“Wall,” sez I in deep earnest, “if you keep on in this way you’ll find that sunthin’ _will_ happen, for no livin’ stomach can stand such a strain cast onto it, unless it is,” sez I reasonably, “a goat or a mule. I have hearn that they can digest stove-pipe and tin cans. But a human stomach must break down under it. And I’d advise you to feed him on good plain bread and toast till he gets well, and keep your preserves for meal-times and company. And I’d advise you to set them great boys of yourn to work stiddy, and not by fits and starts, and you’ll have as much agin comfort in your house, and health too.” But, good land! I might jest as well have talked to the wind, or better. For the wind, even if it didn’t pay no attention to my remarks—as it probably wouldn’t, specially if it wuz blowin’ hard—it wouldn’t get mad. It would jest blow right on, and blow my remarks right away, and blow jest as friendly as ever. But she got mad—mad as a hen. And she didn’t send after milk for as much as three days. But it didn’t hold out; she sent on the fourth day. But it didn’t change their course any. He kep’ on a eatin’ hot biscuit and butter and preserves, when they had ’em, night and day, and they all would. And when they hadn’t anything to eat, and couldn’t get anything in any other way, why, they would go without till they wuz most starved, and then they would sally out and work a day or two, and then the same scenes would be enacted right over agin. Good land! there didn’t seem to be no use of talkin’, and still I sort o’ kep’ on. There wuz one boy amongst ’em, and that wuz St. Luke, and mebby it wuz because he wuz named after that likely old apostel, and then, agin, mebby it wuzn’t; but anyway, he did seem to have a little more pride and a little more sense and gumption than the rest. And I kep’ a naggin’ at him, and his Pa and Ma, and Thomas J. and Maggie, and Josiah, till with a tremendus effort I did get that boy into a new suit of clothes and started him off to work for his board and go to school at a place about three miles off. And though he run away five times in as many weeks—twice to come home and three times to go a fishin’—I kep’ on, and by argument, and persuasion, and a new jack-knife, and a coaxin’ him up, and persuadin’ the folks to try him a little longer, I got him quelled down, and he begun to go easier in the harness, and stiddier. And his teacher sez “he will make a smart boy yet.” So I see jest what I always knew wuz a fact, “that while the lamp holds out to burn the vilest sinner may return.” And if I wuz a goin’ to sing that him, I would omit two words in the last stanza, and for the words “vilest sinner” I would sing “shiftless creeter.”