Even the scant money he earned we seldom really fingered. The little that was not cheated out of my father’s hands by the sins of diamond screens and untrue weights and other company tricks, was pounced on in advance by the harpies of “company store” and “company cottage,” and what coins came to our touch never soared above the mean dignity of copper. Poor we were! a family of groats and farthings! poor as Lamb’s “obolary Jew!” It is not worth while for what I have in mind to dwell in sad extent on the struggles of my father or the aching shifts we made in my childhood to feed and clothe the life within our bodies. And yet, in body at least, I thrived thereby. I grew up strong and muscular; I boxed, wrestled and ran; was proficient as an athlete, and among other feats and for a slight wager--which was not made with my money, I warrant you!--swam eighteen miles in fresh water one Sunday afternoon. While my muscles did well enough, our poverty would have starved my mind were it not for the parish priest. The question of books and schools for me was far beyond my father’s solution; he was eager that I be educated, but the emptiness of the family fisc forbade. It was then the good parish priest stepped forward and took me in earnest hand. Father Glennon deemed himself no little of an athlete, and I now believe that it was my supremacy in muscle among the boys of my age that first drew his eyes to me. Be that as it may, he took my schooling on himself; and night and day while I abode on Tom’s Run--say until my seventeenth year--I was as tightly bound to the priest’s books as ever Prometheus to his rock. And being a ready lad, I did my preceptor proud. The good priest is dead now; I sought to put a tall stone above him but the bishop refused because it was too rich a mark for the dust of an humble priest. I had my way in part, however; I bought the plot just across the narrow gravel walk from the grave that held my earliest, best friend, and there, registering on its smooth white surface my debt to Father Glennon, stands the shaft. I carved on it no explanation of the fact that it is only near and not over my good priest’s bones. Those who turn curious touching that matter may wend to the bishop or to the sexton, and I now and then hear that they do.