He never liked any situation so much or stuck to it so long.
Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows
a succession of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows,
who always went into battle singing, right behind the army,
and always went out a-whooping, right ahead of it.
This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism
that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that
one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.
Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."
He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's
hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head
off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and
by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness
of the work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time
he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals,
was some forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all
those long years he gave such satisfaction that he never was through
with one contract a week till the government gave him another. He was
a perfect pet. And he was always a favorite with his fellow-artists,
and was a conspicuous member of their benevolent secret society,
called the Chain Gang. He always wore his hair short, had a
preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by the government.
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