Silas will never do much anyway,
they still live on the Taylor place, and Nathan manages one way and
another to get some work out of him. Nathan intends at some time to deed
the place to the family in such a way that Silas can't squander it away;
but he has never told them so yet. Somehow or other, after mother's
death, I felt drawn toward the family, and did all I could to help them
along. I kept the little girls with me by turns, and encouraged them to
attend school, and took pains to learn them habits of order and
industry, and I found after a time that my labor was not entirely thrown
away, for as they grew older they carried the habits which I tried to
teach them into their own home, and to say the least of it, they live
much more like other people than they used to; and I begin to think that
even an old maid can do a little good in the world, now and then, as
well as any one else. Of course you remember the boys, and what an awful
trial it used to be to have Ephraim about the place; well, he settled
down after a while, he always said the whipping his father gave him for
cutting up my clothes-lines and then lying about it was what made a man
of him.
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