“Yes, you will,—lots of ’em. York ain’t Haynton, old boy; an’ as the Yorkers don’t know enough to take their style from you, you’ll have to take yours from them. I was there once, when I was ’long about your age: I didn’t have to buy no more meetin’-clothes after that until I got married,—nigh on to ten years.”
“If it’s as expensive as that, I’m not going,” said Phil, looking very solemn and beginning to reconstruct the demolished stack.
“Yes, you are, sir. I’ll have you understand you’re not much over age yet, an’ have got to mind your old father. Now let that corn alone. If it won’t stay down, sit on it,—this way,—see.” And, suiting the action to the word, the old man sprawled at ease on the fallen fodder, dragged his son down after him, and said,—
“You shall have a hundred dollars to start with, and more afterward, if you need it, as I know you will. The first thing to do when you get to the city is to go to the best-looking clothing-store you can find, and buy a suit such as you see well-dressed men wearing to business. Keep your eyes open on men as sharply as if they were hosses and clothes were their only points, and then see that you get as good clothes as any of them. It don’t matter so much about the stuff; but have your clothes fit you, an’ cut like other people’s.”
“I don’t want to put on city airs,” said Phil.
“That’s right,—that’s right; but city clothes and city airs aren’t any more alike than country airs an’ good manners. You may be the smartest, brightest young fellow that ever went to York,—as of course you are, bein’ my son,—but folks at York’ll never find it out if you don’t dress properly,—that means, dress as they do. I’ll trade watches with you, to trade back after the trip: mine is gold, you know. You’ll have to buy a decent chain, though.”
“I won’t take your watch, father. I can’t; that’s all about it.”
“Nonsense! of course you can, if you try. It isn’t good manners to wear silver watches in the city.”
“But your watch——” Phil could get no further; for his father’s gold watch was venerated by the family as if it were a Mayflower chair or the musket of a soldier of the Revolution. Once while old farmer Hayn was young Captain Hayn, of the whaling-ship Lou Ann, he saved the crew of a sinking British bark. Unlike modern ship-captains (who do not own their vessels), he went in the boat with the rescuing-party instead of merely sending it out, and he suffered so much through exposure, strain, and the fear of the death which seemed impending that he abandoned the sea as soon thereafter as possible. Nevertheless he thought only of the work before him, until he had rescued the imperilled crew and stowed them safely in his own ship. The circumstances of the rescue were so unusual that they formed the subject of long columns in foreign newspapers; and in a few months Captain Hayn received through the State Department at Washington a gold watch, with sundry complimentary papers from the British Admiralty. The young seaman never talked of either; his neighbors first learned of the presentation by conning their favorite weekly newspapers; nevertheless the papers were framed and hung in the young captain’s bedchamber, and, however carelessly he dressed afterward, nobody ever saw him when he had not the watch in his pocket.
“Father,” said Phil, after some moments spent in silence and facial contortion, “I can’t take your watch, even for a little while. You’ve always worn it: it’s your—the family’s—patent of nobility.”