A wisdom far older than his years was
his. Poverty had been his teacher, exile and deprivation. When other
children were in school, repeating mechanically that many a little made
a mickle, that genius was an infinite capacity for taking pains, and
that a man has no handicaps but those of his own making, Mark _knew_ these
things, he knew that the great forces of life were no stronger than his
own two hands, and that any work of any sort must bring him to his
goal--the goal of wealth and power and position.
He knew that his father was not so clever as he was, and why. He saw
that his mother was worn out with housework and child-bearing. He did
not idealize their home, where father, mother, and seven children were
crowded into four rooms, and where of an evening the smell of cabbage
soup and herrings, of soap-suds and hot irons on woollen, of inky school
books and perspiring humanity, mingled with the hot, oily breath of the
lamp.
Yet Mark saw beyond this, too. The food was good, if coarse, the bills
were paid, the bank account grew. Some day the girls would be married,
the boys in good positions; some day the mother should have a little
country house and a garden, and the father come home early to smoke his
pipe and prune his rose bushes.
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