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Show 95 "Macel, ask the blessing, " he said, and we all bowed our heads. Macel started, but broke into giggling. Papa looked at her sternly. "Revo, ask the blessing. " Revo started, but giggled. Papa looked at her sternly. "Eldon, ask the blessing. " Eldon followed suit. One by one Papa appointed each one of us, with the same result. Finally he turned to Mama. Even she couldn't get through the blessing. "Damn it to Hell, " quoted Papa. "I'll ask it myself. " Papa started, hesitated a long time, then started to laugh. "We'll eat without the blessing!' One other time Papa demonstrated human weakness. It was in the matter of reading. He was not a good reader, as his formal education stopped with the second grade, for some reason. He would read the paper of an evening, his lips forming the words laboriously. His mother, a Sheffield from New England, back almost as far as the Mayflower, was a voracious reader. She had been the first school teacher in Kanosh, but had passed none of this ability to her children. As a matter of fact, she read so much that she got little else done, probably because of her "bad legtf which had a running sore which never healed up, indicative that she might have been an undiagnosed diabetic. Her example of constant reading, to the exclusion of all else, did not inspire Papa to follow in her footsteps. Quite the opposite. He could not tolerate any of us reading when there was work to do. |