Saint Harvey of Riverbank was not having a care-free sainthood those days. Lem came every night, sitting in the same place, pleading with his father to stop being a saint, and eating a luscious ham sandwich before his eyes. The young rascal knew what he was doing. He found a way of turning the ham slowly on the bread—so his father saw it in all its beauty—that made Saint Harvey turn red in the face and swallow hard and lick his lips greedily. There was a way in which Lem licked a forefinger after getting it moist with ham grease that was agony to Saint Harvey. And all the while Lem talked.

“Don't your aunt treat you nice?” his father would ask.

“No, she don't,” Lem would say. “She's mean to me. She makes me wash the dishes, she does. An' she's got millions of dishes. She don't care how many dishes she has. She goes an' cooks an' cooks, an' has pie an' puddin' an' roast beef an' asparagus an'—”

“How does she have the asparagus, Lem?”

“Well, she has it in stalks—big, white stalks—with a kind of sauce on it. It's good. It's mighty good. An' she has ham an' eggs an' beefsteak an' sausage an' pancakes for breakfast. With maple syrup.”

“Ham an' eggs an'' beefsteak an' sausage?”

“Yes.”

Saint Harvey would emit a long, tremulous sigh and close his eyes. Sometimes when Lem told of a Sunday dinner Saint Harvey would turn quite pale, and groan. Then he would get up and walk back and forth, gasping and swallowing and working his jaws and licking his lips.

“I don't want all this sandwich. You can have it,” Lem would say sometimes. “You ought to be hungry; nothin' but bread an'—”

“You get out o' here! You scoot out o' here!” his father would cry, reaching for something to use as a club, and then Lem would go.

Nor was Lem the only trial the good saint had. The Russian Jew, Moses Shuder, would not leave him alone, and no one could anger good Saint Harvey as Shuder could. His very meekness angered Saint Harvey.

Moses Shuder would come to the junkyard, meek and apologetic, dry-washing his hands against his chest, with his crushed hat on his head—the hat itself a reminder of Saint Harvey's anger—and plead with Harvey to sell him or lease him the junkyard.

“Please, Misder Redink, I vant only to talk to you. Please, you should not get a mad at me—

“Why, dod—why, blame take—” Saint Harvey would begin furiously, only to remember himself in time, and force himself to calmness. “You go 'way from here! I don't want to talk to you! I don't want to sell! I don't want to lease—”

“But, please, Misder Redink—”

The meekly appealing eyes of his late rival made Harvey furious, inwardly. He longed to be able to cast aside all restraint and to dod-baste Moses Shuder with all his heart and all his soul. Moses Shuder was worse than a hair shirt or peas in his shoes.

It was the meekness of Shuder, coming back so cringingly, day after day, that drove Saint Harvey to the edge of terrible outbursts of unsaintly temper. And Moses Shuder's eyes, which were like the meekly appealing eyes of Saint Harvey's stray dogs, reminded him of them.

For the stray dogs were another thorn in the good saint's flesh. He was having a sad time being a Little Brother to Stray Dogs. Stray dogs did not like him. They hated him. Whenever they saw him, they looked up at him with meekly appealing eyes like Moses Shuder's and then bit him on the leg.

Perhaps this was because before Saint Harvey became a saint he had hated stray dogs and thrown things at them, and the dogs recognized him as an ancient dog-hater. However that may be, they now greeted him, when he approached them, with a look that pleaded not to be given a beating, and then, as he approached, showed their fangs, growled and raised the hair along their spines, and jumped at his legs. He wished he had been advertised as a Little Brother to Stray Rabbits instead of to dogs.

Saint Harvey missed his smoking tobacco, too. He missed it tremendously, and temptation was always being forced upon him. You know how Americans are. We are not well used to saints and hermits, and when we have one we are proud of him and grateful to him, and we try to show that we are. We go to him and offer him a good cigar. People who would never have thought of offering Harvey Redding even a two-for-five cigar went out of their way to buy ten-cent cigars to offer to Saint Harvey of Riverbank. Sometimes they offered him two two-for-twenty-five cigars at one offering! And when he refused they seated themselves beside him and lighted one of the cigars and let the delicious aroma of the burning leaf float across his nostrils. Great Scott! Have you ever stopped smoking and had one of these fellows come around and let the delicious aroma of a really good cigar float across your nostrils?

I have seen pictures of Saint Anthony being tempted, and I will admit he was subjected to some considerable temptations, and withstood them, but he had never been a tobacco smoker. If he had been, and had given it up, and had then been tempted as Saint Harvey was tempted, he would have stood firm, I have no doubt, but he would have been quite considerably irritated. Giving up tobacco after long using it has that effect on the nerves. It had that effect on Saint Harvey's nerves.

Along about that time Saint Harvey of Riverbank was the most easily irritated saint that ever lived, bar none.