Then they looked up and the old man raised his hands in a pitiful tumult of joy and fear and reverence as he said:
“An' Marse Tom, so help me God—a-ridin' John Paul Jones!”
CHAPTER IX
THE PEDIGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT
Man may breed up all animals but himself. Strive as he may, the laws of heredity are hidden. “Like produces like or the likeness of an ancestor” is the unalterable law of the lower animal. Not so with man—he is a strange anomaly. Breed him up—up—and then from his high breeding will come reversion. From pedigrees and plumed hats and ruffled shirts come not men, but pygmies—things which in the real fight of life are but mice to the eagles which have come up from the soil with the grit of it in their craws and the strength of it in their talons.
We stop in wonder—balked. Then we see that we cannot breed men—they are born; not in castles, but in cabins.
And why in cabins? For therein must be the solution. And the solution is plain: It is work—work that does it.