A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill

BOOK 1. 

I. 

My name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means atypical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, anddue, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am aboutto write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist. Inthat sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding mycountry as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as afunction of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of thisromantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence is toeradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean task!

I have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, withwhat frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection ofwhich I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; thepassions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write abiography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have torelate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place inthe world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the schooland university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business andpolitics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that haveimpelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture of goodand evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks ofmemory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and betterthan I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child whobelieves in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose desires aredreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge of theprinciples of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless activity, admitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions. What he wants, he wants very badly indeed. This wanting things was the corner-stone ofmy character, and I believe that the science of the future will bear meout when I say that it might have been differently built upon. Certain itis that the system of education in vogue in the 70's and 80's nevercontemplated the search for natural corner-stones. 

At all events, when I look back upon the boy I was, I see the beginningsof a real person who fades little by little as manhood arrives andadvances, until suddenly I am aware that a stranger has taken hisplace. .. . 

I lived in a city which is now some twelve hours distant from theAtlantic seaboard. A very different city, too, it was in youth, in mygrandfather's day and my father's, even in my own boyhood, from what ithas since become in this most material of ages. 

There is a book of my photographs, preserved by my mother, which I havebeen looking over lately. First is presented a plump child of two, gazingin smiling trustfulness upon a world of sunshine; later on a lean boy inplaided kilts, whose wavy, chestnut-brown hair has been most carefullyparted on the side by Norah, his nurse. The face is still childish. Thenappears a youth of fourteen or thereabout in long trousers and thequeerest of short jackets, standing beside a marble table against aclassic background; he is smiling still in undiminished hope and trust, despite increasing vexations and crossings, meaningless lessons which hadto be learned, disciplines to rack an aspiring soul, and long, uncomfortable hours in the stiff pew of the First Presbyterian Church. Associated with this torture is a peculiar Sunday smell and the faintrustling of silk dresses. I can see the stern black figure of Dr. Pound, who made interminable statements to the Lord. 

"Oh, Lord, " I can hear him say, "thou knowest. .. "

These pictures, though yellowed and faded, suggest vividly the being Ionce was, the feelings that possessed and animated me, love for myplaymates, vague impulses struggling for expression in a world foreverthwarting them. I recall, too, innocent dreams of a future unidentified, dreams from which I emerged vibrating with an energy that was lost forlack of a definite objective: yet it was constantly being renewed. Ioften wonder what I might have become if it could have been harnessed, directed! Speculations are vain. Calvinism, though it had begun to makecompromises, was still a force in those days, inimical to spontaneity andhuman instincts. And when I think of Calvinism I see, not Dr. Pound, whopreached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion ofaspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained noshining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters forsuspicion and distrust. 

I sometimes ask myself, as I gaze upon his portrait now, the duplicate ofthe one painted for the Bar Association, whether he ever could have feltthe secret, hot thrills I knew and did not identify with religion. Hisreligion was real to him, though he failed utterly to make itcomprehensible to me. The apparent calmness, evenness of his life awedme. A successful lawyer, a respected and trusted citizen, was he lackingsomewhat in virility, vitality? I cannot judge him, even to-day. I neverknew him. There were times in my youth when the curtain of his unfamiliarspirit was withdrawn a little: and once, after I had passed the crisis ofsome childhood disease, I awoke to find him bending over my bed with atender expression that surprised and puzzled me. 

He was well educated, and from his portrait a shrewd observer mightdivine in him a genteel taste for literature. The fine features bearwitness to the influence of an American environment, yet suggest theintellectual Englishman of Matthew Arnold's time. The face isdistinguished, ascetic, the chestnut hair lighter and thinner than myown; the side whiskers are not too obtrusive, the eyes blue-grey. Thereis a large black cravat crossed and held by a cameo pin, and the coat hasodd, narrow lapels. His habits of mind were English, although heharmonized well enough with the manners and traditions of a city whoseinheritance was Scotch-Irish; and he invariably drank tea for breakfast. One of my earliest recollections is of the silver breakfast service andegg-cups which my great-grandfather brought with him from Sheffield toPhiladelphia shortly after the Revolution. His son, Dr. Hugh MoretonParet, after whom I was named, was the best known physician of the cityin the decorous, Second Bank days. 

My mother was Sarah Breck. Hers was my Scotch-Irish side. Old BenjaminBreck, her grandfather, undaunted by sea or wilderness, had come straightfrom Belfast to the little log settlement by the great river thatmirrored then the mantle of primeval forest on the hills. So much forchance. He kept a store with a side porch and square-paned windows, wherehams and sides of bacon and sugar loaves in blue glazed paper hung besideploughs and calico prints, barrels of flour, of molasses and rum, all ofwhich had been somehow marvellously transported over the passes of thoseforbidding mountains, --passes we blithely thread to-day in dining carsand compartment sleepers. Behind the store were moored the barges thatfloated down on the swift current to the Ohio, carrying goods to evenremoter settlements in the western wilderness. 

Benjamin, in addition to his emigrant's leather box, brought with himsome of that pigment that was to dye the locality for generations a deepblue. I refer, of course, to his Presbyterianism. And in order the betterto ensure to his progeny the fastness of this dye, he married thegranddaughter of a famous divine, celebrated in the annals of NewEngland, --no doubt with some injustice, --as a staunch advocate on thedoctrine of infant damnation. My cousin Robert Breck had old Benjamin'sportrait, which has since gone to the Kinley's. Heaven knows who paintedit, though no great art were needed to suggest on canvas the tough fabricof that sitter, who was more Irish than Scotch. The heavy stick he holdsmight, with a slight stretch of the imagination, be a blackthorn; hishead looks capable of withstanding many blows; his hand of giving many. And, as I gazed the other day at this picture hanging in the shabbysuburban parlour, I could only contrast him with his anaemic descendantswho possessed the likeness. Between the children of poor MaryKinley, --Cousin Robert's daughter, and the hardy stock of the old countrythere is a gap indeed!

Benjamin Breck made the foundation of a fortune. It was his son who builton the Second Bank the wide, corniced mansion in which to housecomfortably his eight children. There, two tiers above the river, livedmy paternal grandfather, Dr. Paret, the Breck's physician and friend; theDurretts and the Hambletons, iron-masters; the Hollisters, Sherwins, theMcAlerys and Ewanses, --Breck connections, --the Willetts and Ogilvys; inshort, everyone of importance in the days between the 'thirties and theCivil War. Theirs were generous houses surrounded by shade trees, withglorious back yards--I have been told--where apricots and pears andpeaches and even nectarines grew. 

The business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to mymother's first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore. The verysound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight; but theClaremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis, and the placeis now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots and connectedwith Boyne Street and the business section of the city by trolley lines. Then it was "the country, " and fairly saturated with romance. CousinRobert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, broughtwith him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was nosuburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper contemptfor dwellers in towns. 

Every summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And suchwas my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when Iheard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect--

"If you're really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr. Paret" (she generally addressed my father thus formally), "I think I'llgo to Robert's and take Hugh. "

"Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother, " I would exclaim, starting up. 

"We'll see what your father thinks, my dear. "

"Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh, " he would say. 

Released at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with me, and then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters domainnext door, eager, with the refreshing lack of considerationcharacteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses--who were to remainat home the news of my good fortune. There would be Tom and Alfred andRussell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained knees, faringforth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady western yard. Myrawas too young not to look wistful at my news, but the others pretendedindifference, seeking to lessen my triumph. And it was Julia whoinvariably retorted "We can go out to Uncle Jake's farm whenever we wantto. Can't we, Tom?". .. 

No journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely tripof thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hotfields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smellingwoods to Claremore. No silent palace "sleeping in the sun, " no edificedecreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house ofCousin Robert Breck. 

It stood half a mile from the drowsy village, deep in its own groundsamidst lawns splashed with shadows, with gravel paths edged--in barbarousfashion, if you please with shells. There were flower beds of equallybarbarous design; and two iron deer, which, like the figures on Keats'sGrecian urn, were ever ready poised to flee, --and yet never fled. ForCousin Robert was rich, as riches went in those days: not only rich, butcomfortable. Stretching behind the house were sweet meadows of hay andred clover basking in the heat, orchards where the cows cropped beneaththe trees, arbours where purple clusters of Concords hung beneath warmleaves: there were woods beyond, into which, under the guidance of WillieBreck, I made adventurous excursions, and in the autumn gatheredhickories and walnuts. The house was a rambling, wooden mansion paintedgrey, with red scroll-work on its porches and horsehair furniture inside. Oh, the smell of its darkened interior on a midsummer day! Like theflavour of that choicest of tropical fruits, the mangosteen, it bafflesanalysis, and the nearest I can come to it is a mixture of matting andcorn-bread, with another element too subtle to define. 

The hospitality of that house! One would have thought we had arrived, mymother and I, from the ends of the earth, such was the welcome we gotfrom Cousin Jenny, Cousin Robert's wife, from Mary and Helen with theflaxen pig-tails, from Willie, whom I recall as permanently without shoesor stockings. Met and embraced by Cousin Jenny at the station and drivento the house in the squeaky surrey, the moment we arrived she and mymother would put on the dressing-sacks I associated with hot weather, andsit sewing all day long in rocking-chairs at the coolest end of thepiazza. The women of that day scorned lying down, except at night, and asevening came on they donned starched dresses; I recall in particular onemy mother wore, with little vertical stripes of black and white, and afull skirt. And how they talked, from the beginning of the visit untilthe end! I have often since wondered where the topics came from. 

It was not until nearly seven o'clock that the train arrived whichbrought home my Cousin Robert. He was a big man; his features and evenhis ample moustache gave a disconcerting impression of rugged integrity, and I remember him chiefly in an alpaca or seersucker coat. Though muchless formal, more democratic--in a word--than my father, I stood in aweof him for a different reason, and this I know now was because hepossessed the penetration to discern the flaws in my youthfulcharacter, --flaws that persisted in manhood. None so quick as CousinRobert to detect deceptions which were hidden from my mother. 

His hobby was carpentering, and he had a little shop beside the stablefilled with shining tools which Willie and I, in spite of theirattractions, were forbidden to touch. Willie, by dire experience, hadlearned to keep the law; but on one occasion I stole in alone, andpromptly cut my finger with a chisel. My mother and Cousin Jenny acceptedthe fiction that the injury had been done with a flint arrowhead thatWillie had given me, but when Cousin Robert came home and saw my boundhand and heard the story, he gave me a certain look which sticks in mymind. 

"Wonderful people, those Indians were!" he observed. "They could makearrowheads as sharp as chisels. "

I was most uncomfortable. .. . 

He had a strong voice, and spoke with a rising inflection and a markedaccent that still remains peculiar to our locality, although it was muchmodified in my mother and not at all noticeable in my father; with an oddnasal alteration of the burr our Scotch-Irish ancestors had brought withthem across the seas. For instance, he always called my father Mr. Par-r-ret. He had an admiration and respect for him that seemed to forbidthe informality of "Matthew. " It was shared by others of my father'sfriends and relations. 

"Sarah, " Cousin Robert would say to my mother, "you're coddling that boy, you ought to lam him oftener. Hand him over to me for a couple ofmonths--I'll put him through his paces. .. . So you're going to send him tocollege, are you? He's too good for old Benjamin's grocery business. "

He was very fond of my mother, though he lectured her soundly for herweakness in indulging me. I can see him as he sat at the head of thesupper table, carving liberal helpings which Mary and Helen and Williedevoured with country appetites, watching our plates. 

"What's the matter, Hugh? You haven't eaten all your lamb. "

"He doesn't like fat, Robert, " my mother explained. 

"I'd teach him to like it if he were my boy. "

"Well, Robert, he isn't your boy, " Cousin Jenny would remind him. .. . Hisbark was worse than his bite. Like many kind people he made use ofbrusqueness to hide an inner tenderness, and on the train he was hailfellow well met with every Tom, Dick and Harry that commuted, --althoughthe word was not invented in those days, --and the conductor and brakemantoo. But he had his standards, and held to them. .. . 

Mine was not a questioning childhood, and I was willing to accept thescheme of things as presented to me entire. In my tenderer years, when Ihad broken one of the commandments on my father's tablet (there were morethan ten), and had, on his home-coming, been sent to bed, my mother wouldcome softly upstairs after supper with a book in her hand; a book ofselected Bible stories on which Dr. Pound had set the seal of hisapproval, with a glazed picture cover, representing Daniel in the lions'den and an angel standing beside him. On the somewhat specious plea thatHoly Writ might have a chastening effect, she was permitted to ministerto me in my shame. The amazing adventure of Shadrach, Meshach andAbednego particularly appealed to an imagination needing littlestimulation. It never occurred to me to doubt that these gentlemen hadtriumphed over caloric laws. But out of my window, at the back of thesecond storey, I often saw a sudden, crimson glow in the sky to thesouthward, as though that part of the city had caught fire. There werethe big steel-works, my mother told me, belonging to Mr. Durrett and Mr. Hambleton, the father of Ralph Hambleton and the grandfather of HambletonDurrett, my schoolmates at Miss Caroline's. I invariably connected theglow, not with Hambleton and Ralph, but with Shadrach, Meshach andAbednego! Later on, when my father took me to the steel-works, and Ibeheld with awe a huge pot filled with molten metal that ran out of itlike water, I asked him--if I leaped into that stream, could God save me?He was shocked. Miracles, he told me, didn't happen any more. 

"When did they stop?" I demanded. 

"About two thousand years ago, my son, " he replied gravely. 

"Then, " said I, "no matter how much I believed in God, he wouldn't saveme if I jumped into the big kettle for his sake?"

For this I was properly rebuked and silenced. 

My boyhood was filled with obsessing desires. If God, for example, hadcast down, out of his abundant store, manna and quail in the desert, whycouldn't he fling me a little pocket money? A paltry quarter of a dollar, let us say, which to me represented wealth. To avoid the reproach of thePharisees, I went into the closet of my bed-chamber to pray, requestingthat the quarter should be dropped on the north side of Lyme Street, between Stamford and Tryon; in short, as conveniently near home aspossible. Then I issued forth, not feeling overconfident, but hoping. TomPeters, leaning over the ornamental cast-iron fence which separated hisfront yard from the street, presently spied me scanning the sidewalk. 

"What are you looking for, Hugh?" he demanded with interest. 

"Oh, something I dropped, " I answered uneasily. 

"What?"

Naturally, I refused to tell. It was a broiling, midsummer day; Julia andRussell, who had been warned to stay in the shade, but who were engagedin the experiment of throwing the yellow cat from the top of the latticefence to see if she would alight on her feet, were presently attracted, and joined in the search. The mystery which I threw around it added toits interest, and I was not inconsiderably annoyed. Suppose one of themwere to find the quarter which God had intended for me? Would that bejustice?

"It's nothing, " I said, and pretended to abandon the quest--to be renewedlater. But this ruse failed; they continued obstinately to search; andafter a few minutes Tom, with a shout, picked out of a hot crevicebetween the bricks--a nickel!

"It's mine!" I cried fiercely. 

"Did you lose it?" demanded Julia, the canny one, as Tom was about togive it up. 

My lying was generally reserved for my elders. 

"N-no, " I said hesitatingly, "but it's mine all the same. It was--sent tome. "

"Sent to you!" they exclaimed, in a chorus of protest and derision. Andhow, indeed, was I to make good my claim? The Peterses, when assembled, were a clan, led by Julia and in matters of controversy, moved as one. How was I to tell them that in answer to my prayers for twenty-fivecents, God had deemed five all that was good for me?

"Some--somebody dropped it there for me. "

"Who?" demanded the chorus. "Say, that's a good one!"

Tears suddenly blinded me. Overcome by chagrin, I turned and flew intothe house and upstairs into my room, locking the door behind me. Aninterval ensued, during which I nursed my sense of wrong, and it pleasedme to think that the money would bring a curse on the Peters family. Atlength there came a knock on the door, and a voice calling my name. 

"Hugh! Hugh!"

It was Tom. 

"Hughie, won't you let me in? I want to give you the nickel. "

"Keep it!" I shouted back. "You found it. "

Another interval, and then more knocking. 

"Open up, " he said coaxingly. "I--I want to talk to you. "

I relented, and let him in. He pressed the coin into my hand. I refused;he pleaded. 

