"But Jake managed to save the engine an' kettles, an' thinkin' 'twas about time to go north for a change, he got his stuff up to New Orleans, where he got another little boat built to fit the engine, an' started up-stream in the tradin'-boat business. He got along an' along, an' then up the Missouri River; but when he got up near the mouth of our crick he ran on a snag, close inshore, that ripped the bottom an' sides off o' the boat an' didn't leave nothin' that could float.
"That might have been a deadener, if Jake had been of the dyin' kind, but he wasn't; an' as he was wrecked alongside of a town an' a saw-mill, he kept his eye peeled for business, an' pretty soon he'd put up a slab shanty, an' got a little circular saw, for his engine to work, an' turned out the first sawed shingles ever seen in these parts, an' when folks saw that they didn't curl up like cut shingles, he got lots o' business an' is keepin' it right along.
"''Tain't makin' me a millionnaire,' he says, 'an' the sight o' pineapples would make me tired, but at last I've struck a job that me an' the engine fits to a T, an' an angel couldn't ask more'n that, if he was in my shoes.'"
"That story, Caleb," said Philip, "is quite appropriate to my case. But see here, old chap, didn't it ever occur to you to apply it to yourself?"
"Can't say that it did," Caleb replied. "What put that notion into your head?"
"Everybody and everything, my own eyes included. You started to be a preacher—not merely for the sake of talking, but for the good that your talk would do. I hear from every one that for many years you've been everybody's friend, doing all sorts of kind, unselfish acts for the good of other people. Mr. Grateway says that your work does more good than his preaching, and Doctor Taggess says you cure as many sick people as he. It seems to me that your disappointments, like Jake Brockleband's, have resulted in your finding a place that fits you to a T."
"I want to know! Well, I'm glad to hear it—from you. Kind o' seems, then, as if you an' me was in the same boat, don't it?"
