In spite of Windy's incompetence and her
own growing ill health, she would not permit the family to go into debt,
and although, in the long hard winters, Sam sometimes ate cornmeal mush
until his mind revolted at the thought of a corn field, yet was the rent
of the little house paid on the scratch, and her boy fairly driven to
increase the totals in the yellow bankbook. Even Valmore, who since the
death of his wife had lived in a loft above his shop and who was a
blacksmith of the old days, a workman first and a money maker later, did
not despise the thought of gain.
"It is money makes the mare go," he said with a kind of reverence as
banker Walker, fat, sleek, and prosperous, walked pompously out of
Wildman's grocery.
Of John Telfer's attitude toward money-making, the boy was uncertain. The
man followed with joyous abandonment the impulse of the moment.
"That's right," he cried impatiently when Sam, who had begun to express
opinions at the gatherings in the grocery, pointed out hesitatingly that
the papers took account of men of wealth no matter what their
achievements, "Make money! Cheat! Lie! Be one of the men of the big world!
Get your name up for a modern, high-class American!"
And in the next breath, turning upon Freedom Smith who had begun to berate
the boy for not sticking to the schools and who predicted that the day
would come when Sam would regret his lack of book learning, he shouted,
"Let the schools go! They are but musty beds in which old clerkliness lies
asleep!"
Among the travelling men who came to Caxton to sell goods, the boy, who
had continued the paper selling even after attaining the stature of a man,
was a favourite.
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