And yet all these cheap glories of a narrow
life and narrower brain were upheld and made sacred by the love of
the devoted priestess who worshiped at this lonely shrine, and kept
the light burning through gloom and doubt and despair. The storm
tore round the house, and shook its white fists in the windows. A
dried wreath of laurel that Fanny had placed on Dobbs's head after
his celebrated centennial address at the school-house, July 4,
1876, swayed in the gusts, and sent a few of its dead leaves down
on the floor, and I lay in Dobbs's bed and wondered what a first-
class clerkship was.
I found out early the next summer. I was strolling through the
long corridors of a certain great department, when I came upon a
man accurately yoked across the shoulders, and supporting two huge
pails of ice on either side, from which he was replenishing the
pitchers in the various offices. As I passed I turned to look at
him again. It was Dobbs!
He did not set down his burden; it was against the rules, he said.
But he gossiped cheerily, said he was beginning at the foot of the
ladder, but expected soon to climb up.
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