Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/19

Rh been an honest boy of good conduct, and because he had lived true to his father's and mother's principles and instructions after he had moved away into the city. It was only an afternoon's ride from Philadelphia, and he returned frequently to meet the friends of his youth and early manhood. These old friends stopped to speak to him as he passed along the country roads making his visits. They called him "I. V.," just as they had done in the early days, and they said to each other, as they went along after the greeting, that "I. V." was "just the same—money has not changed him a speck."

How could he be other than the sunny-faced, gentle-mannered, softly-spoken man he had been from the beginning, when his manners, when his gifts came to him as birthday tokens?

He was "the grand old man" to the country friends, who knew him through and through. Did he not remember them and call them by their first names, asking for the man who broke his leg or lost his sick horse and had to be helped out of some distressing