And what has the people to show for all the money they have destroyed, and salaries they have increased, and mortgages they have foreclosed, and bad laws they have made, but hard times and debts, and people without homes, and cheap wheat, and low wages, and high interest, and big taxes, and foreclosin, and beggin, and the Lord only knows what all? Yet Jobe and his likes will vote the strait ticket, and I suppose will keep a votin it until the bull calf knocks their brains out. What has Jobe and his likes got to show for all the votin they have voted? What, I say! If we can save our farm, and if we raise enough to pay the interest and taxes this year, and a little besides, I am a goin to git me a pair of them bloomers and go to workin and votin for more good laws and less polerticks; and the fust polertician that comes around our house talkin “party success” and “party principles” Ile kick clear into the middle of the big road—Ile do it if I split them bloomers from waistband to waistband in doin so. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. A NEW MORTGAGE. WE was that bizzy last week, with gittin our legicy and payin of costs, and a borrowin of money, and a writin of papers, and a signin of our names, and a swearin to this, that and the other thing, that I dident git my bakin done, let alone do any writin. The fust of last week we got our share of our legicy; the officers in Indyana got the balance. Howsomever, what we did git come handy for a while anyhow. I dont know what we would have done if Jobe’s poor, dear dead aunt hadent a died jist when she did. Well, when what was left us, arter payin them Indyana fellers, come, Jobe and me hitched up old Tom and struck out for town to stop the foreclosin bizness. We fust went to the bank at Canal Dover, and made arrangements to borrow $1,800 at seven per cent. Jobe he hung for six per cent., but when the banker explained to Jobe that we was now on a gold basis; that McKinley had come out for a strait gold basis platform; that he could lend all the money he could git at seven per cent. or more, and that all the leadin financiers and bankers, in fact all the leadin citizens, were in for a gold basis, Jobe he “saw it” and agreed to seven. Comin home Jobe told me he would ruther pay seven per cent. than six, in order to support a “sound money basis;” that “nobody believed in small interest but them crazy Populists and their likes.” [Illustration: “He would rather pay seven per cent. than six, in order to support a sound money basis.”]