"You found it, " I said, "it's yours. "

"But--but you were looking for it. "

"That makes no difference, " I declared magnanimously. 

Curiosity overcame him. 

"Say, Hughie, if you didn't drop it, who on earth did?"

"Nobody on earth, " I replied cryptically. .. . 

Naturally, I declined to reveal the secret. Nor was this by any means theonly secret I held over the Peters family, who never quite knew what tomake of me. They were not troubled with imaginations. Julia was a littleolder than Tom and had a sharp tongue, but over him I exercised adistinct fascination, and I knew it. Literal himself, good-natured andwarm-hearted, the gift I had of tingeing life with romance (to put thething optimistically), of creating kingdoms out of back yards--at whichJulia and Russell sniffed--held his allegiance firm. 

II. 

I must have been about twelve years of age when I realized that I waspossessed of the bard's inheritance. A momentous journey I made with myparents to Boston about this time not only stimulated this gift, but gaveme the advantage of which other travellers before me have likewiseavailed themselves--of being able to take certain poetic liberties with adistant land that my friends at home had never seen. Often during theheat of summer noons when we were assembled under the big maple besidethe lattice fence in the Peters' yard, the spirit would move me to relatethe most amazing of adventures. Our train, for instance, had been held upin the night by a band of robbers in black masks, and rescued by atraveller who bore a striking resemblance to my Cousin Robert Breck. Hehad shot two of the robbers. These fabrications, once started, flowedfrom me with ridiculous ease. I experienced an unwonted exhilaration, exaltation; I began to believe that they had actually occurred. In vainthe astute Julia asserted that there were no train robbers in the east. What had my father done? Well, he had been very brave, but he had had nopistol. Had I been frightened? No, not at all; I, too, had wished for apistol. Why hadn't I spoken of this before? Well, so many things hadhappened to me I couldn't tell them all at once. It was plain that Julia, though often fascinated against her will, deemed this sort of thingdistinctly immoral. 

I was a boy divided in two. One part of me dwelt in a fanciful realm ofhis own weaving, and the other part was a commonplace and protestinginhabitant of a world of lessons, disappointments and discipline. Myinstincts were not vicious. Ideas bubbled up within me continually froman apparently inexhaustible spring, and the very strength of the longingsthey set in motion puzzled and troubled my parents: what I seem to seemost distinctly now is a young mind engaged in a ceaseless struggle forself-expression, for self-development, against the inertia of a traditionof which my father was the embodiment. He was an enigma to me then. Hesincerely loved me, he cherished ambitions concerning me, yet thwartedevery natural, budding growth, until I grew unconsciously to regard himas my enemy, although I had an affection for him and a pride in him thatflared up at times. Instead of confiding to him my aspirations, vaguethough they were, I became more and more secretive as I grew older. Iknew instinctively that he regarded these aspirations as evidences in mycharacter of serious moral flaws. And I would sooner have suffered manyafternoons of his favourite punishment--solitary confinement in myroom--than reveal to him those occasional fits of creative fancy whichcaused me to neglect my lessons in order to put them on paper. Lovingliterature, in his way, he was characteristically incapable ofrecognizing the literary instinct, and the symptoms of its early stageshe mistook for inherent frivolity, for lack of respect for the truth; inbrief, for original sin. At the age of fourteen I had begun secretly(alas, how many things I did secretly!) to write stories of a sort, stories that never were finished. 

He regarded reading as duty, not pleasure. He laid out books for me, which I neglected. He was part and parcel of that American environment inwhich literary ambition was regarded as sheer madness. And no one who hasnot experienced that environment can have any conception of the pressureit exerted to stifle originality, to thrust the new generation into itsreligious and commercial moulds. Shall we ever, I wonder, develop theenlightened education that will know how to take advantage of suchinitiative as was mine? that will be on the watch for it, sympathize withit and guide it to fruition?

I was conscious of still another creative need, that of dramatizing myideas, of converting them into action. And this need was to lead mefarther than ever afield from the path of righteousness. The concreterealization of ideas, as many geniuses will testify, is an expensiveundertaking, requiring a little pocket money; and I have already touchedupon that subject. My father did not believe in pocket money. A sea storythat my Cousin Donald Ewan gave me at Christmas inspired me to composeone of a somewhat different nature; incidentally, I deemed it a vastimprovement on Cousin Donald's book. Now, if I only had a boat, with theassistance of Ham Durrett and Tom Peters, Gene Hollister and PerryBlackwood and other friends, this story of mine might be staged. Therewere, however, as usual, certain seemingly insuperable difficulties: inthe first place, it was winter time; in the second, no facilities existedin the city for operations of a nautical character; and, lastly, myChristmas money amounted only to five dollars. It was my father whopointed out these and other objections. For, after a careful perusal ofthe price lists I had sent for, I had been forced to appeal to him tosupply additional funds with which to purchase a row-boat. Incidentally, he read me a lecture on extravagance, referred to my last month's reportat the Academy, and finished by declaring that he would not permit me tohave a boat even in the highly improbable case of somebody's presentingme with one. Let it not be imagined that my ardour or my determinationwere extinguished. Shortly after I had retired from his presence itoccurred to me that he had said nothing to forbid my making a boat, andthe first thing I did after school that day was to procure, fortwenty-five cents, a second-hand book on boat construction. The woodshedwas chosen as a shipbuilding establishment. It was convenient--and myfather never went into the back yard in cold weather. Inquiries oflumber-yards developing the disconcerting fact that four dollars andseventy-five cents was inadequate to buy the material itself, to saynothing of the cost of steaming and bending the ribs, I reluctantlyabandoned the ideal of the graceful craft I had sketched, and compromisedon a flat bottom. Observe how the ways of deception lead totransgression: I recalled the cast-off lumber pile of Jarvis, thecarpenter, a good-natured Englishman, coarse and fat: in ourneighbourhood his reputation for obscenity was so well known to mothersthat I had been forbidden to go near him or his shop. Grits Jarvis, hisson, who had inherited the talent, was also contraband. I can see now thehuge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting, soot-powderedsnow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my pertinacity. 

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd'elp 'im!"

"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?" Idemanded, indignant. 

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation. 

"You mind what old Jarvis says, " he cried. "What you wants, you gets. "

I did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not veryvaluable, and without question he more than made up for them in mymother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at themoment, --the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, Ismuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise theservices of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem. Tom always had to be "worked up" to participation in my ideas, but in theend he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in thedead of winter, and so far from her native element, naturally struck himat first as ridiculous. Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it if Iever got it made? He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent wagondrivers. 

All that Tom saw, at first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dimrecesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature wassomewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a temperedenthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blottedout, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her wayacross blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island, alas, was as yetunwritten; but among my father's books were two old volumes in which Ihad hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings of palms and coralreefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle, theadventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by alater traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to thegreat neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of theSouthern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning aremote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, oftyphoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on you while you weredismantling galleons, when desperate hand-to-hand encounters ensued. Little by little as I wove all this into personal adventures soon to berealized, Tom forgot the snowballs and the maddened grocery-men whochased him around the block; while Grits would occasionally stop sawingand cry out:--"Ah, s'y!" frequently adding that he would be G--d--d. 

The cold woodshed became a chantry on the New England coast, the alleythe wintry sea soon to embrace our ship, the saw-horses--which stoodbetween a coal-bin on one side and unused stalls filled with rubbish andkindling on the other--the ways; the yard behind the lattice fence becamea backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refugethere--on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized withunparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to thepresent, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and thehousemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, werefriendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from myearliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed thewindows and scrubbed the steps. 

One afternoon Tom went to work. .. . 

The history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that ofall created things, a story of trial and error and waste. At last, oneMarch day she stood ready for launching. She had even been caulked; forGrits, from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source, had procured abucket of tar, which we heated over afire in the alley and smeared intoevery crack. It was natural that the news of such a feat as we wereaccomplishing should have leaked out, that the "yard" should have beenvisited from time to time by interested friends, some of whom came toadmire, some to scoff, and all to speculate. Among the scoffers, ofcourse, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets andcheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always asuperior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an amazingself-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, theiron-master. He was older than I. 

"She won't float five minutes, if you ever get her to the water, " was hiscomment, and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia andRussell Peters. Ralph would have none of the Petrel, or of the South Seaseither; but he wanted, --so he said, --"to be in at the death. " TheHambletons were one of the few families who at that time went to the seafor the summer, and from a practical knowledge of craft in general Ralphwas not slow to point out the defects of ours. Tom and I defended herpassionately. 

Ralph was not a romanticist. He was a born leader, excelling at organizedgames, exercising over boys the sort of fascination that comes from doingeverything better and more easily than others. It was only during theprogress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that Isucceeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom's had been won, fanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer, recruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowingcolours. Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they wentback to him. Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, hedeparted, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around thePetrel in the shed: Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhathampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph's cousin Ham Durrett, who was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don andHarry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and SophyMcAlery. Nancy was a tomboy, not to be denied, and Sophy her shadow. Weheld a council, the all-important question of which was how to get thePetrel to the water, and what water to get her to. The river was not tobe thought of, and Blackstone Lake some six miles from town. Finally, Logan's mill-pond was decided on, --a muddy sheet on the outskirts of thecity. But how to get her to Logan's mill-pond? Cephas was at lengthconsulted. It turned out that he had a coloured friend who went by theimpressive name of Thomas Jefferson Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), whowas in the express business; and who, after surveying the boat with somemisgivings, --for she was ten feet long, --finally consented to transporther to "tide-water" for the sum of two dollars. But it proved that ourcombined resources only amounted to a dollar and seventy-five cents. HamDurrett never contributed to anything. On this sum Thomas Jeffersoncompromised. 

Saturday dawned clear, with a stiff March wind catching up the dust intoeddies and whirling it down the street. No sooner was my father safely onhis way to his office than Thomas Jefferson was reported to be in thealley, where we assembled, surveying with some misgivings ThomasJefferson's steed, whose ability to haul the Petrel two miles seemedsomewhat doubtful. Other difficulties developed; the door in the back ofthe shed proved to be too narrow for our ship's beam. But men embarked ona desperate enterprise are not to be stopped by such trifles, and theproblem was solved by sawing out two adjoining boards. These wereafterwards replaced with skill by the ship's carpenter, Able Seaman GritsJarvis. Then the Petrel by heroic efforts was got into the wagon, theseat of which had been removed, old Thomas Jefferson perched himselfprecariously in the bow and protestingly gathered up his rope-patchedreins. 

"Folks'll 'low I'se plum crazy, drivin' dis yere boat, " he declared, observing with concern that some four feet of the stern projected overthe tail-board. "Ef she topples, I'll git to heaven quicker'n a bullet. "

When one is shanghaied, however, --in the hands of buccaneers, --it is toolate to withdraw. Six shoulders upheld the rear end of the Petrel, othersshoved, and Thomas Jefferson's rickety horse began to move forward inspite of himself. An expression of sheer terror might have been observedon the old negro's crinkled face, but his voice was drowned, and we sweptout of the alley. Scarcely had we travelled a block before we began to bejoined by all the boys along the line of march; marbles, tops, and evenincipient baseball games were abandoned that Saturday morning; people ranout of their houses, teamsters halted their carts. The breathlessexcitement, the exaltation I had felt on leaving the alley were nowtinged with other feelings, unanticipated, but not wholly lacking indelectable quality, --concern and awe at these unforeseen forces I hadraised, at this ever growing and enthusiastic body of volunteersspringing up like dragon's teeth in our path. After all, was not I thehero of this triumphal procession? The thought was consoling, exhilarating. And here was Nancy marching at my side, a little subdued, perhaps, but unquestionably admiring and realizing that it was I who hadcreated all this. Nancy, who was the aptest of pupils, the most loyal offollowers, though I did not yet value her devotion at its real worth, because she was a girl. Her imagination kindled at my touch. And on thiseventful occasion she carried in her arms a parcel, the contents of whichwere unknown to all but ourselves. At length we reached the muddy shoresof Logan's pond, where two score eager hands volunteered to assist thePetrel into her native element. 

Alas! that the reality never attains to the vision. I had beheld, in mydreams, the Petrel about to take the water, and Nancy Willett standingvery straight making a little speech and crashing a bottle of wine acrossthe bows. This was the content of the mysterious parcel; she had stolenit from her father's cellar. But the number of uninvited spectators, which had not been foreseen, considerably modified the programme, --as thenewspapers would have said. They pushed and crowded around the ship, andmade frank and even brutal remarks as to her seaworthiness; even Nancy, inured though she was to the masculine sex, had fled to the heights, andit looked at this supreme moment as though we should have to fight forthe Petrel. An attempt to muster her doughty buccaneers failed; thegunner too had fled, --Gene Hollister; Ham Durrett and the Ewanses werenowhere to be seen, and a muster revealed only Tom, the fidus Achates, and Grits Jarvis. 

"Ah, s'y!" he exclaimed in the teeth of the menacing hordes. "Stand back, carn't yer? I'll bash yer face in, Johnny. Whose boat is this?"

Shall it be whispered that I regretted his belligerency? Here, in truth, was the drama staged, --my drama, had I only been able to realize it. Thegood ship beached, the headhunters hemming us in on all sides, the sceneprepared for one of those struggles against frightful odds which I had sographically related as an essential part of our adventures. 

"Let's roll the cuss in the fancy collar, " proposed one of thehead-hunters, --meaning me. 

"I'll stove yer slats if yer touch him, " said Grits, and then resorted toappeal. "I s'y, carn't yer stand back and let a chap 'ave a charnst?"

The head-hunters only jeered. And what shall be said of the Captain inthis moment of peril? Shall it be told that his heart was beatingwildly?--bumping were a better word. He was trying to remember that hewas the Captain. Otherwise, he must admit with shame that he, too, shouldhave fled. So much for romance when the test comes. Will he remain tofall fighting for his ship? Like Horatius, he glanced up at the hill, where, instead of the porch of the home where he would fain have been, hebeheld a wisp of a girl standing alone, her hat on the back of her head, her hair flying in the wind, gazing intently down at him in his danger. The renegade crew was nowhere to be seen. There are those who demand thepresence of a woman in order to be heroes. .. . 

"Give us a chance, can't you?" he cried, repeating Grits's appeal in notquite such a stentorian tone as he would have liked, while his handtrembled on the gunwale. Tom Peters, it must be acknowledged, was muchmore of a buccaneer when it was a question of deeds, for he plantedhimself in the way of the belligerent chief of the head-hunters (whospoke with a decided brogue). 

"Get out of the way!" said Tom, with a little squeak in his voice. Yetthere he was, and he deserves a tribute. 

An unlooked-for diversion saved us from annihilation, in the shape of onewho had a talent for creating them. We were bewilderingly aware of agirlish figure amongst us. 

"You cowards!" she cried. "You cowards!"

Lithe, and fairly quivering with passion, it was Nancy who showed us howto face the head-hunters. They gave back. They would have been braveindeed if they had not retreated before such an intense little nucleus ofenergy and indignation!. .. 

"Ah, give 'em a chanst, " said their chief, after a moment. .. . He evenhelped to push the boat towards the water. But he did not volunteer to beone of those to man the Petrel on her maiden voyage. Nor did Logan'spond, that wild March day, greatly resemble the South Seas. Nevertheless, my eye on Nancy, I stepped proudly aboard and seized an "oar. " Grits andTom followed, --when suddenly the Petrel sank considerably below thewater-line as her builders had estimated it. Ere we fully realized this, the now friendly head-hunters had given us a shove, and we were off! TheCaptain, who should have been waving good-bye to his lady love from thepoop, sat down abruptly, --the crew likewise; not, however, before she hadheeled to the scuppers, and a half-bucket of iced water had run it. Head-hunters were mere daily episodes in Grits's existence, but water. .. He muttered something in cockney that sounded like a prayer. .. . The windwas rapidly driving us toward the middle of the pond, and something coldand ticklish was seeping through the seats of our trousers. We sat likestatues. .. . 

The bright scene etched itself in my memory--the bare brown slopes withwhich the pond was bordered, the Irish shanties, the clothes-lines withred flannel shirts snapping in the biting wind; Nancy motionless on thebank; the group behind her, silent now, impressed in spite of itself atthe sight of our intrepidity. 

