So time went on till “Dodd” was nearly seventeen.  He was almost a man grown now—­a swaggering, profane, vulgar fellow, who ate his meals at home and slept there, usually, but further than that lived apart from his parents, who every day regretted that ever he had been born.

You all know this boy, don’t you, beloved?  He is in every town that I know of, and there are duplicates and triplicates, not to say centiplicates, of him in some of our larger cities.  I wonder if it is worth while to try to do anything with these boys, or for them?  The machine has dropped them, or thrown them out.  They will not run through the great educational mill known as the “graded system.”  They seem destined to go to the bad, and it seems to me the tendency of the machine, and some of its managers, is to let them go.  Yet they ought not to go.  As there is a God in heaven, they ought not to.

But the machine does not care so very much for these things, either for the boys or for the Personage just mentioned, whose name the managers revere enough to teach the children that it should always be written with a capital letter, but further than that do not trouble themselves much about it.  The machine is built on the theory that the pupils are made for the schools, rather than the schools for the pupils, and that the order of the grades must be maintained, no matter what becomes of the graded.  What is it to this great mill if the pupils do fall out of the hopper?  So long as the mill grinds and the grinders can hold their places at the crank; so long as they can draw their pay, escape public censure, dodge behind a stack of examination papers when individual complaints appear, shield themselves from responsibilities by records and marks, keep the promotions in order, graduate a class a year in good clothes and with pretty speeches, see each of those who have been ground through go out into the great world armed with a diploma tied up with a blue ribbon, and so following—­so long as the machine can do all this, what is the use of paying any attention to “Dodd” Weaver and such incorrigibles as he, who refuse to go into the mill and be ground?  What, indeed?

However, you know the story of “the ninety-and-nine.”  At least you ought to know it.  It has an application in these premises.

But Elder Weaver shifted his base of operations once more, and “Dodd” had another chance.

He had now got so far down on the ladder of his descent that he was counted almost dangerous.  His father feared him, and he was even the terror of his brothers and sisters.  In a word, he was a hard case.

It was the town of Emburg in which the parson was stationed this time—­one of those towns so common all through the West, places that start out with a boom and the prospect of being municipalities of at least 500,000 inhabitants in a few years; whose founders lay out into town lots all the land that joins them and sell these at fabulous prices to those who are credulous enough to buy; and which finally settles down to a quiet village of about 2,500 souls, with a depot, stores, seven churches, and a school requiring about ten teachers to take care of its pupils.