I fancy that none of us ever really understood anything about the pieces that we spoke. I remember in a general way that they were mainly of our country, and brave boys fighting and winning victories and dying, and about the evils and dangers of strong drink. We had a great many pieces about intemperance, ambition, and the like. I especially remember one boy, with red hair and freckles and a short neck and large warts on his hands, who used always to speak a piece entitled “How have the Mighty Fallen.” I don’t know who wrote it, or where it came from, or what has become of it; but I remember the piece almost as well as if I heard it yesterday. This boy was the prize speaker of the school, and the piece told about Alexander and Cæsar and Napoleon, and how and why they failed. Their lack of success was due to ambition and strong drink. I know this piece made a deep impression on my mind, and I always vowed that I never would fail as Alexander and Cæsar and Napoleon had done,—and I never have. I remember that once my father came to school on the last day, in the afternoon, to hear us speak; and when I got home at night he told me that the boy who spoke the piece about How the Mighty had Fallen had all the elements of an orator, and he predicted that some day he would make his mark in the world. I felt that I would have given everything I possessed if only my father had said that about me. I know that in my tactful way I led up again and again to the piece that I had spoken, but about this my father said not a single word. How I envied that red-headed lad, and how I wondered if there really was any chance that I might come out as well as he! For some years my remembrance of this youth had passed away, until the last time I went back home. Then, as I drove past his house with never a thought of my old-time friend, I looked over into the weed-covered yard,—perhaps it was weedy before, but I did not so remember it,—and there I saw a man with a hoe in his hand cleaning out a drain that ran from the cellar to the ditch in front of the house. I looked closely at him, and I never in the world should have known him; but he came down to the fence, and leaned on his hoe, and hailed me as I passed. No doubt he had heard that I had come to town. Then I remembered the piece about How the Mighty had Fallen, and the little red-headed boy at school; but this boy’s hair was white, he was bent, and his clothes were about the color of his hair and hands and face in those far-off years when he spoke the piece. I was shocked, but I tried not to let him know it. I asked him how he was, and how he was getting along; and he told me he was very well, and was doing first-rate. And then I thought of my poor father, who said that he had all the elements of an orator and would make his mark some day. Well, perhaps he had made his mark, even though he was cleaning out a cellar-drain,—and, after all, this is better work than making speeches, however fine.