CHAPTER XII. MY HAND TOUCHES IRON

When I was eleven I got a regular job that paid me fifty cents a day. So

I quit school just where the Monitor had sunk the Merrimac in the “first

fight of the ironclads.” Thereafter my life was to be bound up with the

iron industry. My job was in a nail factory. I picked the iron splinters

from among the good nails that had heads on them. This taught me that

many are marred in the making. Those that are born with bad heads must

not be used in building a house or the house will fall. In the head of

the nail is its power to hold fast. Men are like nails, some have the

hold-fast will in their heads. Others have not. They were marred in the

making. They must be thrown aside and not used in building the state, or

the state will fall.

I put the good nails into kegs, and the headless nails and splinters

were sent back to be melted into window weights. Handling sharp nails

is hard on the hands. And the big half-dollar that I earned was not

unmarred with blood. Every pay-day I took home my entire earnings and

gave them to mother. All my brothers did the same. Mother paid the

household expenses, bought our clothing and allotted us spending money

and money for Sunday-school.

This is a cynical age and I can imagine that I hear somebody snicker

when I confess the fondness I had for the Sunday-school. I don't want

any one to think I am laying claim to the record of having always been a

good little boy; nor that everything I did was wise. No; I confess I did

my share of deviltry, that some of my deeds were foolish, and (to use

the slang of that time) I often got it in the neck. Once I bantered a

big fat boy to a fight. He chased me and I ran and crawled into a place

so narrow that I knew he couldn't follow me. I crawled under the floor

of a shed that was only about six inches above the ground. Fatty was at

least ten inches thick and I thought I was safe. But he didn't try to

crawl under the floor after me. He went inside the shed and found that

the boards of the floor sank beneath his weight like spring boards. And

there that human hippopotamus stood jumping up and down while he mashed

me into the mud like a mole under a pile-driver. I had showed that I had

“a head on me like a nail” when I crawled under that floor and let Fatty

step on me. There is a saying, “You can't keep a good man down.” But

Fatty kept me down, and so I must admit he was a better man than I

was. Some people say you should cheer for the under-dog. But that isn't

always fair. The under-dog deserves our sympathy, the upper-dog must be

a better dog or he couldn't have put the other dog down. I give three

cheers for the winner. Any tribe that adopts the rule of always hissing

the winner has found a real way to discourage enterprise.

I owned a part interest in some pigeons with a boy named Jack Thomas.

The pigeons' nests were in Jack's back yard. He told me that my share

of the eggs had rotted and his share had hatched, so that my interest in

the young pigeons had died out and they were all his now. I was sure it

was a quibble and that he was cheating me. It made me mad and I sneaked

up to the pigeon loft and put a tiny pin prick in all the eggs in the

nests. This was invisible but it caused the eggs to rot as he said mine

had, and I felt that this was only justice. Turn about is fair play.

When Jack's eggs didn't hatch he suspected me, for I had been so foolish

as to predict that his eggs wouldn't hatch. And so he was sure I was

responsible, although he didn't know how. In fact his mother had seen

me enter the barn and had told Jack about it. One day when I went to the

pasture to get the hotel keeper's cows, I ran into Jack hunting ground

squirrels with his dog. He set his dog chasing the cows and then ran

away out of my reach. The dog yelped at the cows heels and they galloped

about the pasture in a panic. I shouted to Jack to call off his dog or

there would be trouble the next time I met him. But Jack, who was out of

reach, shouted encouragement instead. Round and round the cattle raced

with that howling dog scaring them into fits. At last the dog tired

of the fun and trotted off to join Jack, who was disappearing over the

hill. I then tried to round up the cows and get them out of the pasture.

But the brutes were wet with sweat and as wild as deer. I saw that they

could not be milked in that condition and felt that Jack's conduct was

outrageous. He had not only made trouble for me; he had injured the

hotel keeper. There would be no milk that night fit to be used.

I started straight for Jack's home to tell his mother of his lawless

act. As I went along, I turned the case over in my mind, and the case

grew stronger and stronger all the time. Before I reached Jack's door I

had, satisfied myself that his mother would be shocked at the news and

would at once cut a big switch to give Jack the licking he deserved.

But when I began to tell Mrs. Thomas of her son's crime, she sided with

Jack and wouldn't listen to me. “Don't come to me with your troubles,

you nasty little whiffet,” she cried. “You started the whole thing when

you sneaked in and ruined Jack's pigeon eggs. Now that you've got

the worst of it you come here with your tattle-tales. You ought to be

ashamed to show your face--” She had become so threatening that I turned

and ran. My whole case had gone to pieces on her sharp tongue like a toy

balloon pricked with a pin. I had been blowing it up until it got so

big I couldn't see anything else. It burst right in my face, and there

wasn't even a scrap of rubber to tell where it had been.

This taught me one of the best lessons I ever learned. By looking only

at his side of a case a man can kid himself into thinking that he is

wholly right, that his cause is greater than himself and represents the

rights of the entire community. But a counter-blast from the other

side will deflate his balloon in a second and he'll come down to earth

without even a parachute to soften the jolt when he lands.

I learned that blood is not only thicker than water, but it is thicker

than curdled milk, and you can't line up a mother against her own child

even if he chased the cows until they got so wild they gave strawberry

pop instead of milk. Any argument that goes contrary to human nature

has struck a snag before it is started. A man must come into court with

clean hands. I had started by rotting the other fellow's eggs and he

finished by souring my milk. I wanted justice and I got it, but I didn't

recognize it when it landed on me with all four feet. Chickens come home

to roost, and my pigeons had found a nesting-place on my anatomy; and

the spot they had chosen was right in the neck.