XXVI CUSTER'S IDOL FALLS
XXVII FAITH IS RESTORED
XXVIII THE LAST NIGHT IN JAIL
XXIX AT IDLE HOUR

CHAPTER ONE

FIGHTING SHRIMPLIN

Custer felt it his greatest privilege to sit of a Sunday morning in his
mother's clean and burnished kitchen and, while she washed the breakfast
dishes, listen to such reflections as his father might care to indulge
in.

On these occasions the senior Shrimplin, commonly called Shrimp by his
intimates, was the very picture of unconventional ease-taking as he
lolled in his chair before the kitchen stove, a cracker box half filled
with sawdust conveniently at hand.

As far back as his memory went Custer could recall vividly these Sunday
mornings, with the church bells ringing peacefully beyond the windows of
his modest home, and his father in easy undress, just emerged from his
weekly bath and pleasantly redolent of strong yellow soap, his feet
incased in blue yarn socks--white at toe and heel--and the neckband of
his fresh-starched shirt sawing away at the lobes of his freckled ears.
On these occasions Mr. Shrimplin inclined to a certain sad conservatism
as he discussed with his son those events of the week last passed which
had left their impress on his mind. But what pleased Custer best was
when his father, ceasing to be gently discursive and becoming vigorously
personal, added yet another canto to the stirring epic of William
Shrimplin.

Custer was wholly and delightfully sympathetic. There was, he felt, the
very choicest inspiration in the narrative, always growing and
expanding, of his father's earlier career, before Mrs. Shrimplin came
into his life, and as Mr. Shrimplin delicately intimated, tied him hand
and foot. The same grounds of mutual understanding and intellectual
dependence which existed between Custer and his father were lacking
where Mrs. Shrimplin was concerned. She was unromantic, with a painfully
literal cast of mind, though Custer--without knowing what is meant by a
sense of humor, suspected her of this rare

The Just and the Unjust

Notka biograficzna

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