Well, Elder, now I want to tell you. When you first said, and Mr. Bailey upheld you, that it behooved me wait two years, and go to State Agricultural, and do thus and so, before I'd be fit to handle boys and be trusted by them as had 'em in charge--I tell you, sir, it seemed as if I _couldn't_, no way in the world. It appeared like I couldn't do it. It was like as if I was in Heaven, and you took me by my scruff and pants and hove me out. "It's more than reason," I says to myself. "It's more than flesh and blood can stand; it's like I was white-hot metal, and they took and threw cold water over me!" Well, Elder! You see where that was leading me? I bet you do! But I didn't, not at first. I went out to the barn, you rec'lect, and just set there by myself, humped up on the meal bucket, sayin' over and over, "I was all white hot to do the Lord's work, and they've took and threw cold water over me!" And then, all of a sudden, it come to me, and I laughed right out. You must have heard me over to the house, I expect. Mary did, and she come running--bless her! "You lunkhead!" I says. "You lunkhead from way back everlasting, how do they temper metal _but_ with cold water? Nice kind of steel you'd get without it, what say? Like to shave with soft iron, what say? And when you put it in the water it hisses," I says, "and so does the old gander hiss, and I know which you are most like!" I says. I was laughing, you rec'lect, when I come back to tell you 'twas all right; I expect you knew pretty well how twas. You were whistling "Soldier of the Cross," and that showed me.