The Petrel was sailing stern first. .. . Would any of us, indeed, ever seehome again? I thought of my father's wrath turned to sorrow because hehad refused to gratify a son's natural wish and present him with a realrowboat. .. . Out of the corners of our eyes we watched the water creepingaround the gunwale, and the very muddiness of it seemed to enhance itscoldness, to make the horrors of its depths more mysterious and hideous. The voice of Grits startled us. 

"O Gawd, " he was saying, "we're a-going to sink, and I carn't swim! Theblarsted tar's give way back here. "

"Is she leaking?" I cried. 

"She's a-filling up like a bath tub, " he lamented. 

Slowly but perceptibly, in truth, the bow was rising, and above thewhistling of the wind I could hear his chattering as she settled. .. . Thenseveral things happened simultaneously: an agonized cry behind me, distant shouts from the shore, a sudden upward lunge of the bow, and thetorture of being submerged, inch by inch, in the icy, yellow water. Despite the splashing behind me, I sat as though paralyzed until I waswaist deep and the boards turned under me, and then, with a spasmodiccontraction of my whole being I struck out--only to find my feet on themuddy bottom. Such was the inglorious end of the good ship Petrel! Forshe went down, with all hands, in little more than half a fathom ofwater. .. . It was not until then I realized that we had been blown clearacross the pond!

Figures were running along the shore. And as Tom and I emerged draggingGrits between us, --for he might have been drowned there abjectly in theshallows, --we were met by a stout and bare-armed Irishwoman whose scantyhair, I remember, was drawn into a tight knot behind her head; and whoseized us, all three, as though we were a bunch of carrots. 

"Come along wid ye!" she cried. 

Shivering, we followed her up the hill, the spectators of the tragedy, who by this time had come around the pond, trailing after. Nancy was notamong them. Inside the shanty into which we were thrust were two smallchildren crawling about the floor, and the place was filled with steamfrom a wash-tub against the wall and a boiler on the stove. With avigorous injunction to make themselves scarce, the Irishwoman slammed thedoor in the faces of the curious and ordered us to remove our clothes. Grits was put to bed in a corner, while Tom and I, provided with variousgarments, huddled over the stove. There fell to my lot the red flannelshirt which I had seen on the clothes-line. She gave us hot coffee, andwas back at her wash-tub in no time at all, her entire comment on aproceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravitybeing, "By's will be by's!" The final ironical touch was given theanti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief ofthe head-hunters himself! He had lingered perforce with his brothers andsister outside the cabin until dinner time, and when he came in he wasmeek as Moses. 

Thus the ready hospitality of the poor, which passed over the heads ofTom and me as we ate bread and onions and potatoes with a ravenoushunger. It must have been about two o'clock in the afternoon when we badegood-bye to our preserver and departed for home. .. . 

At first we went at a dog-trot, but presently slowed down to discuss thefuture looming portentously ahead of us. Since entire concealment was nowimpossible, the question was, --how complete a confession would benecessary? Our cases, indeed, were dissimilar, and Tom's incentive tohold back the facts was not nearly so great as mine. It sometimes seemedto me in those days unjust that the Peterses were able on the whole tokeep out of criminal difficulties, in which I was more or lesscontinuously involved: for it did not strike me that their sins were notthose of the imagination. The method of Tom's father was the slipper. Heand Tom understood each other, while between my father and myself was agreat gulf fixed. Not that Tom yearned for the slipper; but he regardedits occasional applications as being as inevitable as changes in theweather; lying did not come easily to him, and left to himself he muchpreferred to confess and have the matter over with. I have alreadysuggested that I had cultivated lying, that weapon of the weaker party, in some degree, at least, in self-defence. 

Tom was loyal. Moreover, my conviction would probably deprive him for sixwhole afternoons of my company, on which he was more or less dependent. But the defence of this case presented unusual difficulties, and westopped several times to thrash them out. We had been absent from dinner, and doubtless by this time Julia had informed Tom's mother of theexpedition, and anyone could see that our clothing had been wet. So Ilingered in no little anxiety behind the Peters stable while he made theinvestigation. Our spirits rose considerably when he returned to reportthat Julia had unexpectedly been a trump, having quieted his mother bythe surmise that he was spending the day with his Aunt Fanny. So far, sogood. The problem now was to decide upon what to admit. For we must bothtell the same story. 

It was agreed that we had fallen into Logan's Pond from a raft: mysuggestion. Well, said Tom, the Petrel hadn't proved much better than araft, after all. I was in no mood to defend her. 

This designation of the Petrel as a "raft" was my first legal quibble. The question to be decided by the court was, What is a raft? just as thesupreme tribunal of the land has been required, in later years, todecide, What is whiskey? The thing to be concealed if possible was thebuilding of the "raft, " although this information was already in thepossession of a number of persons, whose fathers might at any moment seefit to congratulate my own on being the parent of a genius. It was arisk, however, that had to be run. And, secondly, since Grits Jarvis wascontraband, nothing was to be said about him. 

I have not said much about my mother, who might have been likened on suchoccasions to a grand jury compelled to indict, yet torn between loyaltyto an oath and sympathy with the defendant. I went through the Petersyard, climbed the wire fence, my object being to discover first fromElla, the housemaid, or Hannah, the cook, how much was known in highquarters. It was Hannah who, as I opened the kitchen door, turned at thesound, and set down the saucepan she was scouring. 

"Is it home ye are? Mercy to goodness!" (this on beholding my shrunkencostume) "Glory be to God you're not drownded! and your mother worritin'her heart out! So it's into the wather ye were?"

I admitted it. 

"Hannah?" I said softly. 

"What then?"

"Does mother know--about the boat?"

"Now don't ye be wheedlin'. "

I managed to discover, however, that my mother did not know, and surmisedthat the best reason why she had not been told had to do with Hannah'scriminal acquiescence concerning the operations in the shed. I ran intothe front hall and up the stairs, and my mother heard me coming and metme on the landing. 

"Hugh, where have you been?"

As I emerged from the semi-darkness of the stairway she caught sight ofmy dwindled garments, of the trousers well above my ankles. Suddenly shehad me in her arms and was kissing me passionately. As she stood beforeme in her grey, belted skirt, the familiar red-and-white cameo at herthroat, her heavy hair parted in the middle, in her eyes was an odd, appealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling witha Presbyterian conscience. Though she inherited that conscience, I haveoften thought she might have succeeded in casting it off--or at leastsome of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself sheworshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father. Her voice trembleda little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window. 

"Tell me about what happened, my son, " she said. 

It was a terrible moment for me. For my affections were still quiveringlyalive in those days, and I loved her. I had for an instant an instinctiveimpulse to tell her the whole story, --South Sea Islands and all! And Icould have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figurewhich represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow madeher, suddenly, of small account. Not that she would have understood theromance, but she would have comprehended me. I knew that she waspowerless to save me from the wrath to come. I wept. It was because Ihated to lie to her, --yet I did so. Fear gripped me, and--like somerespectable criminals I have since known--I understood that anyconfession I made would inexorably be used against me. .. . I wonderwhether she knew I was lying? At any rate, the case appeared to be agrave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over fortrial. .. . 

Vividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, whileawaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paperand steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fieldsand groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had becomemorne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yardwhich the wind of the morning had strewn with chips from the Petrel. Atlast, when shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, I heardfootsteps. Ella appeared, prim and virtuous, yet a little commiserating. My father wished to see me, downstairs. It was not the first time she hadbrought that summons, and always her manner was the same!

The scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim booksin their walnut cases. And my father sat, like a judge, behind the bigdesk where he did his work when at home. Oh, the distance between us atsuch an hour! I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in hiseye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth. 

"Hugh, " he said, "your mother tells me that you have confessed to going, without permission, to Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft andfell into the water. "

The slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a coldershiver down my spine than the iced water had done. What did he know? orwas this mere suspicion? Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty. 

"It was a sort of a raft, sir, " I stammered. 

"A sort of a raft, " repeated my father. "Where, may I ask, did you findit?"

"I--I didn't exactly find it, sir. "

"Ah!" said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at thejury. ) The prisoner gulped. "You didn't exactly find it, then. Will youkindly explain how you came by it?"

"Well, sir, we--I--put it together. "

"Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you madeit?"

"No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it. "

"Or that it was intended for a row-boat?"

Here was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted arow-boat. 

"Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir, " I said abjectly. 

"Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbiddingyou to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a whim, you constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of the backpartition, thus destroying property that did, not belong to you, and hadthe boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?" I was silent, utterlyundone. Evidently he had specific information. .. . There are certainexpressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of speech, and nowmy father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added visibly to hisstature. 

"Hugh, " he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of mysoul, "I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son ofmine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness andhonour--can be a liar. " (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!)"Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for itbefore. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instilinto you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess thatI am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever, no conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not onlypersistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for manymonths, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you weresecretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where thisdetermination of yours to have what you desire at any price will lead youin the future. It is just such a desire that distinguishes wicked menfrom good. "

I will not linger upon a scene the very remembrance of which is painfulto this day. .. . I went from my father's presence in disgrace, in an agonyof spirit that was overwhelming, to lock the door of my room and dropface downward on the bed, to sob until my muscles twitched. For he had, indeed, put into me an awful fear. The greatest horror of my boyishimagination was a wicked man. Was I, as he had declared, utterly depravedand doomed in spite of myself to be one?

There came a knock at my door--Ella with my supper. I refused to open, and sent her away, to fall on my knees in the darkness and pray wildly toa God whose attributes and character were sufficiently confused in mymind. On the one hand was the stern, despotic Monarch of the WestminsterCatechism, whom I addressed out of habit, the Father who condemned aportion of his children from the cradle. Was I one of those who he haddecreed before I was born must suffer the tortures of the flames of hell?Putting two and two together, what I had learned in Sunday school andgathered from parts of Dr. Pound's sermons, and the intimation of myfather that wickedness was within me, like an incurable disease, --was notmine the logical conclusion? What, then, was the use of praying?. .. Mysupplications ceased abruptly. And my ever ready imagination, stirred toits depths, beheld that awful scene of the last day: the darkness, suchas sometimes creeps over the city in winter, when the jaundiced smokefalls down and we read at noonday by gas-light. I beheld the torturedfaces of the wicked gathered on the one side, and my mother on the otheramongst the blessed, gazing across the gulf at me with yearning andcompassion. Strange that it did not strike me that the sight of thecondemned whom they had loved in life would have marred if not destroyedthe happiness of the chosen, about to receive their crowns and harps!What a theology--that made the Creator and Preserver of all mankind thusillogical!

III. 

Although I was imaginative, I was not morbidly introspective, and by theend of the first day of my incarceration my interest in that solution hadwaned. At times, however, I actually yearned for someone in whom I couldconfide, who could suggest a solution. I repeat, I would not for worldshave asked my father or my mother or Dr. Pound, of whom I had a wholesomefear, or perhaps an unwholesome one. Except at morning Bible reading andat church my parents never mentioned the name of the Deity, save toinstruct me formally. Intended or no, the effect of my religious trainingwas to make me ashamed of discussing spiritual matters, and naturally Ifailed to perceive that this was because it laid its emphasis on personalsalvation. .. . I did not, however, become an unbeliever, for I was not ofa nature to contemplate with equanimity a godless universe. .. . 

My sufferings during these series of afternoon confinements did not comefrom remorse, but were the result of a vague sense of injury; and theireffect was to generate within me a strange motive power, a desire to dosomething that would astound my father and eventually wring from him theconfession that he had misjudged me. To be sure, I should have to waituntil early manhood, at least, for the accomplishment of such a coup. Might it not be that I was an embryonic literary genius? Many were thebooks I began in this ecstasy of self-vindication, only to abandon themwhen my confinement came to an end. 

It was about this time, I think, that I experienced one of those shockswhich have a permanent effect upon character. It was then the custom forladies to spend the day with one another, bringing their sewing; andsometimes, when I unexpectedly entered the sitting-room, the voices of mymother's visitors would drop to a whisper. One afternoon I returned fromschool to pause at the head of the stairs. Cousin Bertha Ewan and Mrs. McAlery were discussing with my mother an affair that I judged from theawed tone in which they spoke might prove interesting. 

"Poor Grace, " Mrs. McAlery was saying, "I imagine she's paid a heavypenalty. No man alive will be faithful under those circumstances. "

I stopped at the head of the stairs, with a delicious, guilty feeling. 

"Have they ever heard of her?" Cousin Bertha asked. 

"It is thought they went to Spain, " replied Mrs. McAlery, solemnly, yetnot without a certain zest. "Mr. Jules Hollister will not have her namementioned in his presence, you know. And Whitcomb chased them as far asNew York with a horse-pistol in his pocket. The report is that he got tothe dock just as the ship sailed. And then, you know, he went to livesomewhere out West, --in Iowa, I believe. "

"Did he ever get a divorce?" Cousin Bertha inquired. 

"He was too good a church member, my dear, " my mother reminded her. 

"Well, I'd have got one quick enough, church member or no church member, "declared Cousin Bertha, who had in her elements of daring. 

"Not that I mean for a moment to excuse her, " Mrs. McAlery put in, "butEdward Whitcomb did have a frightful temper, and he was awfully strictwith her, and he was old enough, anyhow, to be her father. GraceHollister was the last woman in the world I should have suspected ofdoing so hideous a thing. She was so sweet and simple. "

"Jennings was very attractive, " said my Cousin Bertha. "I don't think Iever saw a handsomer man. Now, if he had looked at me--"

The sentence was never finished, for at this crucial moment I dropped agrammar. .. . 

I had heard enough, however, to excite my curiosity to the highest pitch. And that evening, when I came in at five o'clock to study, I asked mymother what had become of Gene Hollister's aunt. 

"She went away, Hugh, " replied my mother, looking greatly troubled. 

"Why?" I persisted. 

"It is something you are too young to understand. "

Of course I started an investigation, and the next day at school I askedthe question of Gene Hollister himself, only to discover that he believedhis aunt to be dead! And that night he asked his mother if his Aunt Gracewere really alive, after all? Whereupon complications and explanationsensued between our parents, of which we saw only the surface signs. .. . Myfather accused me of eavesdropping (which I denied), and sentenced me toan afternoon of solitary confinement for repeating something which I hadheard in private. I have reason to believe that my mother was alsoreprimanded. 

It must not be supposed that I permitted the matter to rest. In additionto Grits Jarvis, there was another contraband among my acquaintances, namely, Alec Pound, the scrape-grace son of the Reverend Doctor Pound. Alec had an encyclopaedic mind, especially well stocked with the kind ofknowledge I now desired; first and last he taught me much, which I wouldbetter have got in another way. To him I appealed and got the story, myworst suspicions being confirmed. Mrs. Whitcomb's house had been acrossthe alley from that of Mr. Jennings, but no one knew that anything was"going on, " though there had been signals from the windows--theneighbours afterwards remembered. .. . 

I listened shudderingly. 

"But, " I cried, "they were both married!"

"What difference does that make when you love a woman?" Alec repliedgrandly. "I could tell you much worse things than that. "

This he proceeded to do. Fascinated, I listened with a sickeningsensation. It was a mild afternoon in spring, and we stood in the deeplimestone gutter in front of the parsonage, a little Gothic wooden houseset in a gloomy yard. 

"I thought, " said I, "that people couldn't love any more after they weremarried, except each other. "

Alec looked at me pityingly. 

"You'll get over that notion, " he assured me. 

Thus another ingredient entered my character. Denied its food at home, good food, my soul eagerly consumed and made part of itself thefermenting stuff that Alec Pound so willing distributed. And it wasfermenting stuff. Let us see what it did to me. Working slowly butsurely, it changed for me the dawning mystery of sex into an evil insteadof a holy one. The knowledge of the tragedy of Grace Hollister started meto seeking restlessly, on bookshelves and elsewhere, for a secret thatforever eluded me, and forever led me on. The word fermenting aptlydescribes the process begun, suggesting as it does something closed up, away from air and sunlight, continually working in secret, engenderingforces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly thissecretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of theirorthodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, andthe flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to bedeplored and condemned, exorcised and transformed by the miracle ofgrace. Now love had become a terrible power (gripping me) whoseenchantment drove men and women from home and friends and kindred to theuttermost parts of the earth. .. . 

