I've heard my grandfather tell how he'd
heard folks say his father was always hintin' in his licker that
he was a heap better than he seemed, and if people only knowed
the truth about him they'd respect him mo', and mebby treat him
better. Well, sir, he married and riz a family; there was my
grandfather and a passel of girls--and that crop of children was
the only decent crop he ever riz. I've heard my grandfather tell
how, when he got old enough to notice such things, he seen that
his father had the look of a man with something mysterious
hangin' over him, but he couldn't make it out what it was, though
he gave it a heap of study. He seen, too, that let him get a
taste of licker and he'd begin to throw out them hints, how if
folks only knowed the truth they'd be just naturally fallin' over
themselves fo' to do him a favor, instead of pickin' on him and
tryin' to down him.
"My grandfather said he never knowed a man, either, with the same
aversion agin labor as his father had. Folks put it down to
laziness, but they misjudged him, as come out later, yet he never
let on. He just went around sorrowful-like, and when there was a
piece of work fo' him to do he'd spend a heap of time studyin'
it, or mebby he'd just set and look at it until he was ready fo'
to give it up. Appeared like he couldn't bring himself down to
toil.
"Then one day he got his hands on a paper that had come acrost in
a ship from England. He was readin' it, settin' in the shade; my
grandfather said he always noticed he was partial to the shade,
and his wife was pesterin' of him fo' to go and plow out his
truck-patch, when, all at once, he lit on something in the paper,
and he started up and let out a yell like he'd been shot.
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