about, I HAVEN'T read."

Don't you read any other books but novels?"

"Scarcely ever. One gets tired after business, and you can't get the

books. I have been to some extension lectures, of course, 'Lizabethan

Dramatists,' it was, but it seemed a little high-flown, you know. And I

went and did wood-carving at the same place. But it didn't seem leading

nowhere, and I cut my thumb and chucked it."

He made a depressing spectacle, with his face anxious and his hands

limp. "It makes me sick," he said, "to think how I've been fooled with.

My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced HIDING. He's a thief. He

pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and be's stole twenty-three

years of my life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings. Here I am! I

don't KNOW anything, and I can't DO anything, and all the learning time

is over."

Is it?" she said; but he did not seem to hear her. "My o' people didn't

know any better, and went and paid thirty pounds premium--thirty pounds

down to have me made THIS. The G.V. promised to teach me the trade, and

he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with

draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up--well, you'd have

nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and

those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might

not have been better--with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer

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The Wheels of Chance