It was long before I got to sleep that night after my talk with AlecPound. I alternated between the horror and the romance of the story I hadheard, supplying for myself the details he had omitted: I beheld thesignals from the windows, the clandestine meetings, the sudden anddesperate flight. And to think that all this could have happened in ourcity not five blocks from where I lay!

My consternation and horror were concentrated on the man, --and yet Irecall a curious bifurcation. Instead of experiencing that automaticrighteous indignation which my father and mother had felt, which hadanimated old Mr. Jules Hollister when he had sternly forbidden hisdaughter's name to be mentioned in his presence, which had made thesepeople outcasts, there welled up within me an intense sympathy and pity. By an instinctive process somehow linked with other experiences, I seemedto be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts, tounderstand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that had ledthem to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which I myselfwas at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by mankind. Wasthere something within me that might eventually draw me to do likewise?The desire in me to which my father had referred, which would brook noopposition, which twisted and squirmed until it found its way to itsobject? I recalled the words of Jarvis, the carpenter, that if I ever setmy heart on another man's wife, God help him. God help me!

A wicked man! I had never beheld the handsome and fascinating Mr. Jennings, but I visualised him now; dark, like all villains, with a blackmoustache and snapping black eyes. He carried a cane. I always associatedcanes with villains. Whereupon I arose, groped for the matches, lightedthe gas, and gazing at myself in the mirror was a little reassured tofind nothing sinister in my countenance. .. . 

Next to my father's faith in a Moral Governor of the Universe was hisbelief in the Tariff and the Republican Party. And this belief, amongothers, he handed on to me. On the cinder playground of the Academy weRepublicans used to wage, during campaigns, pitched battles for theTariff. It did not take a great deal of courage to be a Republican in ourcity, and I was brought up to believe that Democrats were irrational, inferior, and--with certain exceptions like the Hollisters--dirty beings. There was only one degree lower, and that was to be a mugwump. It was nowonder that the Hollisters were Democrats, for they had a queer streak inthem; owing, no doubt, to the fact that old Mr. Jules Hollister's motherhad been a Frenchwoman. He looked like a Frenchman, by the way, andalways wore a skullcap. 

I remember one autumn afternoon having a violent quarrel with GeneHollister that bade fair to end in blows, when he suddenlydemanded:--"I'll bet you anything you don't know why you're aRepublican. "

"It's because I'm for the Tariff, " I replied triumphantly. 

But his next question floored me. What, for example, was the Tariff? Itried to bluster it out, but with no success. 

"Do you know?" I cried finally, with sudden inspiration. 

It turned out that he did not. 

"Aren't we darned idiots, " he asked, "to get fighting over something wedon't know anything about?"

That was Gene's French blood, of course. But his question rankled. Andhow was I to know that he would have got as little satisfaction if he hadhurled it into the marching ranks of those imposing torch-lightprocessions which sometimes passed our house at night, with drums beatingand fifes screaming and torches waving, --thousands of citizens who werefor the Tariff for the same reason as I: to wit, because they wereRepublicans. 

Yet my father lived and died in the firm belief that the United States ofAmerica was a democracy!

Resolved not to be caught a second time in such a humiliating position bya Democrat, I asked my father that night what the Tariff was. But I wastoo young to understand it, he said. I was to take his word for it thatthe country would go to the dogs if the Democrats got in and the Tariffwere taken away. Here, in a nutshell, though neither he nor I realizedit, was the political instruction of the marching hordes. Theirs not toreason why. I was too young, they too ignorant. Such is the method ofAuthority!

The steel-mills of Mr. Durrett and Mr. Hambleton, he continued, would beforced to shut down, and thousands of workmen would starve. This was justa sample of what would happen. Prosperity would cease, he declared. Thatword, Prosperity, made a deep impression on me, and I recall the certainreverential emphasis he laid on it. And while my solicitude for theworkmen was not so great as his and Mr. Durrett's, I was concerned as towhat would happen to us if those twin gods, the Tariff and Prosperity, should take their departure from the land. Knowing my love for the goodthings of the table, my father intimated, with a rare humour I failed toappreciate, that we should have to live henceforth in spartan simplicity. After that, like the intelligent workman, I was firmer than ever for theTariff. 

Such was the idealistic plane on which--and from a good man--I receivedmy first political instruction! And for a long time I connected thedominance of the Republican Party with the continuation of manna andquails, in other words, with nothing that had to do with the spiritualwelfare of any citizen, but with clothing and food and material comforts. My education was progressing. .. . 

Though my father revered Plato and Aristotle, he did not, apparently, take very seriously the contention that that government alone is good"which seeks to attain the permanent interests of the governed byevolving the character of its citizens. " To put the matter brutally, politics, despite the lofty sentiments on the transparencies intorchlight processions, had only to do with the belly, not the soul. 

Politics and government, one perceives, had nothing to do with religion, nor education with any of these. A secularized and disjointed world! Ourleading citizens, learned in the classics though some of them might be, paid no heed to the dictum of the Greek idealist, who was more practicalthan they would have supposed. "The man who does not carry his citywithin his heart is a spiritual starveling. "

One evening, a year or two after that tariff campaign, I was pretendingto study my lessons under the student lamp in the sitting-room while mymother sewed and my father wrote at his desk, when there was a ring atthe door-bell. I welcomed any interruption, even though the visitorproved to be only the druggist's boy; and there was always thepossibility of a telegram announcing, for instance, the death of arelative. Such had once been the case when my Uncle Avery Paret had diedin New York, and I was taken out of school for a blissful four days forthe funeral. 

I went tiptoeing into the hall and peeped over the banisters while Ellaopened the door. I heard a voice which I recognized as that of PerryBlackwood's father asking for Mr. Paret; and then to my astonishment, Isaw filing after him into the parlour some ten or twelve persons. Withthe exception of Mr. Ogilvy, who belonged to one of our old families, andMr. Watling, a lawyer who had married the youngest of Gene Hollister'saunts, the visitors entered stealthily, after the manner of burglars;some of these were heavy-jowled, and all had an air of mystery thatraised my curiosity and excitement to the highest pitch. I caught hold ofElla as she came up the stairs, but she tore herself free, and announcedto my father that Mr. Josiah Blackwood and other gentlemen had asked tosee him. My father seemed puzzled as he went downstairs. .. . A longinterval elapsed, during which I did not make even a pretence of lookingat my arithmetic. At times the low hum of voices rose to what was almostan uproar, and on occasions I distinguished a marked Irish brogue. 

"I wonder what they want?" said my mother, nervously. 

At last we heard the front door shut behind them, and my father cameupstairs, his usually serene face wearing a disturbed expression. 

"Who in the world was it, Mr. Paret?" asked my mother. 

My father sat down in the arm-chair. He was clearly making an effort forself-control. 

"Blackwood and Ogilvy and Watling and some city politicians, " heexclaimed. 

"Politicians!" she repeated. "What did they want? That is, if it'sanything you can tell me, " she added apologetically. 

"They wished me to be the Republican candidate for the mayor of thiscity. "

This tremendous news took me off my feet. My father mayor!

"Of course you didn't consider it, Mr. Paret, " my mother was saying. 

"Consider it!" he echoed reprovingly. "I can't imagine what Ogilvy andWatling and Josiah Blackwood were thinking of! They are out of theirheads. I as much as told them so. "

This was more than I could bear, for I had already pictured myselftelling the news to envious schoolmates. 

"Oh, father, why didn't you take it?" I cried. 

By this time, when he turned to me, he had regained his usual expression. 

"You don't know what you're talking about, Hugh, " he said. "Accept apolitical office! That sort of thing is left to politicians. "

The tone in which he spoke warned me that a continuation of theconversation would be unwise, and my mother also understood that thediscussion was closed. He went back to his desk, and began writing againas though nothing had happened. 

As for me, I was left in a palpitating state of excitement which myfather's self-control or sang-froid only served to irritate and enhance, and my head was fairly spinning as, covertly, I watched his pen steadilycovering the paper. 

How could he--how could any man of flesh and blood sit down calmly afterhaving been offered the highest honour in the gift of his community! Andhe had spurned it as if Mr. Blackwood and the others had gratuitouslyinsulted him! And how was it, if my father so revered the RepublicanParty that he would not suffer it to be mentioned slightingly in hispresence, that he had refused contemptuously to be its mayor?. .. 

The next day at school, however, I managed to let it be known that theoffer had been made and declined. After all, this seemed to make myfather a bigger man than if he had accepted it. Naturally I was asked whyhe had declined it. 

"He wouldn't take it, " I replied scornfully. "Office-holding should beleft to politicians. "

Ralph Hambleton, with his precocious and cynical knowledge of the world, minimized my triumph by declaring that he would rather be hisgrandfather, Nathaniel Durrett, than the mayor of the biggest city in thecountry. Politicians, he said, were bloodsuckers and thieves, and theonly reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal thetaxpayers' money. .. . 

As I have intimated, my vision of a future literary career waxed andwaned, but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me. If not a literary lion, what was that Somebody to be? Such an environmentas mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romanticsoul. In view of the experience I have just related, it is not surprisingthat the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me; nor is itto be wondered at, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe inwhich Ralph's grandfather was held by my father and other influentialpersons, that I failed to be stirred by the elements of greatness in thegrim personality of our first citizen, the iron-master. For he possessedsuch elements. He lived alone in Ingrain Street in an uncompromisingmansion I always associated with the Sabbath, not only because I used tobe taken there on decorous Sunday visits by my father, but because it wasthe very quintessence of Presbyterianism. The moment I entered its"portals"--as Mr. Hawthorne appropriately would have called them--myspirit was overwhelmed and suffocated by its formality and orderliness. Within its stern walls Nathaniel Durrett had made a model universe of hisown, such as the Deity of the Westminster Confession had no doubt meanthis greater one to be if man had not rebelled and foiled him. .. . It was aworld from which I was determined to escape at any cost. 

My father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library, with itshigh ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rocococornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of atombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellowbindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was oneof those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmountedby a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind this table Mr. Durrett satreading a volume of sermons, a really handsome old man in his black tieand pleated shirt; tall and spare, straight as a ramrod, with a finelymoulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberrystain. He called my father by his first name, an immense compliment, considering how few dared to do so. 

"Well, Matthew, " the old man would remark, after they had discussed Dr. Pound's latest flight on the nature of the Trinity or the depravity ofman, or horticulture, or the Republican Party, "do you have any betternews of Hugh at school?"

"I regret to say, Mr. Durrett, " my father would reply, "that he does notyet seem to be aroused to a sense of his opportunities. "

Whereupon Mr. Durrett would gimble me with a blue eye that lurked beneathgrizzled brows, quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an iron tool. I almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger I was intheir company. They two, indeed, were of one kind, and I of another sortwho could never understand them, --nor they me. To what depths of despairthey reduced me they never knew, and yet they were doing it all for mygood! They only managed to convince me that my love of folly wasineradicable, and that I was on my way head first for perdition. I alwayslooked, during these excruciating and personal moments, at the colouredglass bottle. 

"It grieves me to hear it, Hugh, " Mr. Durrett invariably declared. "You'll never come to any good without study. Now when I was your age. .. "

I knew his history by heart, a common one in this country, although hemade an honourable name instead of a dishonourable one. And when Icontrast him with those of his successors whom I was to know later. .. !But I shall not anticipate. American genius had not then evolved thefalse entry method of overcapitalization. A thrilling history, Mr. Durrett's, could I but have entered into it. I did not reflect then thatthis stern old man must have throbbed once; nay, fire and energy stillremained in his bowels, else he could not have continued to dominate acity. Nor did it occur to me that the great steel-works that lighted thesouthern sky were the result of a passion, of dreams similar to thosepossessing me, but which I could not express. He had founded a familywhose position was virtually hereditary, gained riches which for thosedays were great, compelled men to speak his name with a certain awe. Butof what use were such riches as his when his religion and moralitycompelled him to banish from him all the joys in the power of riches tobring?

No, I didn't want to be an iron-master. But it may have been about thistime that I began to be impressed with the power of wealth, the adulationand reverence it commanded, the importance in which it clothed all whoshared in it. .. . 

The private school I attended in the company of other boys with whom Iwas brought up was called Densmore Academy, a large, square building of athen hideous modernity, built of smooth, orange-red bricks with threadsof black mortar between them. One reads of happy school days, yet I failto recall any really happy hours spent there, even in the yard, which wascovered with black cinders that cut you when you fell. I think of it as apenitentiary, and the memory of the barred lower windows gives substanceto this impression. 

I suppose I learned something during the seven years of my incarceration. All of value, had its teachers known anything of youthful psychology, ofnatural bent, could have been put into me in three. At least fourcriminally wasted years, to say nothing of the benumbing and desiccatingeffect of that old system of education! Chalk and chalk-dust! TheMediterranean a tinted portion of the map, Italy a man's boot which Idrew painfully, with many yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as itunrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrousdistillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching andcounter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to belearned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th GeneralSo-and-so proceeded with his whole army--" where? What does it matter?One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding, were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil!"Paret" (a shiver), "begin at the one hundred and thirtieth line andtranslate!" I can hear myself droning out in detestable English ameaningless portion of that endless journey of the pious AEneas; can seeGene Hollister, with heart-rending glances of despair, stumbling throughCornelius Nepos in an unventilated room with chalk-rubbed blackboards andheavy odours of ink and stale lunch. And I graduated from DensmoreAcademy, the best school in our city, in the 80's, without having beentaught even the rudiments of citizenship. 

Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse, which bit by bit we painfullydissected. We never glimpsed the living, growing thing, never experiencedthe Spirit, the same spirit that was able magically to waft me from awintry Lyme Street to the South Seas, the energizing, electrifying Spiritof true achievement, of life, of God himself. Little by little its flameswere smothered until in manhood there seemed no spark of it left alive. Many years were to pass ere it was to revive again, as by a miracle. Itravelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed in a port-hole, rose-redSeriphos set in a living blue that paled the sapphire; the seas Ulysseshad sailed, and the company of the Argonauts. My soul was steeped inunimagined colour, and in the memory of one rapturous instant is gatheredwhat I was soon to see of Greece, is focussed the meaning of history, poetry and art. I was to stand one evening in spring on the mound whereheroes sleep and gaze upon the plain of Marathon between darkeningmountains and the blue thread of the strait peaceful now, flushed withpink and white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on thecliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis foughtand lost. .. . In that port-hole glimpse a Themistocles was revealed, aSocrates, a Homer and a Phidias, an AEschylus, and a Pericles; yes, and aJohn brooding Revelations on his sea-girt rock as twilight falls over thewaters. .. . 

I saw the Roman Empire, that Scarlet Woman whose sands were dyed crimsonwith blood to appease her harlotry, whose ships were laden with treasuresfrom the immutable East, grain from the valley of the Nile, spices fromArabia, precious purple stuffs from Tyre, tribute and spoil, slaves andjewels from conquered nations she absorbed; and yet whose very emperorswere the unconscious instruments of a Progress they wot not of, preservedto the West by Marathon and Salamis. With Caesar's legions its messagewent forth across Hispania to the cliffs of the wild western ocean, through Hercynian forests to tribes that dwelt where great rivers roll uptheir bars by misty, northern seas, and even to Celtic fastnesses beyondthe Wall. .. . 

IV. 

In and out of my early memories like a dancing ray of sunlight flits thespirit of Nancy. I was always fond of her, but in extreme youth Iaccepted her incense with masculine complacency and took her allegiancefor granted, never seeking to fathom the nature of the spell I exercisedover her. Naturally other children teased me about her; but what wasworse, with that charming lack of self-consciousness and considerationfor what in after life are called the finer feelings, they teased herabout me before me, my presence deterring them not at all. I can see themhopping around her in the Peters yard crying out:--"Nancy's in love withHugh! Nancy's in love with Hugh!"

A sufficiently thrilling pastime, this, for Nancy could take care ofherself. I was a bungler beside her when it came to retaliation, and notthe least of her attractions for me was her capacity for anger: furywould be a better term. She would fly at them--even as she flew at thehead-hunters when the Petrel was menaced; and she could run like a deer. Woe to the unfortunate victim she overtook! Masculine strength, exercisedapologetically, availed but little, and I have seen Russell Peters andGene Hollister retire from such encounters humiliated and weeping. Shenever caught Ralph; his methods of torture were more intelligent andsubtle than Gene's and Russell's, but she was his equal when it came to aquestion of tongues. 

