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have an easy time of it nowadays doing nothing. Yes I had it very differently when I was a boy like George here who is just a lazy good for nothing. I didn't have all these new fangled notions. I was already earning my own living and giving myself my own education. What! yes! well I say it to you, you have no idea what an easy time you children all have nowadays just doing nothing. And my poor mother, peace be with her, she never had her own house and all kinds of servants to wait on her like your mother. Yes, well, your mother has everything I can give her, not that she don't deserve everything I can give her, Miss Jenny is the best girl I know and she will always have it as easy as I can make it for her, but you children, you never have done anything yet to make it right that you should always be having everything so easy to you. Yes, I say to you, I don't see with all these modern improvements to always spoil you, you ever will be good to work hard like your father. No all these modern kinds of improvements never can do any good to anybody. Yes, what, well, tell me, you all like to be always explaining to me, tell me exactly what you are going to get from all these your expensive modern kinds of ways of doing. Well I say, just tell me some kind of way so that I can understand you. You know I like to get good value for my money, I always had a name for being pretty good at trading, I say, you know I like to know just what I am getting for my money and you children do certainly cost a great deal of my money, now I say, tell me, I am glad to listen to you, I say you tell me just what you are going to do, to make it good all this money. Well, what, what are all these kinds of improvements going to do for you."

The children laughed, "You see you can't tell yet sir," they answered, "it will be different but I guess we will be good for something."

"No you children never will be good for something if I have any right kind of a way to know it," Mr. Dehning answered, and he looked very sharply at them. And this was a cheerful challenge to them for he liked it and they liked it too with him, to fight strongly against him in the everlasting struggle of conscious unproved power in the young against dogmatic pride in having done it, of the old ones.

This father was proud of his children and yet, too, very reproachful in his feeling toward them. His wife from perhaps more than equal living with him never much regarded such a feeling in him, but to the young ones it was new for them however often it came to them, for it always meant a new fighting for the right to their kind of power that they felt strongly inside them.

But always there was a little of the dread in them that comes to even grown young men and women from an old man’s sharp looking, for deep down is the fear, perhaps he really knows, his look is so outward from him, he certainly has used it all up the things inside him at which young ones are still always looking. And then comes the strong feeling,