answered questions and went out on the sidewalks to direct strangers.  From one window hung a banner inviting visitors to enter and get a list of hotels and boarding-houses.  The crowd was entirely good-humored and waited outside restaurants, bandying jokes with true Western philosophy.  At times the wagons made a temporary blockade in the street, but no one grumbled.  Bands of music paraded past them, the escort for visitors of especial consideration.  In a window belonging, the sign above declared, to the Business Men’s Association, stood a huge doll clad in blue satin, on which was painted a device of Neptune sailing down the Mississippi amid a storm of fireworks.  The doll stood in a boat arched about with lantern-decked hoops, and while Nelson halted, unable to proceed, he could hear the voluble explanation of the proud citizen who was interpreting to strangers.

This, Nelson thought, was success.  Here were the successful men.  The man who had failed looked at them.  Eve roused him by a shrill cry, “There they are.  There’s May and the girls.  Let me out quick, Uncle!”

He stopped the horse and jumped out himself to help her.  It was the first time since she came under his roof that she had been away from it all night.  He cleared his throat for some advice on behavior.  “Mind and be respectful to Mrs. Arlington.  Say yes, ma’am, and no, ma’am ——­” He got no further, for Eve gave him a hasty kiss and the crowd brushed her away.

“All she thinks of is wearing fine clothes and going with the fellers!” said her brother, disdainfully.  “If I had to be born a girl, I wouldn’t be born at all!”

“Maybe if you despise girls so, you’ll be born a girl the next time,” said Nelson.  “Some folks thinks that’s how it happens with us.”

“Do you, Uncle?” asked Tim, running his mind forebodingly over the possible business results of such a belief.  “S’posing he shouldn’t be willing to sell the pigs to be killed, ’cause they might be some friends of his!” he reflected, with a rising tide of consternation.  Nelson smiled rather sadly.  He said, in another tone:  “Tim, I’ve thought so many things, that now I’ve about given up thinking.  All I can do is to live along the best way I know how and help the world move the best I’m able.”

“You bet I ain’t going to help the world move,” said the boy; “I’m going to look out for myself!”

“Then my training of you has turned out pretty badly, if that’s the way you feel.”

A little shiver passed over the lad’s sullen face; he flushed until he lost his freckles in the red veil and burst out passionately:  “Well, I got eyes, ain’t I?  I ain’t going to be bad, or drink, or steal, or do things to git put in the penitentiary; but I ain’t going to let folks walk all over me like you do; no, sir!”

Nelson did not answer; in his heart he thought that he had failed with the children, too; and he relapsed into that dismal study of the face of Failure.