"I know what's the matter with you, Ralph Hambleton, " she would say. "You're jealous. " An accusation that invariably put him on the defensive. "You think all the girls are in love with you, don't you?"

These scenes I found somewhat embarrassing. Not so Nancy. Afterdiscomfiting her tormenters, or wounding and scattering them, she wouldreturn to my side. .. . In spite of her frankly expressed preference for meshe had an elusiveness that made a continual appeal to my imagination. She was never obvious or commonplace, and long before I began toexperience the discomforts and sufferings of youthful love I wasfascinated by a nature eloquent with contradictions and inconsistencies. She was a tomboy, yet her own sex was enhanced rather than overwhelmed bycontact with the other: and no matter how many trees she climbed shenever seemed to lose her daintiness. It was innate. 

She could, at times, be surprisingly demure. These impressions of herdaintiness and demureness are particularly vivid in a picture my memoryhas retained of our walking together, unattended, to Susan Blackwood'sbirthday party. She must have been about twelve years old. It was thefirst time I had escorted her or any other girl to a party; Mrs. Willetthad smiled over the proceeding, but Nancy and I took it most seriously, as symbolic of things to come. I can see Powell Street, where Nancylived, at four o'clock on a mild and cloudy December afternoon, thedecorous, retiring houses, Nancy on one side of the pavement by the ironfences and I on the other by the tree boxes. I can't remember her dress, only the exquisite sense of her slimness and daintiness comes back to me, of her dark hair in a long braid tied with a red ribbon, of her slenderlegs clad in black stockings of shining silk. We felt the occasion to besomehow too significant, too eloquent for words. .. . 

In silence we climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to theBlackwood mansion, when suddenly the door was opened, letting out soundsof music and revelry. Mr. Blackwood's coloured butler, Ned, beamed at ushospitably, inviting us to enter the brightness within. The shades weredrawn, the carpets were covered with festal canvas, the folding doorsbetween the square rooms were flung back, the prisms of the bigchandeliers flung their light over animated groups of matrons andchildren. Mrs. Watling, the mother of the Watling twins--too young to bepresent was directing with vivacity the game of "King William was KingJames's son, " and Mrs. McAlery was playing the piano. 

 "Now choose you East, now choose you West, Now choose the one you love the best!"

Tom Peters, in a velvet suit and consequently very miserable, refused toembrace Ethel Hollister; while the scornful Julia lurked in a corner:nothing would induce her to enter such a foolish game. I experienced anovel discomfiture when Ralph kissed Nancy. .. . Afterwards came the feast, from which Ham Durrett, in a pink paper cap with streamers, was at lengthforcibly removed by his mother. Thus early did he betray his love for theflesh pots. .. . 

It was not until I was sixteen that a player came and touched the keys ofmy soul, and it awoke, bewildered, at these first tender notes. The musicquickened, tripping in ecstasy, to change by subtle phrases into themesof exquisite suffering hitherto unexperienced. I knew that I loved Nancy. 

With the advent of longer dresses that reached to her shoe tops a changehad come over her. The tomboy, the willing camp-follower who loved me andwas unashamed, were gone forever, and a mysterious, transfigured being, neither girl nor woman, had magically been evolved. Could it be possiblethat she loved me still? My complacency had vanished; suddenly I hadbecome the aggressor, if only I had known how to "aggress"; but in herpresence I was seized by an accursed shyness that paralyzed my tongue, and the things I had planned to say were left unuttered. It wassomething--though I did not realize it--to be able to feel like that. 

The time came when I could no longer keep this thing to myself. The needof an outlet, of a confidant, became imperative, and I sought out TomPeters. It was in February; I remember because I had ventured--withincredible daring--to send Nancy an elaborate, rosy Valentine; written onthe back of it in a handwriting all too thinly disguised was thefollowing verse, the triumphant result of much hard thinking in schoolhours:--

 Should you of this the sender guess Without another sign, Would you repent, and rest content To be his Valentine

I grew hot and cold by turns when I thought of its possible effects on mychances. 

One of those useless, slushy afternoons, I took Tom for a walk that ledus, as dusk came on, past Nancy's house. Only by painful degrees did Isucceed in overcoming my bashfulness; but Tom, when at last I had blurtedout the secret, was most sympathetic, although the ailment from which Isuffered was as yet outside of the realm of his experience. I have usedthe word "ailment" advisedly, since he evidently put my trouble in thesame category with diphtheria or scarlet fever, remarking that it was"darned hard luck. " In vain I sought to explain that I did not regard itas such in the least; there was suffering, I admitted, but a degree ofbliss none could comprehend who had not felt it. He refused to beenvious, or at least to betray envy; yet he was curious, asking manyquestions, and I had reason to think before we parted that his admirationfor me was increased. Was it possible that he, too, didn't love Nancy?No, it was funny, but he didn't. He failed to see much in girls: his toneremained commiserating, yet he began to take an interest in the progressof my suit. 

For a time I had no progress to report. Out of consideration for thosemembers of our weekly dancing class whose parents were Episcopalians themeetings were discontinued during Lent, and to call would have demanded acourage not in me; I should have become an object of ridicule among myfriends and I would have died rather than face Nancy's mother and themembers of her household. I set about making ingenious plans with a viewto encounters that might appear casual. Nancy's school was dismissed attwo, so was mine. By walking fast I could reach Salisbury Street, nearSt. Mary's Seminary for Young Ladies, in time to catch her, but even thenfor many days I was doomed to disappointment. She was either in companywith other girls, or else she had taken another route; this I surmisedled past Sophy McAlery's house, and I enlisted Tom as a confederate. Hewas to make straight for the McAlery's on Elm while I followed Powell, two short blocks away, and if Nancy went to Sophy's and left there alonehe was to announce the fact by a preconcerted signal. Through long andpersistent practice he had acquired a whistle shrill enough to wake thedead, accomplished by placing a finger of each hand between his teeth;--agift that was the envy of his acquaintances, and the subject of muchdiscussion as to whether his teeth were peculiar. Tom insisted that theywere; it was an added distinction. 

On this occasion he came up behind Nancy as she was leaving Sophy's gateand immediately sounded the alarm. She leaped in the air, dropped herschool-books and whirled on him. 

"Tom Peters! How dare you frighten me so!" she cried. 

Tom regarded her in sudden dismay. 

"I--I didn't mean to, " he said. "I didn't think you were so near. "

"But you must have seen me. "

"I wasn't paying much attention, " he equivocated, --a remark notcalculated to appease her anger. 

"Why were you doing it?"

"I was just practising, " said Tom. 

"Practising!" exclaimed Nancy, scornfully. "I shouldn't think you neededto practise that any more. "

"Oh, I've done it louder, " he declared, "Listen!"

She seized his hands, snatching them away from his lips. At this criticalmoment I appeared around the corner considerably out of breath, my heartbeating like a watchman's rattle. I tried to feign nonchalance. 

"Hello, Tom, " I said. "Hello, Nancy. What's the matter?"

"It's Tom--he frightened me out of my senses. " Dropping his wrists, shegave me a most disconcerting look; there was in it the suspicion of asmile. "What are you doing here, Hugh?"

"I heard Tom, " I explained. 

"I should think you might have. Where were you?"

"Over in another street, " I answered, with deliberate vagueness. Nancyhad suddenly become demure. I did not dare look at her, but I had a mostuncomfortable notion that she suspected the plot. Meanwhile we had begunto walk along, all three of us, Tom, obviously ill at ease anddiscomfited, lagging a little behind. Just before we reached the corner Imanaged to kick him. His departure was by no means graceful. 

"I've got to go;" he announced abruptly, and turned down the side street. We watched his sturdy figure as it receded. 

"Well, of all queer boys!" said Nancy, and we walked on again. 

"He's my best friend, " I replied warmly. 

"He doesn't seem to care much for your company, " said Nancy. 

"Oh, they have dinner at half past two, " I explained. 

"Aren't you afraid of missing yours, Hugh?" she asked wickedly. 

"I've got time. I'd--I'd rather be with you. " After making whichaudacious remark I was seized by a spasm of apprehension. But nothinghappened. Nancy remained demure. She didn't remind me that I hadreflected upon Tom. 

"That's nice of you, Hugh. "

"Oh, I'm not saying it because it's nice, " I faltered. "I'd rather bewith you than--with anybody. "

This was indeed the acme of daring. I couldn't believe I had actuallysaid it. But again I received no rebuke; instead came a remark that setme palpitating, that I treasured for many weeks to come. 

"I got a very nice valentine, " she informed me. 

"What was it like?" I asked thickly. 

"Oh, beautiful! All pink lace and--and Cupids, and the picture of a youngman and a young woman in a garden. "

"Was that all?"

"Oh, no, there was a verse, in the oddest handwriting. I wonder who sentit?"

"Perhaps Ralph, " I hazarded ecstatically. 

"Ralph couldn't write poetry, " she replied disdainfully. "Besides, it wasvery good poetry. "

I suggested other possible authors and admirers. She rejected them all. We reached her gate, and I lingered. As she looked down at me from thestone steps her eyes shone with a soft light that filled me withradiance, and into her voice had come a questioning, shy note thatthrilled the more because it revealed a new Nancy of whom I had notdreamed. 

"Perhaps I'll meet you again--coming from school, " I said. 

"Perhaps, " she answered. "You'll be late to dinner, Hugh, if you don'tgo. .. . "

I was late, and unable to eat much dinner, somewhat to my mother's alarm. Love had taken away my appetite. .. . After dinner, when I was wanderingaimlessly about the yard, Tom appeared on the other side of the fence. 

"Don't ever ask me to do that again, " he said gloomily. 

I did meet Nancy again coming from school, not every day, but nearlyevery day. At first we pretended that there was no arrangement in this, and we both feigned surprise when we encountered one another. It wasNancy who possessed the courage that I lacked. One afternoon shesaid:--"I think I'd better walk with the girls to-morrow, Hugh. "

I protested, but she was firm. And after that it was an understood thingthat on certain days I should go directly home, feeling like an exile. Sophy McAlery had begun to complain: and I gathered that Sophy wasNancy's confidante. The other girls had begun to gossip. It was Nancy whoconceived the brilliant idea--the more delightful because she saidnothing about it to me--of making use of Sophy. She would leave schoolwith Sophy, and I waited on the corner near the McAlery house. PoorSophy! She was always of those who piped while others danced. In thosedays she had two straw-coloured pigtails, and her plain, faithful face isbefore me as I write. She never betrayed to me the excitement that filledher at being the accomplice of our romance. 

Gossip raged, of course. Far from being disturbed, we used it, so tospeak, as a handle for our love-making, which was carried on in aninferential rather than a direct fashion. Were they saying that we werelovers? Delightful! We laughed at one another in the sunshine. .. . At lastwe achieved the great adventure of a clandestine meeting and went for awalk in the afternoon, avoiding the houses of our friends. I've forgottenwhich of us had the boldness to propose it. The crocuses and tulips hadbroken the black mould, the flower beds in the front yards were beginningto blaze with scarlet and yellow, the lawns had turned a living green. What did we talk about? The substance has vanished, only the flavourremains. 

One awoke of a morning to the twittering of birds, to walk to schoolamidst delicate, lace-like shadows of great trees acloud with old gold:the buds lay curled like tiny feathers on the pavements. Suddenly theshade was dense, the sunlight white and glaring, the odour of lilacsheavy in the air, spring in all its fulness had come, --spring and Nancy. Just so subtly, yet with the same seeming suddenness had budded and cometo leaf and flower a perfect understanding, which nevertheless remainedundefined. This, I had no doubt, was my fault, and due to theincomprehensible shyness her presence continued to inspire. Although wedid not altogether abandon our secret trysts, we began to meet in morenatural ways; there were garden parties and picnics where we strayedtogether through the woods and fields, pausing to tear off, one by one, the petals of a daisy, "She loves me, she loves me not. " I never venturedto kiss her; I always thought afterwards I might have done so, she hadseemed so willing, her eyes had shone so expectantly as I sat beside heron the grass; nor can I tell why I desired to kiss her save that this wasthe traditional thing to do to the lady one loved. To be sure, the verytouch of her hand was galvanic. Paradoxically, I saw the human side ofher, the yielding gentleness that always amazed me, yet I never overcamemy awe of the divine; she was a being sacrosanct. Whether this idealismwere innate or the result of such romances as I had read I cannot say. .. . I got, indeed, an avowal of a sort. The weekly dancing classes havingbegun again, on one occasion when she had waltzed twice with GeneHollister I protested. 

"Don't be silly, Hugh, " she whispered. "Of course I like you better thananyone else--you ought to know that. "

We never got to the word "love, " but we knew the feeling. 

One cloud alone flung its shadow across these idyllic days. Before I wasfully aware of it I had drawn very near to the first great junction-pointof my life, my graduation from Densmore Academy. We were to "changecars, " in the language of Principal Haime. Well enough for the fortunateones who were to continue the academic journey, which implied apostponement of the serious business of life; but month after month ofthe last term had passed without a hint from my father that I was tochange cars. Again and again I almost succeeded in screwing up my courageto the point of mentioning college to him, --never quite; his manner, though kind and calm, somehow strengthened my suspicion that I had beenjudged and found wanting, and doomed to "business": galley slavery, Ideemed it, humdrum, prosaic, degrading! When I thought of it at night Iexperienced almost a frenzy of self-pity. My father couldn't intend to dothat, just because my monthly reports hadn't always been what he thoughtthey ought to be! Gene Hollister's were no better, if as good, and he wasgoing to Princeton. Was I, Hugh Paret, to be denied the distinction ofbeing a college man, the delights of university existence, cruellyseparated and set apart from my friends whom I loved! held up to theworld and especially to Nancy Willett as good for nothing else! Thethought was unbearable. Characteristically, I hoped against hope. 

I have mentioned garden parties. One of our annual institutions was Mrs. Willett's children's party in May; for the Willett house had a gardenthat covered almost a quarter of a block. Mrs. Willett loved children, the greatest regret of her life being that providence had denied her alarge family. As far back as my memory goes she had been something of aninvalid; she had a sweet, sad face, and delicate hands so thin as to seemalmost transparent; and she always sat in a chair under the great tree onthe lawn, smiling at us as we soared to dizzy heights in the swing, orplayed croquet, or scurried through the paths, and in and out of thelatticed summer-house with shrieks of laughter and terror. It all endedwith a feast at a long table made of sawhorses and boards covered with awhite cloth, and when the cake was cut there was wild excitement as towho would get the ring and who the thimble. 

We were more decorous, or rather more awkward now, and the party beganwith a formal period when the boys gathered in a group and pretendedindifference to the girls. The girls were cleverer at it, and actuallyachieved the impression that they were indifferent. We kept an eye onthem, uneasily, while we talked. To be in Nancy's presence and not alonewith Nancy was agonizing, and I wondered at a sang-froid beyond my powerto achieve, accused her of coldness, my sufferings being the greaterbecause she seemed more beautiful, daintier, more irreproachable than Ihad ever seen her. Even at that early age she gave evidence of the socialgift, and it was due to her efforts that we forgot our best clothes andour newly born self-consciousness. When I begged her to slip away with meamong the currant bushes she whispered:--"I can't, Hugh. I'm the hostess, you know. "

I had gone there in a flutter of anticipation, but nothing went rightthat day. There was dancing in the big rooms that looked out on thegarden; the only girl with whom I cared to dance was Nancy, and she wasbusy finding partners for the backward members of both sexes; though shewas my partner, to be sure, when it all wound up with a Virginia reel onthe lawn. Then, at supper, to cap the climax of untoward incidents, ananimated discussion was begun as to the relative merits of the variouscolleges, the girls, too, taking sides. Mac Willett, Nancy's cousin, wasgoing to Yale, Gene Hollister to Princeton, the Ewan boys to our StateUniversity, while Perry Blackwood and Ralph Hambleton and Ham Durrettwere destined for Harvard; Tom Peters, also, though he was not tograduate from the Academy for another year. I might have known that Ralphwould have suspected my misery. He sat triumphantly next to Nancyherself, while I had been told off to entertain the faithful Sophy. Noticing my silence, he demanded wickedly:--"Where are you going, Hugh?"

