“You don't understand, James,” she said. “But these clothes are not for people like us. These are to be given to the poor.” I have often smiled as I looked back on it. I'll bet there wasn't a dime in the house. The patches on my best pants were three deep and if laid side by side would have covered more territory than the new blue suit. To take those clothes back was the bitterest sacrifice my heart has ever known. A few days later there was a fire sale by one of the merchants, and I got the job of ringing the auction bell. Late in the afternoon the auctioneer held up a brown overcoat. “Here is a fine piece of goods, only slightly damaged,” he said. He showed the back of the coat where a hole was burned in it. “How much am I offered?” I knew that I would get fifty cents for my day's work, so I bid ten cents--all that I could spare. “Sold,” said the auctioneer, “for ten cents to the kid who rang the bell all day.” I took the garment home and told my mother how I had bought it for cash in open competition with all the world. My mother and my aunt set to work with shears and needles and built me a suit of clothes out of the brown overcoat. It took a lot of ingenuity to make the pieces come out right. The trousers were neither long nor short. They dwindled down and stopped at my calves, half-way above my ankles. What I hated most was that the seams were not in the right places. It was a patchwork, and there were seams down the front of the legs where the crease ought to be. I didn't want to wear the suit, but mother said it looked fine on me, and if she said so I knew it must be true. I wore it all fall and half the winter. The first time I went to Sunday-school, I met Babe Durgon. He set up the cry: “Little boy, little boy, Does your mother know you're out; With your breeches put on backward, And the seams all inside out!” This was the first time that my spirit had been hurt. His words were a torment that left a scar upon my very soul. Even to this day when I awake from some bad dream, it is a dream that I am wearing crazy breeches and all the world is jeering at me. It has made me tender toward poor children who have to wear hand-me-downs. To-day psychologists talk much of the “inferiority complex” which spurs a man forward to outdo himself. But Babe Durgon and I didn't go into these matters as we trudged along through the dark on our way to do battle “over the line.” At the foot of the hill, Babe exclaimed: