Even this joke father took as a sober possibility. I saw then the full reason why he came to America. He wanted to give his boys boundless opportunities. A humble man himself, he had made all his sacrifices to broaden the chances for his children. This was a lesson to me. I could not repay him. I could only resolve to follow his example, to stand for a square deal for children everywhere. Mother was as pleased with my humble success as was father. When I sat down to the table she apologized for her cooking and said: “After the fine food you have been eating in the big hotels, you will find our table pretty common.” “You're wrong, mother,” I said. “The best food I ever had I got right here at your table. You've never lived in boarding-houses, but father has. He knows that it's a rough life, and they don't feed you on delicacies. Hotel cookery is not like the cookery in the Old World. Over there they make each dish as tasty as they can, and good eating is one of the main objects in life. But Americans don't like to eat. They begrudge the time they have to spend at the table. They get it over as soon as they can. They seem to take it like medicine; the worse the medicine tastes, the better it is for them. An egg is something that is pretty hard to spoil in the cooking. Yet some of these boarding-house cooks are such masters of the art that they can fix up a plate of steak, eggs and potatoes and make them all as tasteless as a chip of wood. I've had this kind of fare for the last few years, and getting back to your table is the best part of home-coming.” Father was still a puddler, and to show my appreciation of all he had done for me, I went into the mill every afternoon that summer and worked a heat or two for him while he went home and rested in the shade. The workout did me good. It kept my body vigorous and cleared my brain so that my studies were easy for me, and I advanced with my education faster than ever before. This proved to me that schooling should combine the book stuff with the shop work. Instead of interfering with each other, they help each other. The hand work makes the books seem more enjoyable. CHAPTER XLI. A PAVING CONTRACTOR PUTS ME ON THE PAVING I was the only Republican elected that year. But for this exception the Democrats would have made a clean sweep of the city. If the editor had not charged me with being illiterate I would neither have been nominated nor elected. When I appeared before audiences in the “swell end” of town and wrote my lessons on my little slate, I gained their sympathy. They believed in fair play. And I found I had not lost their support by thrashing the editor.