And then what could you expect of a child of seven? he wuzn’t much more’n a baby. Good land! I used to hold Thomas Jefferson in my lap and baby him till he wuz nine or ten years old, and his legs dragged on the floor, he wuz so tall.
I thought like as not Raymond Fairfax Coleman would take a turn after a while and live up to the privileges of his name and be quite smart.
He took a great fancy to Rosy’s baby, and it was as cunnin’ a little black image as I ever see, jest a beginnin’ to be playful and full of laugh.
Raymond would carry it down candy and oranges, and give him nickels and little silver pieces to put into his savings-bank.
I gin that bank myself to little Thomas Jefferson Washington, for that wuz the name his Pa and Ma had gin him—we called him Tommy. They gin him the name of Thomas Jefferson, I spoze, to honor the name of my son, and then put on the Washington to kinder prop up the memory of the Father of our Country, or so I spoze.
I gin him that bank to try to give his Pa and Ma some idee of savin’ for a rainy day, and days when it didn’t rain.
It wuz very nice, in the form of a meetin’ house—you put the money down through the steeple.
I thought mebby, bein’ it wuz in this shape, it would sort o’ turn their minds onto meetin’ houses and such moral idees.
Well, finally, one mornin’ early we heard, clear up in our room, Senator Coleman makin’ a great hue and cry.
We hearn his voice lifted up high in agitation and exhortation, and I sez to my pardner: