, Reub?” his sister called to him. “Oh, he says he’d rather not come in, as long as we have company. He says he isn’t dressed for dinner; left his spike-tail in the city.” The young man laughed, and his sister with him. VIII Young Camp carried out the plate of victuals to the tramp, and Mrs. Makely said to his mother: “I suppose you would make the tramp do some sort of work to earn his breakfast on week-days?” “Not always,” Mrs. Camp replied. “Do the boarders at the hotel always work to earn their breakfast?” “No, certainly not,” said Mrs. Makely, with the sharpness of offence. “But they always pay for it.”