In the spring my uncle hired a man to work for us—­a noisy, brawny, sharp-featured fellow with keen gray eyes, of the name of Dug Draper.  Aunt Deel hated him.  I feared him but regarded him with great hope because he had a funny way of winking at me with one eye across the table and, further, because he could sing and did sing while he worked—­songs that rattled from his lips in a way that amused me greatly.  Then, too, he could rip out words that had a new and wonderful sound in them.  I made up my mind that he was likely to become a valuable asset when I heard Aunt Deel say to my Uncle Peabody: 

“You’ll have to send that loafer away, right now, ayes I guess you will.”

“Why?”

“Because this boy has learnt to swear like a pirate—­ayes—­he has!”

Uncle Peabody didn’t know it but I myself had begun to suspect it, and that hour the man was sent away, and I remember that he left in anger with a number of those new words flying from his lips.  A forced march to the upper room followed that event.  Uncle Peabody explained that it was wicked to swear—­that boys who did it had very bad luck, and mine came in a moment.  I never had more of it come along in the same length of time.

One day in the spring when the frogs were chanting in the swamp land, they seemed to be saying, “Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg, Dunkelberg,” from morning to bedtime.  I was helping Uncle Peabody to fix the fence when he said: 

“Hand me that stake, Bub.  Don’t be so much of a gentleman.”

I handed the stake to him and then I said: 

“Uncle Peabody, I want to be a gentleman.”

“A gentleman!” he exclaimed as he looked down at me thoughtfully.

“A grand, noble gentleman with a sword and a gold watch and chain and diamonds on,” I exclaimed.

He leaned against the top rail of the fence and looked down at me and laughed.

“Whatever put that in yer head?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know—­how do ye be it?” I demanded.

“They’s two ways,” said he.  “One is to begin ’fore you’re born and pick out the right father.  T’other is to begin after you’re born and pick out the right son.  You can make yerself whatever you want to be.  It’s all inside of a boy and it comes out by and by—­swords and gold and diamonds, or rags an’ dirt an’ shovels an’ crowbars.”

I wondered what I had inside of me.

“I guess I ain’t got any sword in me,” I said.

“When you’ve been eating green apples and I wouldn’t wonder,” he answered as he went on with his work.

“Once I thought I heard a watch tickin’ in my throat,” I said hopefully.

“I don’t mean them things is really in ye, but the power to git ’em is in ye,” said Uncle Peabody.  “That’s what I mean—­power.  Be a good boy and study yer lessons and never lie, and the power’ll come into ye jest as sure as you’re alive.”

I began to watch myself for symptoms of power.