I don\'t like Mr. Travers as much as I did. Of course I know he\'s a very nice man, and he\'s going to be my brother when he marries Sue, and he used to bring me candy sometimes, but he isn\'t what he used to be.

One time—that was last summer—he was always dreadfully anxious to hear from the Post-office, and whenever he came to see Sue, and he and she and I would be sitting on the front piazza, he would say, "Jimmy, I think there must be a letter for me; I\'ll give you ten cents if you\'ll go down to the Post-office;" and then Sue would say, "Don\'t run, Jimmy; you\'ll get heart disease if you do;" and I\'d walk \'way down to the Post-office, which is pretty near half a mile from our house. But now he doesn\'t seem to care anything about his letters; and he and Sue sit in the back parlor, and mother says I mustn\'t go in and disturb them; and I don\'t get any more ten cents.

I\'ve learned that it won\'t do to fix your affections on human beings, for even the best of men won\'t keep on giving you ten cents forever. And it wasn\'t fair for Mr. Travers[Pg 163] to get angry with me the other night, when it was all an accident—at least \'most all of it; and I don\'t think it\'s manly for a man to stand by and see a sister shake a fellow that isn\'t half her size, and especially when he never supposed that anything was going to happen to her even if it did break.

When Aunt Eliza came to our house the last time, she brought a steam chair: that\'s what she called it, though there wasn\'t any steam about it. She brought it from Europe with her, and it was the queerest sort of chair, that would all fold up, and had a kind of footstool to it, so that you put your legs out and just lie down in it. Well, one day it got broken. The back of the seat fell down, and shut Aunt Eliza up in the chair so she couldn\'t get out, and didn\'t she just howl till somebody came and helped her! She was so angry that she said she never wanted to see that chair again, and you may have it if you want it Jimmy for you are a good boy sometimes when you want to be.

So I took the chair and mended it. The folks laughed at me, and said I couldn\'t mend it to save my life; but I got some nails and some mucilage, and mended it elegantly. Then mother let me get some varnish, and I varnished the chair, and when it was done it looked so nice that Sue said we\'d keep it in the back parlor. Now I\'m never allowed[Pg 164] to sit in the back parlor, so what good would my chair do me? But Sue said, "Stuff and nonsense that boy\'s indulged now till he can\'t rest." So they put my chair in the back parlor............