conceit and strutting self-satisfaction from every pore. “Yes, sir!” the swarthy little man continued, pompously, “I should doubt very much if you could buy a foot of that property for less than $5, 000 today!”
“Well,” said Mr. Candler with a satisfied air. “That’s what I thought! I knew it would be way up there somewheres. But I could have had the whole thing once for a thousand dollars. I’ve kicked myself in the seat of the pants a thousand times since to think what a fool I was for not taking it when I had the chance! I’d be a rich man to-day if I had! It just goes to show you, doesn’t it?” he concluded indefinitely.
“Yes, sir,” the pompous, swarthy little man replied, in his dry, briskly assured tones, “it goes to show that our hindsight is usually a great deal better than our foresight!” And he glanced about him complacently, obviously pleased with his wit and convinced that he had said something remarkably pungent and original.
“It was about that time when I first met your father,” said Mr. Candler, turning to the boy again. “Along there in the fall of’82—that’s when it was all right—and I don’t think he’d been in town then more than a month, for in a town that size, I’d have known if he’d been there longer. And yes, of course!” he cried sharply, struck by sudden recollection, “that very first day I saw him he was standing there in front of his shop with two nigger men, unloading some blocks of marble and granite and tombstones, I reckon, and moving them back into his shop. I guess he was just moving in at the time. He’d rented an old shack over there at the north-east corner of the square where the Sluder building is now. That’s where it was, all right. I was working for old man Weaver at the time—he had a grocery and general-goods store there opposite the old courthouse about where the Blue Ridge Coal and Ice Company is now. I was going back to work after dinner and had just turned the corner at the Square there from Academy Street when I saw your father. I remember stopping to watch him for a moment because there was something about his appearance—I don’t know what it was, but if you saw him once you’d never forget him—there was something about the way he looked and talked and worked that was different from any one I’d ever seen. Of course, he was an awful tall, big-boned, powerful-looking sort of man—how tall is your father, son?”
“He was about six feet five,” the boy answered, “but I guess he’s not that much now—he’s stooped over some since he got old.”
“Well, he didn’t stoop in those days,” said Mr. Candler. “He always carried himself as straight as an arrow. I noticed that. He was an awful big