"Harvard, I think, " I answered with as bold a front as I could muster. "Ihaven't talked it over with my father yet. " It was intolerable to admitthat I of them all was to be left behind. 

Nancy looked at me in surprise. She was always downright. 

"Oh, Hugh, doesn't your father mean to put you in business?" sheexclaimed. 

A hot flush spread over my face. Even to her I had not betrayed myapprehensions on this painful subject. Perhaps it was because of thisvery reason, knowing me as she did, that she had divined my fate. Couldmy father have spoken of it to anyone?

"Not that I know of, " I said angrily. I wondered if she knew how deeplyshe had hurt me. The others laughed. The colour rose in Nancy's cheeks, and she gave me an appealing, almost tearful look, but my heart hadhardened. As soon as supper was over I left the table to wander, nursingmy wrongs, in a far corner of the garden, gay shouts and laughter stillechoing in my ears. I was negligible, even my pathetic subterfuge hadbeen detected and cruelly ridiculed by these friends whom I had alwaysloved and sought out, and who now were so absorbed in their own prospectsand happiness that they cared nothing for mine. And Nancy! I had beenbetrayed by Nancy!. .. Twilight was coming on. I remember glancing downmiserably at the new blue suit I had put on so hopefully for the firsttime that afternoon. 

Separating the garden from the street was a high, smooth board fence witha little gate in it, and I had my hand on the latch when I heard thesound of hurrying steps on the gravel path and a familiar voice callingmy name. 

"Hugh! Hugh!"

I turned. Nancy stood before me. 

"Hugh, you're not going!"

"Yes, I am. "

"Why?"

"If you don't know, there's no use telling you. "

"Just because I said your father intended to put you in business! Oh, Hugh, why are you so foolish and so proud? Do you suppose thatanyone--that I--think any the worse of you?"

Yes, she had read me, she alone had entered into the source of thatprevarication, the complex feelings from which it sprang. But at thatmoment I could not forgive her for humiliating me. I hugged my grievance. 

"It was true, what I said, " I declared hotly. "My father has not spoken. It is true that I'm going to college, because I'll make it true. I maynot go this year. "

She stood staring in sheer surprise at sight of my sudden, quiveringpassion. I think the very intensity of it frightened her. And then, without more ado, I opened the gate and was gone. .. . 

That night, though I did not realize it, my journey into a Far Countrywas begun. 

The misery that followed this incident had one compensating factor. Although too late to electrify Densmore and Principal Haime with myscholarship, I was determined to go to college now, somehow, sometime. Iwould show my father, these companions of mine, and above all Nancyherself the stuff of which I was made, compel them sooner or later toadmit that they had misjudged me. I had been possessed by similarresolutions before, though none so strong, and they had a way of sinkingbelow the surface of my consciousness, only to rise again and again untilby sheer pressure they achieved realization. 

Yet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which Iwould have thought unbelievable: she began to show a marked preferencefor Ralph Hambleton. At first I regarded this affair as the most obviousof retaliations. She, likewise, had pride. Gradually, however, a feelingof uneasiness crept over me: as pretence, her performance was altogethertoo realistic; she threw her whole soul into it, danced with Ralph asoften as she had ever danced with me, took walks with him, deferred tohis opinions until, in spite of myself, I became convinced that thepreference was genuine. I was a curious mixture of self-confidence andself-depreciation, and never had his superiority seemed more patent thannow. His air of satisfaction was maddening. 

How well I remember his triumph on that hot, June morning of ourgraduation from Densmore, a triumph he had apparently achieved withoutlabour, and which he seemed to despise. A fitful breeze blew through thechapel at the top of the building; we, the graduates, sat in two rowsnext to the platform, and behind us the wooden benches nicked by manyknives--were filled with sisters and mothers and fathers, some anxious, some proud and some sad. So brief a span, like that summer's day, andyouth was gone! Would the time come when we, too, should sit by thewaters of Babylon and sigh for it? The world was upside down. 

We read the one hundred and third psalm. Then Principal Haime, in hislong "Prince Albert" and a ridiculously inadequate collar that emphasizedhis scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we had formed, of the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who were theprivileged of the city. "We had crossed to-day, " he said, "an invisiblethreshold. Some were to go on to higher institutions of learning. Others. .. " I gulped. Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented those whohad made the most of their opportunities. And it was then that he calledout, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton. Summa cumlaude! Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets at thesound of the applause. I might have been the prize scholar, instead ofRalph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what this focussingday of graduation meant! I might have been a marked individual, withpeople murmuring words of admiration, of speculation concerning thebrilliancy of my future!. .. When at last my name was called and I rose toreceive my diploma it seemed as though my incompetency had beenproclaimed to the world. .. 

That evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasiumand watched Nancy dancing with Ralph. 

I let her go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed tohave taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy withsadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hithertospontaneous, warm and living was withering within me. 

V. 

It was true to my father's character that he should have waited until theday after graduation to discuss my future, if discussion be the properword. The next evening at supper he informed me that he wished to talk tome in the sitting-room, whither I followed him with a sinking heart. Heseated himself at his desk, and sat for a moment gazing at me with acurious and benumbing expression, and then the blow fell. 

"Hugh, I have spoken to your Cousin Robert Breck about you, and he haskindly consented to give you a trial. "

"To give me a trial, sir!" I exclaimed. 

"To employ you at a small but reasonable salary. "

I could find no words to express my dismay. My dreams had come to this, that I was to be made a clerk in a grocery store! The fact that it was awholesale grocery store was little consolation. 

"But father, " I faltered, "I don't want to go into business. "

"Ah!" The sharpness of the exclamation might have betrayed to me the painin which he was, but he recovered himself instantly. And I could seenothing but an inexorable justice closing in on me mechanically; a blindjustice, in its inability to read my soul. "The time to have decidedthat, " he declared, "was some years ago, my son. I have given you thebest schooling a boy can have, and you have not shown the leastappreciation of your advantages. I do not enjoy saying this, Hugh, but inspite of all my efforts and of those of your mother, you have remainedundeveloped and irresponsible. My hope, as you know, was to have made youa professional man, a lawyer, and to take you into my office. My fatherand grandfather were professional men before me. But you are whollylacking in ambition. "

And I had burned with it all my life!

"I have ambition, " I cried, the tears forcing themselves to my eyes. 

"Ambition--for what, my son?"

I hesitated. How could I tell him that my longings to do something, to besomebody in the world were never more keen than at that moment? MatthewArnold had not then written his definition of God as the stream oftendency by which we fulfil the laws of our being; and my father, at anyrate, would not have acquiesced in the definition. Dimly but passionatelyI felt then, as I had always felt, that I had a mission to perform, aservice to do which ultimately would be revealed to me. But thehopelessness of explaining this took on, now, the proportions of atragedy. And I could only gaze at him. 

"What kind of ambition, Hugh?" he repeated sadly. 

"I--I have sometimes thought I could write, sir, if I had a chance. Ilike it better than anything else. I--I have tried it. And if I couldonly go to college--"

"Literature!" There was in his voice a scandalized note. 

"Why not, father?" I asked weakly. 

And now it was he who, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss toexpress himself. He turned in his chair, and with a sweep of the handindicated the long rows of musty-backed volumes. "Here, " he said, "youhave had at your disposal as well-assorted a small library as the citycontains, and you have not availed yourself of it. Yet you talk to me ofliterature as a profession. I am afraid, Hugh, that this is merelyanother indication of your desire to shun hard work, and I must tell youfrankly that I fail to see in you the least qualification for such acareer. You have not even inherited my taste for books. I venture to say, for instance, that you have never even read a paragraph of Plutarch, andyet when I was your age I was completely familiar with the Lives. Youwill not read Scott or Dickens. "

The impeachment was not to be denied, for the classics were hateful tome. Naturally I was afraid to make such a damning admission. My fatherhad succeeded in presenting my ambition as the height of absurdity andpresumption, and with something of the despair of a shipwrecked marinermy eyes rested on the green expanses of those book-backs, Bohn's StandardLibrary! Nor did it occur to him or to me that one might be great inliterature without having read so much as a gritty page of them. .. . 

He finished his argument by reminding me that worthless persons sought toenter the arts in the search for a fool's paradise, and in order tosatisfy a reprehensible craving for notoriety. The implication was clear, that imaginative production could not be classed as hard work. And heassured me that literature was a profession in which no one could affordto be second class. A Longfellow, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, or nothing. This was a practical age and a practical country. We had indeed producedIrvings and Hawthornes, but the future of American letters was, to saythe least, problematical. We were a utilitarian people who would nevercreate a great literature, and he reminded me that the days of theromantic and the picturesque had passed. He gathered that I desired to bea novelist. Well, novelists, with certain exceptions, were fantasticfellows who blew iridescent soap-bubbles and who had no morals. In theface of such a philosophy as his I was mute. The world appeared a drearyplace of musty offices and smoky steel-works, of coal dust, of labourwithout a spark of inspiration. And that other, the world of my dreams, simply did not exist. 

Incidentally my father had condemned Cousin Robert's wholesale grocerybusiness as a refuge of the lesser of intellect that could not achievethe professions, --an inference not calculated to stir my ambition andliking for it at the start. 

I began my business career on the following Monday morning. At breakfast, held earlier than usual on my account, my mother's sympathy was the moreeloquent for being unspoken, while my father wore an air of unwontedcheerfulness; charging me, when I departed, to give his kindestremembrances to my Cousin Robert Breck. With a sense of martyrdom somehowdeepened by this attitude of my parents I boarded a horse-car and wentdown town. Early though it was, the narrow streets of the wholesaledistrict reverberated with the rattle of trucks and echoed with theshouts of drivers. The day promised to be scorching. At the door of thewarehouse of Breck and Company I was greeted by the ineffable smell ofgroceries in which the suggestion of parched coffee prevailed. This isthe sharpest remembrance of all, and even to-day that odour affects mesomewhat in the manner that the interior of a ship affects a person proneto seasickness. My Cousin Robert, in his well-worn alpaca coat, wasalready seated at his desk behind the clouded glass partition next thealley at the back of the store, and as I entered he gazed at me over hissteel-rimmed spectacles with that same disturbing look of clairvoyance Ihave already mentioned as one of his characteristics. The grey eyes werequizzical, and yet seemed to express a little commiseration. 

"Well, Hugh, you've decided to honour us, have you?" he asked. 

"I'm much obliged for giving me the place, Cousin Robert, " I replied. 

But he had no use for that sort of politeness, and he saw through me, asalways. 

"So you're not too tony for the grocery business, eh?"

"Oh, no, sir. "

"It was good enough for old Benjamin Breck, " he said. "Well, I'll giveyou a fair trial, my boy, and no favouritism on account of relationship, any more than to Willie. "

His strong voice resounded through the store, and presently my cousinWillie appeared in answer to his summons, the same Willie who used tolead me, on mischief bent, through the barns and woods and fields ofClaremore. He was barefoot no longer, though freckled still, grown lankyand tall; he wore a coarse blue apron that fell below his knees, and apencil was stuck behind his ear. 

"Get an apron for Hugh, " said his father. 

Willie's grin grew wider. 

"I'll fit him out, " he said. 

"Start him in the shipping department, " directed Cousin Robert, andturned to his letters. 

I was forthwith provided with an apron, and introduced to the slim andanaemic but cheerful Johnny Hedges, the shipping clerk, hard at work inthe alley. Secretly I looked down on my fellow-clerks, as one destinedfor a higher mission, made out of better stuff, --finer stuff. Despite myattempt to hide this sense of superiority they were swift to discover it;and perhaps it is to my credit as well as theirs that they did not resentit. Curiously enough, they seemed to acknowledge it. Before the week wasout I had earned the nickname of Beau Brummel. 

"Say, Beau, " Johnny Hedges would ask, when I appeared of a morning, "whathappened in the great world last night?"

I had an affection for them, these fellow-clerks, and I often wondered attheir contentment with the drab lives they led, at theirself-congratulation for "having a job" at Breck and Company's. 

"You don't mean to say you like this kind of work?" I exclaimed one dayto Johnny Hedges, as we sat on barrels of XXXX flour looking out at thehot sunlight in the alley. 

"It ain't a question of liking it, Beau, " he rebuked me. "It's all verywell for you to talk, since your father's a millionaire" (a fiction sofirmly embedded in their heads that no amount of denial affected it), "but what do you think would happen to me if I was fired? I couldn't gohome and take it easy--you bet not. I just want to shake hands withmyself when I think that I've got a home, and a job like this. I know afeller--a hard worker he was, too who walked the pavements for threemonths when the Colvers failed, and couldn't get nothing, and took todrink, and the last I heard of him he was sleeping in police stations andwalking the ties, and his wife's a waitress at a cheap hotel. Don't youthink it's easy to get a job. "

I was momentarily sobered by the earnestness with which he brought hometo me the relentlessness of our civilization. It seemed incredible. Ishould have learned a lesson in that store. Barring a few discordant dayswhen the orders came in too fast or when we were short handed because ofsickness, it was a veritable hive of happiness; morning after morningclerks and porters arrived, pale, yet smiling, and laboured withcheerfulness from eight o'clock until six, and departed as cheerfully formodest homes in obscure neighbourhoods that seemed to me areas of exile. They were troubled with no visions of better things. When the travellingmen came in from the "road" there was great hilarity. Importantpersonages, these, looked up to by the city clerks; jolly, reckless, Elizabethan-like rovers, who had tasted of the wine of liberty--and ofother wines with the ineradicable lust for the road in their blood. Nomore routine for Jimmy Bowles, who was king of them all. I shudder tothink how much of my knowledge of life I owe to this Jimmy, whose storieswould have filled a quarto volume, but could on no account have beenpublished; for a self-respecting post-office would not have allowed themto pass through the mails. As it was, Jimmy gave them circulation enough. I can still see his round face, with the nose just indicated, his wicked, twinkling little eyes, and I can hear his husky voice fall to a whisperwhen "the boss" passed through the store. Jimmy, when visiting us, alwayshad a group around him. His audacity with women amazed me, for he neverpassed one of the "lady clerks" without some form of caress, which theyresented but invariably laughed at. One day he imparted to me his code ofmorality: he never made love to another man's wife, so he assured me, ifhe knew the man! The secret of life he had discovered in laughter, and bylaughter he sold quantities of Cousin Robert's groceries. 

Mr. Bowles boasted of a catholic acquaintance in all the cities of hisdistrict, but before venturing forth to conquer these he had learned hisown city by heart. My Cousin Robert was not aware of the fact that Mr. Bowles "showed" the town to certain customers. He even desired to show itto me, but an epicurean strain in my nature held me back. Johnny Hedgeswent with him occasionally, and Henry Schneider, the bill clerk, and Ilistened eagerly to their experiences, afterwards confiding them toTom. .. . 

There were times when, driven by an overwhelming curiosity, I venturedinto certain strange streets, alone, shivering with cold and excitement, gripped by a fascination I did not comprehend, my eyes now averted, nowirresistibly raised toward the white streaks of light that outlined thewindows of dark houses. .. . 

One winter evening as I was going home, I encountered at the mail-box ayoung woman who shot at me a queer, twisted smile. I stood still, asthough stunned, looking after her, and when halfway across the slushystreet she turned and smiled again. Prodigiously excited, I followed her, fearful that I might be seen by someone who knew me, nor was it until shereached an unfamiliar street that I ventured to overtake her. Sheconfounded me by facing me. 

"Get out!" she cried fiercely. 

I halted in my tracks, overwhelmed with shame. But she continued toregard me by the light of the street lamp. 

"You didn't want to be seen with me on Second Street, did you? You're oneof those sneaking swells. "

The shock of this sudden onslaught was tremendous. I stood frozen to thespot, trembling, convicted, for I knew that her accusation was just; Ihad wounded her, and I had a desire to make amends. 

"I'm sorry, " I faltered. "I didn't mean--to offend you. And you smiled--"I got no farther. She began to laugh, and so loudly that I glancedanxiously about. I would have fled, but something still held me, something that belied the harshness of her laugh. 

