as much book-learning as these other gentlemen, but there's one thing
that I do know when I see it, and that's a good steady gait either of
a horse or a man. Now Chicky is no thoroughbred, and he'll probably
never beat the record of them that is, but I've kept an eye on him
this summer, and I tell you he's developing the traits that win every
time. Last spring, when the judge made this offer, he was as skittish
and unreliable as a young colt. I wouldn't have trusted him around the
corner to do an errand for me. I've known him ever since he put on the
district messenger uniform, and I wouldn't have given one of his own
brass buttons for him. I've come across him too many times, when he'd
been sent on an errand, stopping to play marbles and fly kites with
the other boys.

"But since he's took up with that motto of his, he's settled down in
the harness as steady as a ten-year-old horse. Now I notice if there's
anything specially important to be done, Chicky's the one they pick
out. There's something almost pitiful in the way he's been trying,
when you recollect he has never had any raising, and has shifted for
himself all his life. I don't really believe that it's to get the
wheel that has made such a change in him as the idea of being faithful
in every little thing has taken such a holt on him. I've known him to
walk two miles to straighten out the matter of a penny or a
postage-stamp.

"I'm not saying but that the other fellows' mottoes are best for them
that likes them, but, if I was a-hunting somebody that I could tie to
through thick and thin, in any kind of business, and under every kind
of circumstance, I'll be blamed if I wouldn't rather choose somebody
that was a-living up to Chicky's text in dead earnest."