I think if he'd lived to get one o'
them big fat pensions, he'd had it easier. Eight dollars a month paid
his board, while he'd pick up what cheap work he could, an' then he
got so that decent folks didn't seem to want the bother of him, an' so
he come on the town."
"There was somethin' else to it," said Henry Merrill soberly. "Drink
come natural to him, 'twas born in him, I expect, an' there wan't
nobody that could turn the divil out same's they did in Scriptur'. His
father an' his gran'father was drinkin' men; but they was kind-hearted
an' good neighbors, an' never set out to wrong nobody. 'Twas the
custom to drink in their day; folks was colder an' lived poorer in
early times, an' that's how most of 'em kept a-goin'. But what stove
Eb all up was his disapp'intment with Marthy Peck--her forsakin' of
him an' marryin' old John Down whilst Eb was off to war. I've always
laid it up ag'inst her."
"So've I," said Asa Brown. "She didn't use the poor fellow right. I
guess she was full as well off, but it's one thing to show judgment,
an' another thing to have heart."
There was a long pause; the subject was too familiar to need further
comment.
"There ain't no public sperit here in Barlow," announced Asa Brown,
with decision. "I don't s'pose we could ever get up anything for
Decoration Day. I've felt kind of 'shamed, but it always comes in a
busy time; 'twan't no time to have it, anyway, right in late
plantin'."
"'Tain't no use to look for public sperit 'less you've got some
yourself," observed John Stover soberly; but something had pleased him
in the discouraged suggestion.
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