A MERCHANT'S LETTERS
her off on to the weather when she wanted to talk religion. So I shut my eyes and let it come, though it caught on my palate once or twice on the way out.
"Hooked a watermelon, mam."
There wasn't any need for further particulars with that crowd, and they simply howled. Ma led me up to our pew, allowing that she'd tend to me Monday for disgracing her in public that way—and she did.
That was a twelve-grain dose, without any sugar coat, but it sweat more cant and false pride out of my system than I could get back into it for the next twenty years. I learned right there how to be humble, which is a heap more important than knowing how to be proud. There are mighty few men that need any lessons in that.
Your affectionate father,
John Graham.
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