day right along, I don’t know how many years.  I love it like I do my own business, and I’d fight for it as quick as I’d fight for my own family.  It’s a beautiful town.  Look at our wholesale district; look at any district you want to; look at the park system we’re puttin’ through, and the boulevards and the public statuary.  And she grows.  God! how she grows!” He had become intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity.  “Now, Bibbs, I can’t take any of it—­nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds—­away with me in my shroud when I have to go.  But I want to leave my share in it to my boys.  I’ve worked for it; I’ve been a builder and a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed ’em to grow.  I’ve built big, and I want the buildin’ to go on.  And when my last hour comes I want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they’re fit to take charge and go on with it.  Bibbs, when that hour comes I want to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big things.  Bibbs, when I’m up above I want to know that the big share I’ve made mine, here below, is growin’ bigger and bigger in the charge of my boys.”

He leaned back, deeply moved.  “There!” he said, huskily.  “I’ve never spoken more what was in my heart in my life.  I do it because I want you to understand—­and not think me a mean father.  I never had to talk that way to Jim and Roscoe.  They understood without any talk, Bibbs.”

“I see,” said Bibbs.  “At least I think I do.  But—­”

“Wait a minute!” Sheridan raised his hand.  “If you see the least bit in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here and talk about ‘poems and essays’ and such-like fooleries.  And you must understand, too, what it meant to start one o’ my boys and have him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because he couldn’t stand work.  Now, let’s get right down to it, Bibbs.  I’ve had a whole lot o’ talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another, and I reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does, anyway!  Now here, I’ll be frank with you.  I started you in harder than what I did the other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw you needed to be shook up more’n they did.  You were always kind of moody and mopish—­and you needed work that’d keep you on the jump.  Now, why did it make you sick instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of done?  I pinned ole Gurney down to it.  I says, ’Look here, ain’t it really because he just plain hated it?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, ’that’s it.  If he’d enjoyed it, it wouldn’t ‘a’ hurt him.  He loathes it, and that affects his nervous system.  The more he tries it, the more he hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.’  That ain’t quite his words, but it’s what he meant.  And that’s about the way it is.”