"You're just a kid, " she told me. "Say, you get along home, and tell yourmamma I sent you. "

Whereupon I departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I hadnever before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When atlength I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude onlyserved to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen herself to see if mymince-pie were hot, and served me with her own hands. My father remainedat his place at the head of the table while I tried to eat, smilingindulgently at her ministrations. 

"Oh, a little hard work won't hurt him, Sarah, " he said. "When I was hisage I often worked until eleven o'clock and never felt the worse for it. Business must be pretty good, eh, Hugh?"

I had never seen him in a more relaxing mood, a more approving one. Mymother sat down beside me. .. . Words seem useless to express thecomplicated nature of my suffering at that moment, --my remorse, my senseof deception, of hypocrisy, --yes, and my terror. I tried to talknaturally, to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store, while all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room, familiarsince childhood. Here were warmth, love, and safety. Why could I not becontent with them, thankful for them? What was it in me that drove mefrom these sheltering walls out into the dark places? I glanced at myfather. Had he ever known these wild, destroying desires? Oh, if I onlycould have confided in him! The very idea of it was preposterous. Suchplacidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations, and I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation. Inimagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea, alone. Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and out, in spite of all I could do?

 "Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core. .. . "

I did not shirk my tasks at the store, although I never got over thefeeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser onewould have done equally well. There were moments when I was almostovercome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger: forinstance, I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocerwhom I had asked to settle a long-standing account. Yet the days passed, the daily grind absorbed my energies, and when I was not collecting, ortediously going over the stock in the dim recesses of the store, I wasrunning errands in the wholesale district, treading the burning brick ofthe pavements, dodging heavy trucks and drays and perspiring clerks whoflew about with memorandum pads in their hands, or awaiting the pleasureof bank tellers. Save Harvey, the venerable porter, I was the last toleave the store in the evening, and I always came away with the taste onmy palate of Breck and Company's mail, it being my final duty to "lick"the whole of it and deposit it in the box at the corner. The gum on theenvelopes tasted of winter-green. 

My Cousin Robert was somewhat astonished at my application. 

"We'll make a man of you yet, Hugh, " he said to me once, when I hadperformed a commission with unexpected despatch. .. . 

Business was his all-in-all, and he had an undisguised contempt forhigher education. To send a boy to college was, in his opinion, to run noinconsiderable risk of ruining him. What did they amount to when theycame home, strutting like peacocks, full of fads and fancies, and muchtoo good to associate with decent, hard-working citizens? Neverthelesswhen autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East, I wasdesperate indeed! Even the contemplation of Robert Breck did not consoleme, and yet here, in truth, was a life which might have served me as amodel. His store was his castle; and his reputation for integrity andsquare dealing as wide as the city. Often I used to watch him with acertain envy as he stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, andgreeted fellow-merchant and banker with his genuine and dignifieddirectness. This man was his own master. They all called him "Robert, "and they made it clear by their manner that they knew they wereaddressing one who fulfilled his obligations and asked no favours. 

Crusty old Nathaniel Durrett once declared that when you bought a bill ofgoods from Robert Breck you did not have to check up the invoice oremploy a chemist. Here was a character to mould upon. If my ambitioncould but have been bounded by Breck and Company, I, too, might have cometo stand in that doorway content with a tribute that was greater thanCaesar's. 

I had been dreading the Christmas holidays, which were indeed to be noholidays for me. And when at length they arrived they brought with themfrom the East certain heroes fashionably clad, citizens now of a largerworld than mine. These former companions had become superior beings, theycould not help showing it, and their presence destroyed the Balance ofThings. For alas, I had not wholly abjured the feminine sex after all!And from being a somewhat important factor in the lives of Ruth Hollisterand other young women I suddenly became of no account. New interests, newrivalries and loyalties had arisen in which I had no share; I mustperforce busy myself with invoices of flour and coffee and canned fruitswhile sleigh rides and coasting and skating expeditions to BlackstoneLake followed one another day after day, --for the irony of circumstanceshad decreed a winter uncommonly cold. There were evening parties, too, where I felt like an alien, though my friends were guilty of no consciousneglect; and had I been able to accept the situation simply, I should nothave suffered. 

The principal event of those holidays was a play given in the oldHambleton house (which later became the Boyne Club), under the directionof the lively and talented Mrs. Watling. I was invited, indeed, toparticipate; but even if I had had the desire I could not have done so, since the rehearsals were carried on in the daytime. Nancy was theleading lady. I have neglected to mention that she too had been awayalmost continuously since our misunderstanding, for the summer in themountains, --a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in theautumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school atFarmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellouslyacquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certainfrivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane. She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role sheplayed. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcelyrecognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above me, suggesting asphere of power and luxury hitherto unimagined and beyond the scope ofthe world to which I belonged. 

Her triumph was genuine. When the play was over she was immediatelysurrounded by enthusiastic admirers eager to congratulate her, to dancewith her. I too would have gone forward, but a sense of inadequacy, ofunimportance, of an inability to cope with her, held me back, and from acorner I watched her sweeping around the room, holding up her train, andleaning on the arm of Bob Lansing, a classmate whom Ralph had broughthome from Harvard. Then it was Ralph's turn: that affair seemed still tobe going on. My feelings were a strange medley of despondency andstimulation. .. . 

Our eyes met. Her partner now was Ham Durrett. Capriciously releasinghim, she stood before me, "Hugh, you haven't asked me to dance, or even told me what you thought ofthe play. "

"I thought it was splendid, " I said lamely. 

Because she refrained from replying I was farther than ever fromunderstanding her. How was I to divine what she felt? or whether anylonger she felt at all? Here, in this costume of a woman of the world, with the string of pearls at her neck to give her the final touch ofbrilliancy, was a strange, new creature who baffled and silenced me. .. . We had not gone halfway across the room when she halted abruptly. 

"I'm tired, " she exclaimed. "I don't feel like dancing just now, " and ledthe way to the big, rose punch-bowl, one of the Durretts' most cherishedpossessions. Glancing up at me over the glass of lemonade I had given hershe went on: "Why haven't you been to see me since I came home? I'vewanted to talk to you, to hear how you are getting along. "

Was she trying to make amends, or reminding me in this subtle way of thecause of our quarrel? What I was aware of as I looked at her was anattitude, a vantage point apparently gained by contact with thatmysterious outer world which thus vicariously had laid its spell on me; Iwas tremendously struck by the thought that to achieve this attitudemeant emancipation, invulnerability against the aches and pains whichotherwise our fellow-beings had the power to give us; mastery overlife, --the ability to choose calmly, as from a height, what were best forone's self, untroubled by loves and hates. Untroubled by loves and hates!At that very moment, paradoxically, I loved her madly, but with a lovenot of the old quality, a love that demanded a vantage point of its own. Even though she had made an advance--and some elusiveness in her mannerled me to doubt it I could not go to her now. I must go as aconqueror, --a conqueror in the lists she herself had chosen, where theprize is power. 

"Oh, I'm getting along pretty well, " I said. "At any rate, they don'tcomplain of me. "

"Somehow, " she ventured, "somehow it's hard to think of you as a businessman. "

I took this for a reference to the boast I had made that I would go tocollege. 

"Business isn't so bad as it might be, " I assured her. 

"I think a man ought to go away to college, " she declared, in what seemedanother tone. "He makes friends, learns certain things, --it gives himfinish. We are very provincial here. "

Provincial! I did not stop to reflect how recently she must have acquiredthe word; it summed up precisely the self-estimate at which I hadarrived. The sting went deep. Before I could think of an effective replyNancy was being carried off by the young man from the East, who wasclearly infatuated. He was not provincial. She smiled back at me brightlyover his shoulder. .. . In that instant were fused in one resolution allthe discordant elements within me of aspiration and discontent. It wasnot so much that I would show Nancy what I intended to do--I would showmyself; and I felt a sudden elation, and accession of power that enabledme momentarily to despise the puppets with whom she danced. .. . From thismood I was awakened with a start to feel a hand on my shoulder, and Iturned to confront her father, McAlery Willett; a gregarious, easygoing, pleasure-loving gentleman who made only a pretence of business, havinginherited an ample fortune from his father, unique among his generationin our city in that he paid some attention to fashion in his dress; goodliving was already beginning to affect his figure. His mellow voice had away of breaking an octave. 

"Don't worry, my boy, " he said. "You stick to business. These collegefellows are cocks of the walk just now, but some day you'll be able tosnap your fingers at all of 'em. "

The next day was dark, overcast, smoky, damp-the soft, unwholesomedampness that follows a spell of hard frost. I spent the morning andafternoon on the gloomy third floor of Breck and Company, making a listof the stock. I remember the place as though I had just stepped out ofit, the freight elevator at the back, the dusty, iron columns, thecontinuous piles of cases and bags and barrels with narrow aisles betweenthem; the dirty windows, spotted and soot-streaked, that looked down onSecond Street. I was determined now to escape from all this, and I had myplan in mind. 

No sooner had I swallowed my supper that evening than I set out at aswift pace for a modest residence district ten blocks away, coming to alittle frame house set back in a yard, --one of those houses in which theringing of the front door-bell produces the greatest commotion;children's voices were excitedly raised and then hushed. After a briefsilence the door was opened by a pleasant-faced, brown-bearded man, whostood staring at me in surprise. His hair was rumpled, he wore an oldhouse coat with a hole in the elbow, and with one finger he kept hisplace in the book which he held in his hand. 

"Hugh Paret!" he exclaimed. 

He ushered me into a little parlour lighted by two lamps, that bore everyevidence of having been recently vacated. Its features somehow bespoke astruggle for existence; as though its occupants had worried much andloved much. It was a room best described by the word "home"--home mademore precious by a certain precariousness. Toys and school-books strewedthe floor, a sewing-bag and apron lay across the sofa, and in one cornerwas a roll-topped desk of varnished oak. The seats of the chairs werecomfortably depressed. 

So this was where Mr. Wood lived! Mr. Wood, instructor in Latin and Greekat Densmore Academy. It was now borne in on me for the first time that hedid live and have his ties like any other human being, instead of justappearing magically from nowhere on a platform in a chalky room at nineevery morning, to vanish again in the afternoon. I had formerly stood inawe of his presence. But now I was suddenly possessed by anembarrassment, and (shall I say it?) by a commiseration bordering oncontempt for a man who would consent to live thus for the sake of being aschoolteacher. How strange that civilization should set such a high valueon education and treat its functionaries with such neglect!

Mr. Wood's surprise at seeing me was genuine. For I had never shown aparticular interest in him, nor in the knowledge which he strove toimpart. 

"I thought you had forgotten me, Hugh, " he said, and added whimsically:"most boys do, when they graduate. "

I felt the reproach, which made it the more difficult for me to state myerrand. 

"I knew you sometimes took pupils in the evening, Mr. Wood. "

"Pupils, --yes, " he replied, still eyeing me. Suddenly his eyes twinkled. He had indeed no reason to suspect me of thirsting for learning. "But Iwas under the impression that you had gone into business, Hugh. "

"The fact is, sir, " I explained somewhat painfully, "that I am notsatisfied with business. I feel--as if I ought to know more. And I cameto see if you would give me lessons about three nights a week, because Iwant to take the Harvard examinations next summer. "

Thus I made it appear, and so persuaded myself, that my ambition had beenprompted by a craving for knowledge. As soon as he could recover himselfhe reminded me that he had on many occasions declared I had a brain. 

"Your father must be very happy over this decision of yours, " he said. 

That was the point, I told him. It was to be a surprise for my father; Iwas to take the examinations first, and inform him afterwards. 

To my intense relief, Mr. Wood found the scheme wholly laudable, andentered into it with zest. He produced examinations of preceding yearsfrom a pigeonhole in his desk, and inside of half an hour the arrangementwas made, the price of the lessons settled. They were well within mysalary, which recently had been raised. .. . 

When I went down town, or collecting bills for Breck and Company, I tooka text-book along with me in the street-cars. Now at last I had behind mystudies a driving force. Algebra, Latin, Greek and history became worthwhile, means to an end. I astonished Mr. Wood; and sometimes he wouldtilt back his chair, take off his spectacles and pull his beard. 

"Why in the name of all the sages, " he would demand, "couldn't you havedone this well at school? You might have led your class, instead of RalphHambleton. "

I grew very fond of Mr. Wood, and even of his thin little wife, whooccasionally flitted into the room after we had finished. I fullyintended to keep up with them in after life, but I never did. I forgotthem completely. .. . 

My parents were not wholly easy in their minds concerning me; they werebewildered by the new aspect I presented. For my lately acquired motivewas strong enough to compel me to restrict myself socially, and theevenings I spent at home were given to study, usually in my own room. Once I was caught with a Latin grammar: I was just "looking over it, " Isaid. My mother sighed. I knew what was in her mind; she had always beensecretly disappointed that I had not been sent to college. And presently, when my father went out to attend a trustee's meeting, the impulse toconfide in her almost overcame me; I loved her with that affection whichgoes out to those whom we feel understand us, but I was learning torestrain my feelings. She looked at me wistfully. .. . I knew that shewould insist on telling my father, and thus possibly frustrate my plans. That I was not discovered was due to a certain quixotic twist in myfather's character. I was working now, and though not actually earning myown living, he no longer felt justified in prying into my affairs. 

When June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that hisconscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum. The joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he foundpraiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father wereinformed of them; he was determined to call at my father's office. 

The next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, withthe presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become utterlydistasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make outinvoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, mymind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety. The result of aninterview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no Ishould be immediately released from a slavery I detested. Would Mr. Woodpersuade my father? If not, I was prepared to take more desperatemeasures; remain in the grocery business I would not. In the evening, asI hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had droppedme, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing the scenewhere my childhood had been spent: each of these spreading maples was anold friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed. An unaccountablesadness passed over me as I walked on toward our gate; I entered it, gained the doorway of the house and went upstairs, glancing into thesitting room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. She looked up at mewith an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of tears. 

"Hugh!" she exclaimed. 

I felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her. 

"Why didn't you tell us, my son?" In her voice was in truth reproach; yetmingled with that was another note, which I think was pride. 

"What has father said?" I asked. 

"Oh, my dear, he will tell you himself. I--I don't know--he will talk toyou. "

Suddenly she seized my hands and drew me down to her, and then held meaway, gazing into my face with a passionate questioning, her lipssmiling, her eyes wet. What did she see? Was there a subtler relationshipbetween our natures than I guessed? Did she understand by someinstinctive power the riddle within me? divine through love the forcethat was driving me on she knew not whither, nor I? At the sound of myfather's step in the hall she released me. He came in as though nothinghad happened. 

"Well, Hugh, are you home?" he said. .. . 

Never had I been more impressed, more bewildered by his self-command thanat that time. Save for the fact that my mother talked less than usual, supper passed as though nothing had happened. Whether I had shaken him, disappointed him, or gained his reluctant approval I could not tell. Gradually his outward calmness turned my suspense to irritation. .. . 

But when at length we were alone together, I gained a certainreassurance. His manner was not severe. He hesitated a little beforebeginning. 

"I must confess, Hugh; that I scarcely know what to say about thisproceeding of yours. The thing that strikes me most forcibly is that youmight have confided in your mother and myself. "

Hope flashed up within me, like an explosion. 

"I--I wanted to surprise you, father. And then, you see, I thought itwould be wiser to find out first how well I was likely to do at theexaminations. "

My father looked at me. Unfortunately he possessed neither a sense ofhumour nor a sense of tragedy sufficient to meet such a situation. Forthe first time in my life I beheld him at a disadvantage; for I had, somehow, managed at length to force him out of position, and he waspuzzled. I was quick to play my trump card. 

"I have been thinking it over carefully, " I told him, "and I have made upmy mind that I want to go into the law. "

"The law!" he exclaimed sharply. 

"Why, yes, sir. I know that you were disappointed because I did not dosufficiently well at school to go to college and study for the bar. "

I felt indeed a momentary pang, but I remembered that I was fighting formy freedom. 

"You seemed satisfied where you were, " he said in a puzzled voice, "andyour Cousin Robert gives a good account of you. "

"I've tried to do the work as well as I could, sir, " I replied. "But Idon't like the grocery business, or any other business. I have a feelingthat I'm not made for it. "

"And you think, now, that you are made for the law?" he asked, with thefaint hint of a smile. 

