"As for the way you like what helps you (and queer as it may seem, too many boys _don't_ like what helps them), that has astonished and pleased me many a day. I remember your telling me once that you got tired of prunes and potatoes. And I said to you, 'Prunes are good for you, and nothing could be better than baked potatoes,'--I knowing how you relished them mashed! Well, after that, never another mashed potato dared to show its eyes! And, oh, how you did make away with the prunes! "It's the good things you've got in your character, and the bad things that you haven't got, which explain how it comes that you're loved the way you are--by Narcissa, and Grandpa (ah, it's handsome, is that old soldier's love for you! it's grand!), and Mrs. Kukor, and the Western gentleman, and Mr. Perkins, and me! With so much love as all that, could you ever think of yourself as poor? Now you just couldn't! "And then consider the way you love each of us in return! And no lad can say he's poor when he's got the power to love in him! and the sweet sacrifice! And you know the kind of love that all sound young hearts give to the crippled and the helpless and the dumb. Grandpa would say Yes to that if he could. And so would the sparrows on the window sill! "But, of course, we'll not be forgetting that you've got your youth, and most precious it is, and two rows of teeth which don't need bridging! Also, you're as good-looking as any boy ought to be, you're improving in strength, and you're healthy. Why, there's many a millionaire who'd give his fortune if he had that grand little tummy of yours, which can digest the knobs off the doors! "Already--at twelve!--you've got the habit of work, and, oh, what a blessing that habit is, and what an insurance against Satan! And you've got the book habit, a glorious one, since it gives you information, entertains you, and teaches you to think, to argue things out for yourself. Yes, it's reading which makes a lad strong in himself. You don't need racket, and the company of other lads, in order to have a good time. And, John, you know how to listen, and that's uncommon, too. "But thinking is your greatest blessing. You get your joy, not out of what you _have_, for God in His wisdom knows how little that is, but out of what you _think_. If there's something you haven't, you go ahead and supply it with your thoughts, creating beauty where there isn't any, building a world of your own. Never before have I met a lad who could dream as you can dream. Ah, and what it's done for you--in that dark, dirty, little flat!