“Wall, you may be right and you may be wrong, Obadiah. But when a man's dead I don't think it does you any good to roast him and pick his bones. It's too much like those _cannibiles_ that crazy feller told us about. Quincy Adams Sawyer was always a good friend to me, and a better one to you, Strout, than you deserved, judgin' from the way you've been talkin'. His money has been the makin' of both on us, and while we do business together I hope we'll let Mr. Sawyer, as the church folks say, rest in pieces.” CHAPTER XIX BOYHOOD TO MANHOOD Until he was fourteen years of age, young Quincy attended the public schools in Fernborough and Cottonton. While in England he had had a governess and later a tutor, so that when he reached America he was much farther advanced than Fernborough boys of his own age. Methods in the New England town were different, however, and his Uncle Ezekiel was satisfied to have him keep pace with the others, and not arouse antagonism by asking for any special promotion. Ezekiel's son Quincy had decided to become a farmer, following in his father's footsteps. But scientific farming was supplanting old methods, and he had taken the course at the Agricultural College and received his diploma. Young Quincy wished a college education. To obtain admission it was necessary for him to attend a preparatory school, and, relying upon Mr. Gay's description of its advantages, Andover was selected. While at the Cottonton High School, Quincy's chum had been a boy two years older than himself, named Thomas Chripp. He was the son of a weaver at Cottonton. Like Quincy, he had been born in England, but his father had been drawn to America by the lure of higher wages, nothing having been said to him, however, about the increased cost of living. Thomas's father would not let him become a back-boy in the mill. “I've breathed cotton all my life,” said Mr. Chripp to Ezekiel, “and I think too much of my only boy to condemn him to a life in a hot room, where the only music is the whizzing shuttles. No, my boy Tom shall breathe God's fresh air and become a big, strong man instead of a wizened-up little fellow like me. Why, would you believe it, Mr. Pettingill, I began work in a cotton mill when I was eight years old, and I've lived in one ever since--forty years! Sundays when I walk out in the fields I can't get the din out of my ears, and I told Susan, my old wife, the other day, that if I died before she did to have the lid screwed down extra tight so I could be sure of a little quiet.” “My nephew,” said 'Zekiel, “thinks a lot of your boy and wants him to go to college with him.” “But I haven't got the money to pay his way,” said Mr. Chripp. “My nephew has plenty of money, and if he's willing to help your boy along in the world there's nobody to object that I know of.”