Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/325

 he had avoided. He found Davie; Davie didn't care to fight then. But another boy accommodated Willie. Johnnie Badger, the fighter of the school, licked Willie that day; and the next; and the next. Willie came back for his daily licking till his father happened to hear of it.

"What's the matter, William?" he asked. "Can't you lick that boy?"

"Not yet," said William, "but I will some day."

The father took his boy in hand, taught him how to use his fists and—Willie went to school and licked Johnnie Badger. "And then," U'Ren says, "we became good friends."

A salient trait of U'Ren, the man, is his perfect self-possession. His father developed that in him. One day William was sent to a neighbour's for a set of double-trees for a wagon. He hitched a trace to it and, letting his horse drag it home, lost one of the clevis pins. His father rebuked him sharply, and William flew into one of his violent but infrequent passions. . His father was silent. He didn't want to break the boy's spirit; he waited till William "felt bad." They were haying together then, and at one of the pauses to rest the father talked quietly about self-control. One must learn to govern one's self, he said, and he concluded: "If you don't, William, you might kill."