“Certainly no one man ever read them all.” And the minister smiled again. “But any man may read and understand a great part of the best of them. Tommy might, if he had the chance.”
Tommy sat suddenly bolt upright in his chair, and the blood flew to his face.
“Th’ chance?” repeated his mother, slowly. “What d’ you mean by th’ chance, Mr. Bayliss?”
“I mean that after he had learned all that Miss Andrews and I could teach him, he would have to go away for a time to study—to Princeton, say, where I went, where there are men who devote their whole lives to teaching.”
Mr. Remington stirred impatiently in his chair.
“What fer?” he demanded. “S’pose he could read all th’ books in th’ world, what good ’d it do him?”
The minister perceived that there was only one argument which would be understood—the utilitarian one, the one of dollars and cents, of earning a living.
“When a man has learned certain things,” he explained, “he can teach them to others. A man who can teach things well can always command a good position. It would rescue your son from the mines, and, I believe, would make him better and happier.”
The miner sat for a moment, turning this over in his mind.
“Mebbe ’twould, an’ then ag’in mebbe ’twouldn’t,” he said at last. “Anyway,” he added, with an air of finality, “it ain’t t’ be thort of. How kin I pay fer him t’ go away t’ school? It must cost a heap o’ money. Why, I can’t hardly keep my fambly in bread an’ meat an’ clothes.”