THE REFORM AT RED ANT
parent would feel it keenly if she knew he had to borrow the fruits of respectability. Well, next came Little Bob, and he had a birthday he wanted to embroider. He was on the naughty list, but Tib fixed him out. Then came Tuttle, also blacklisted; ditto Johnson—and each had a birthday with no stamps due them. Tib began to look solemn, but delivered the goods to each man.
"But on the next roll-call he gave a little lecture on honesty that would take the kinks out of a wire door-mat. It certainly was tart. He drew pictures of about every form of rascality, and then showed how these weaknesses are all praiseworthy pursuits compared with malicious falsifying. And it stung 'em to the quick, sir! No one answered back, but several days later the bogus birthday claimants, after being as good as the gold they'd dug out, came up in a body and admitted they were unregenerate liars. Then they laid down the amount of their embezzlement and slouched off.
"Then Tib played a big card, and I trembled for my job. He decided the time was ripe to forbid Sunday labor. He labored with them and offered three extra stamps for each Sabbath spent free from work. He told them he had noticed several were breaking down under the strain, and he invited them to come to the store, and loll back and smoke a pipe, and listen to a chapter from the Bible, and imagine
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