I ran my eye over the ruggedly kept accounts and found that each man owed from a dime up to fifty cents. “Why, madam,” says I, “these accounts are not worth collecting.” “That’s what he was afraid of,” says she, moving toward a bundle that lay upon the floor; “he told me if you said so, to give you this, and ask you to sell it if you could, and make your money. It’s all he had, sir, or me, either, and he wouldn’t die easy ’til I told him I wud do it! God knows”—and the tears rolled down her thin and hollow cheeks—“God knows it were a struggle to promise to give it up. He wore it, and his father before him. How many times it has covered ’em both! I had hoped to carry it to the end with me, and wrap my old body in it when I died. But it was all we had which was fine, and he wouldn’t rest ’til I told him I wud give it to you. Then he smiled as pert-like as a child, and kissed me, and says, ‘Now I am ready to go!’ He were a good boy, sir, as ever lived”—and she rocked her old body to and fro with her grief. Need I say that she had offered me the old dress-coat? That sacred garment, blessed with the memory of her son and his father, and which, rather than give up, she would willingly pluck either of the withered arms that hung at her sides from its socket! I dropped my eyes to the account book again—for what purpose I am not ashamed that the reader may guess. In a few moments I spoke: “Madam, I was mistaken in the value of these accounts; most of the debtors on this book, I find upon a second look, are capitalists. The $11 worth of accounts will sell for $12 anywhere. Your son owed me $7. Leave the book with me; I will pay myself, and here is $5 balance which I hand to you. Your son was a good boy, and I feel honored that I can serve his mother.” She folded the old coat up and departed. I kept the book. It was a simple record of Dobbs’s life. Here ran his expense list—a dreary trickle of “bacon” and “meal” and “rent,” enlivened only once with “sugar”; a saccharine suggestion that I am unable to account for, as it surely did not comport with either of the staples that formed the basis of his life. Probably, on some grand occasion, he and his mother ate it in the lump. Here were his accounts, of say fifty cents each, on men accounted responsible in the world’s eye—accounts for papers furnished through snow, and sleet, and rain! Some of them showed signs of having been called for a dozen times, being frescoed with such notes as “Call Tuesday,” “Call Wednesday,” “Call Thursday,” etc. On another page was a pathetic list of delusive liniments and medicines, with which he had attacked his stubborn disease. Such as, “King of Pane—kored a man in Maryetti in 2 days, $1.00”; “Magic Linament—kores in 10 minnits, $2.00 a bottel”; and so on through the whole catalogue of snares which the patent office turns out year after year. Poor fellow! the only relief he got from his racking pains was when God laid his healing hand on him.