I accepted the tribute with a swelling heart. "What good will it do me if I can't get an education?" I demanded. "It's that will give it to you, Ben. Why, don't you know every blessed word in the English language that begins with an _a_? That's more than I know--that's more, I reckon," he burst out, "than the General himself knows!" In this there was comfort, if a feeble one. "But there're so many other things besides the _a_'s that you've got to learn," I responded. "Yes, but if you learn the _a_'s, you'll learn the other things,--now ain't that logic? The trouble with me, you see, is that I learned the other things without knowing a blamed sight of an _a_. I tell you what I'll do, Ben, my boy, I'll speak to the General about it the Very next time he comes to the factory." He gave me back the dictionary, and I applied myself to its pages with a terrible earnestness while I awaited the great man's attention. It was a week before it came, for the General, having gone North on affairs of the railroad, did not condescend to concern himself with my destiny until the more important business was arranged and despatched. Being in a bland mood, however, upon his return, it appeared that he had listened and expressed himself to some purpose at last. "Tell him to go to Theophilus Pry and let me have his report," was what he had said. "But who is Theophilus Pry?" I enquired, when this was repeated to me by Bob Brackett. "Dr. Theophilus Pry, an old friend of the General's, who takes his nephew to coach in the evenings. The doctor's very poor, I believe, because they say of him that he never refuses a patient and never sends a bill. He swears there isn't enough knowledge in his profession to make it worth anybody's money." "And where does he live?" "In that little old house with the office in the yard on Franklin Street. The General says you're to go to him this evening at eight o'clock." The sound of my beating heart was so loud in my ears that I hurriedly buttoned my jacket across it. Then as if I were to be examined on Johnson's Dictionary, my lips began to move silently while I spelled over the biggest words. If I could only confine my future conversations to the use of the _a_'s and _b_'s, I felt that I might safely pass through life without desperate disaster in the matter of speech.