"Yes, sir, I believe I could succeed at it. I'd like to try, " I repliedmodestly. 

"You've given up the idiotic notion of wishing to be an author?"

I implied that he himself had convinced me of the futility of such awish. I listened to his next words as in a dream. 

"I must confess to you, Hugh, that there are times when I fail tounderstand you. I hope it is as you say, that you have arrived at asettled conviction as to your future, and that this is not another ofthose caprices to which you have been subject, nor a desire to shirkhonest work. Mr. Wood has made out a strong case for you, and I havetherefore determined to give you a trial. If you pass the examinationswith credit, you may go to college, but if at any time you fail to makegood progress, you come home, and go into business again. Is thatthoroughly understood?"

I said it was, and thanked him effusively. .. . I had escaped, --the prisondoors had flown open. But it is written that every happiness has itssting; and my joy, intense though it was, had in it a core of remorse. .. . 

I went downstairs to my mother, who was sitting in the hall by the opendoor. 

"Father says I may go!" I said. 

She got up and took me in her arms. 

"My dear, I am so glad, although we shall miss you dreadfully. .. . Hugh?"

"Yes, mother. "

"Oh, Hugh, I so want you to be a good man!"

Her cry was a little incoherent, but fraught with a meaning that camehome to me, in spite of myself. .. . 

A while later I ran over to announce to the amazed Tom Peters that I wasactually going to Harvard with him. He stood in the half-lighted hallway, his hands in his pockets, blinking at me. 

"Hugh, you're a wonder!" he cried. "How in Jehoshaphat did you workit?". .. 

I lay long awake that night thinking over the momentous change so soon tocome into my life, wondering exultantly what Nancy Willett would say now. I was not one, at any rate, to be despised or neglected. 

VI. 

The following September Tom Peters and I went East together. In the earlymorning Boston broke on us like a Mecca as we rolled out of the oldAlbany station, joint lords of a "herdic. " How sharply the smell of thesalt-laden east wind and its penetrating coolness come back to me! I seekin vain for words to express the exhilarating effect of that brinycoolness on my imagination, and of the visions it summoned up of thenewer, larger life into which I had marvellously been transported. Wealighted at the Parker House, full-fledged men of the world, and tried toact as though the breakfast of which we partook were merely an incident, not an Event; as though we were Seniors, and not freshmen, assuming anindifference to the beings by whom we were surrounded and who werebreakfasting, too, --although the nice-looking ones with fresh faces andtrim clothes were all undoubtedly Olympians. The better to proclaim ournonchalance, we seated ourselves on a lounge of the marble-paved lobbyand smoked cigarettes. This was liberty indeed! At length we departed forCambridge, in another herdic. 

Boston! Could it be possible? Everything was so different here as to givethe place the aspect of a dream: the Bulfinch State House, the decorousshops, the still more decorous dwellings with the purple-paned windowsfacing the Common; Back Bay, still boarded up, ivy-spread, suggestive ofa mysterious and delectable existence. We crossed the Charles River, blue-grey and still that morning; traversed a nondescript district, andat last found ourselves gazing out of the windows at the mellowed, plum-coloured bricks of the University buildings. .. . All at once ourexhilaration evaporated as the herdic rumbled into a side street andbacked up before the door of a not-too-inviting, three-storied house witha queer extension on top. Its steps and vestibule were, however, immaculate. The bell was answered by a plainly overworked servant girl, of whom we inquired for Mrs. Bolton, our landlady. There followed aperiod of waiting in a parlour from which the light had been almostwholly banished, with slippery horsehair furniture and a marble-toppedtable; and Mrs. Bolton, when she appeared, dressed in rusty black, harmonized perfectly with the funereal gloom. She was a tall, rawboned, severe lady with a peculiar red-mottled complexion that somehow remindedone of the outcropping rocks of her native New England soil. 

"You want to see your rooms, I suppose, " she remarked impassively when wehad introduced ourselves, and as we mounted the stairs behind her Tom, ina whisper, nicknamed her "Granite Face. " Presently she left us. 

"Hospitable soul!" said Tom, who, with his hands in his pockets, wasgazing at the bare walls of our sitting-room. "We'll have to go into thehouse-furnishing business, Hughie. I vote we don't linger hereto-day--we'll get melancholia. "

Outside, however, the sun was shining brightly, and we departedimmediately to explore Cambridge and announce our important presences tothe proper authorities. .. . We went into Boston to dine. .. . It was notuntil nine o'clock in the evening that we returned and the bottomsuddenly dropped out of things. He who has tasted that first, acutehomesickness of college will know what I mean. It usually comes at theopening of one's trunk. The sight of the top tray gave me a pang I shallnever forget. I would not have believed that I loved my mother so much!These articles had been packed by her hands; and in one corner, among theunderclothes on which she had neatly sewed my initials, lay the new Bibleshe had bought. "Hugh Moreton Paret, from his Mother. September, 1881. " Itook it up (Tom was not looking) and tried to read a passage, but my eyeswere blurred. What was it within me that pressed and pressed until Ithought I could bear the pain of it no longer? I pictured thesitting-room at home, and my father and mother there, thinking of me. Yes, I must acknowledge it; in the bitterness of that moment I longed tobe back once more in the railed-off space on the floor of Breck andCompany, writing invoices. .. . 

Presently, as we went on silently with our unpacking, we became aware ofsomeone in the doorway. 

"Hello, you fellows!" he cried. "We're classmates, I guess. "

We turned to behold an ungainly young man in an ill-fitting blue suit. His face was pimply, his eyes a Teutonic blue, his yellow hair rumpled, his naturally large mouth was made larger by a friendly grin. 

"I'm Hermann Krebs, " he announced simply. "Who are you?"

We replied, I regret to say, with a distinct coolness that did not seemto bother him in the least. He advanced into the room, holding out alarge, red, and serviceable hand, evidently it had never dawned on himthat there was such a thing in the world as snobbery. But Tom and I hadbeen "coached" by Ralph Hambleton and Perry Blackwood, warned to becareful of our friendships. There was a Reason! In any case Mr. Krebswould not have appealed to us. In answer to a second question he wasinformed what city we hailed from, and he proclaimed himself likewise anative of our state. 

"Why, I'm from Elkington!" he exclaimed, as though the fact sealed ourfuture relationships. He seated himself on Tom's trunk and added:"Welcome to old Harvard!"

We felt that he was scarcely qualified to speak for "old Harvard, " but wedid not say so. 

"You look as if you'd been pall-bearers for somebody, " was his nextobservation. 

To this there seemed no possible reply. 

"You fellows are pretty well fixed here, " he went on, undismayed, gazingabout a room which had seemed to us the abomination of desolation. "Yourfolks must be rich. I'm up under the skylight. "

Even this failed to touch us. His father--he told us with undiminishedcandour--had been a German emigrant who had come over in '49, after thecause of liberty had been lost in the old country, and made eye-glassesand opera glasses. There hadn't been a fortune in it. He, Hermann, hadworked at various occupations in the summer time, from peddling tofarming, until he had saved enough to start him at Harvard. Tom, who hadbeen bending over his bureau drawer, straightened up. 

"What did you want to come here for?" he demanded. 

"Say, what did you?" Mr. Krebs retorted genially. "To get an education, of course. "

"An education!" echoed Tom. 

"Isn't Harvard the oldest and best seat of learning in America?" Therewas an exaltation in Krebs's voice that arrested my attention, and mademe look at him again. A troubled chord had been struck within me. 

"Sure, " said Tom. 

"What did you come for?" Mr. Krebs persisted. 

"To sow my wild oats, " said Tom. "I expect to have something of a crop, too. "

For some reason I could not fathom, it suddenly seemed to dawn on Mr. Krebs, as a result of this statement, that he wasn't wanted. 

"Well, so long, " he said, with a new dignity that curiously belied theinformality of his farewell. 

An interval of silence followed his departure. 

"Well, he's got a crust!" said Tom, at last. 

My own feeling about Mr. Krebs had become more complicated; but I took mycue from Tom, who dealt with situations simply. 

"He'll come in for a few knockouts, " he declared. "Here's to old Harvard, the greatest institution of learning in America! Oh, gee!"

Our visitor, at least, made us temporarily forget our homesickness, butit returned with redoubled intensity when we had put out the lights andgone to bed. 

Before we had left home it had been mildly hinted to us by Ralph andPerry Blackwood that scholarly eminence was not absolutely necessary toone's welfare and happiness at Cambridge. The hint had been somewhatsuperfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a viewof getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the nextevening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyedwith a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are somethings that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at amodern university--which is a reflection of life in the greater world--isone of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did most of the talking, whileRalph, characteristically, lay at full length on the window-seat, interrupting with an occasional terse and cynical remark very much to thepoint. As a sophomore, he in particular seemed lifted immeasurably aboveus, for he was--as might have been expected already a marked man in hisclass. The rooms which he shared with his cousin made a tremendousimpression on Tom and me, and seemed palatial in comparison to ourquarters at Mrs. Bolton's, eloquent of the freedom and luxury ofundergraduate existence; their note, perhaps, was struck by the profusionof gay sofa pillows, then something of an innovation. The heavy, expensive furniture was of a pattern new to me; and on the mantel werethree or four photographs of ladies in the alluring costume of themusical stage, in which Tom evinced a particular interest. 

"Did grandfather send 'em?" he inquired. 

"They're Ham's, " said Ralph, and he contrived somehow to get into thosetwo words an epitome of his cousin's character. Ham was stouter, and hisclothes were more striking, more obviously expensive than ever. .. . On ourway homeward, after we had walked a block or two in silence, Tomexclaimed:--"Don't make friends with the friendless!--eh, Hughie? We knewenough to begin all right, didn't we?". .. 

Have I made us out a pair of deliberate, calculating snobs? Well, afterall it must be remembered that our bringing up had not been of sufficientliberality to include the Krebses of this world. We did not, indeed, spend much time in choosing and weighing those whom we should know andthose whom we should avoid; and before the first term of that Freshmanyear was over Tom had become a favourite. He had the gift of making menfeel that he delighted in their society, that he wished for nothingbetter than to sit for hours in their company, content to listen to thearguments that raged about him. Once in a while he would make a drollobservation that was greeted with fits of laughter. He was alwaysreferred to as "old Tom, " or "good old Tom"; presently, when he began topick out chords on the banjo, it was discovered that he had a good tenorvoice, though he could not always be induced to sing. .. . Somewhat to thejeopardy of the academic standard that my father expected me to sustain, our rooms became a rendezvous for many clubable souls whose maudlin, midnight attempts at harmony often set the cocks crowing. 

 "Free from care and despair, What care we? 'Tis wine, 'tis wine That makes the jollity. "

As a matter of truth, on these occasions it was more often beer; beertransported thither in Tom's new valise, --given him by his mother, --andstuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face, adorned in a sky-blue wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway todeclare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the universityauthorities should be informed, etc. , etc. Poor woman, we wereoutrageously inconsiderate of her. .. . One evening as we came through thehall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young manholding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton'sdaughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seenthere, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I pausedat the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm. 

"Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!" he whispered. 

While I was by no means so popular as Tom, I got along fairly well. I hadescaped from provincialism, from the obscure purgatory of the wholesalegrocery business; new vistas, exciting and stimulating, had been openedup; nor did I offend the sensibilities and prejudices of the new friendsI made, but gave a hearty consent to a code I found congenial. Irecognized in the social system of undergraduate life at Harvard areflection of that of a greater world where I hoped some day to shine;yet my ambition did not prey upon me. Mere conformity, however, would nothave taken me very far in a sphere from which I, in common with manyothers, desired not to be excluded. .. . One day, in an idle but inspiredmoment, I paraphrased a song from "Pinafore, " applying it to a collegeembroglio, and the brief and lively vogue it enjoyed was sufficient toindicate a future usefulness. I had "found myself. " This was in the lastpart of the freshman year, and later on I became a sort of amateur, classpoet-laureate. Many were the skits I composed, and Tom sang them. .. . 

During that freshman year we often encountered Hermann Krebs, whistlingmerrily, on the stairs. 

"Got your themes done?" he would inquire cheerfully. 

And Tom would always mutter, when he was out of earshot: "He has got acrust!"

When I thought about Krebs at all, --and this was seldom indeed, --hismanifest happiness puzzled me. Our cool politeness did not seem to botherhim in the least; on the contrary, I got the impression that it amusedhim. He seemed to have made no friends. And after that first evening, memorable for its homesickness, he never ventured to repeat his visit tous. 

One windy November day I spied his somewhat ludicrous figure stridingahead of me, his trousers above his ankles. I was bundled up in a newulster, --of which I was secretly quite proud, --but he wore no overcoat atall. 

"Well, how are you getting along?" I asked, as I overtook him. 

He made clear, as he turned, his surprise that I should have addressedhim at all, but immediately recovered himself. 

"Oh, fine, " he responded. "I've had better luck than I expected. I'mcorrespondent for two or three newspapers. I began by washing windows, and doing odd jobs for the professors' wives. " He laughed. "I guess thatdoesn't strike you as good luck. "

He showed no resentment at my patronage, but a self-sufficiency that mademy sympathy seem superfluous, giving the impression of an inner harmonyand content that surprised me. 

"I needn't ask how you're getting along, " he said. .. . 

At the end of the freshman year we abandoned Mrs. Bolton's for moredesirable quarters. 

I shall not go deeply into my college career, recalling only suchincidents as, seen in the retrospect, appear to have had significance. Ihave mentioned my knack for song-writing; but it was not, I think, untilmy junior year there was startlingly renewed in me my youthful desire towrite, to create something worth while, that had so long been dormant. 

The inspiration came from Alonzo Cheyne, instructor in English; aremarkable teacher, in spite of the finicky mannerisms which Tomimitated. And when, in reading aloud certain magnificent passages, heforgot his affectations, he managed to arouse cravings I thought to havedeserted me forever. Was it possible, after all, that I had been rightand my father wrong? that I might yet be great in literature?

A mere hint from Alonzo Cheyne was more highly prized by the grinds thanfulsome praise from another teacher. And to his credit it should berecorded that the grinds were the only ones he treated with anyseriousness; he took pains to answer their questions; but towards therest of us, the Chosen, he showed a thinly veiled contempt. None so quickas he to detect a simulated interest, or a wily effort to make himridiculous; and few tried this a second time, for he had a rapier-likegift of repartee that transfixed the offender like a moth on a pin. Hehad a way of eyeing me at times, his glasses in his hand, a queer smileon his lips, as much as to imply that there was one at least among thelost who was made for better things. Not that my work was poor, but Iknew that it might have been better. Out of his classes, however, beyondthe immediate, disturbing influence of his personality I would relapseinto indifference. .. . 

Returning one evening to our quarters, which were now in the "Yard, " Ifound Tom seated with a blank sheet before him, thrusting his handthrough his hair and biting the end of his penholder to a pulp. In hismuttering, which was mixed with the curious, stingless profanity of whichhe was master, I caught the name of Cheyne, and I knew that he was facingthe crisis of a fortnightly theme. The subject assigned was a narrativeof some personal experience, and it was to be handed in on the morrow. Myown theme was already, written. 

"I've been holding down this chair for an hour, and I can't seem to thinkof a thing. " He rose to fling himself down on the lounge. "I wish I wasin Canada. "

"Why Canada?"

"Trout fishing with Uncle Jake at that club of his where he took me lastsummer. " Tom gazed dreamily at the ceiling. "Whenever I have some darnedfoolish theme like this to write I want to go fishing, and I want to golike the devil. I'll get Uncle Jake to take you, too, next summer. "

"I wish you would. "

"Say, that's living all right, Hughie, up there among the tamaracks andbalsams!" And he began, for something like the thirtieth time, to relatethe adventures of the trip. 

As he talked, the idea presented itself to me with sudden fascination touse this incident as the subject of Tom's theme; to write it for him, from his point of view, imitating the droll style he would have had if hehad been able to write; for, when he was interested in any matter, hisoral narrative did not lack vividness. I began to ask him questions: whatwere the trees like, for instance? How did the French-Canadian guidestalk? He had the gift of mimicry: aided by a partial knowledge of FrenchI wrote down a few sentences as they sounded. The canoe had upset and hehad come near drowning. I made him describe his sensations. 

"I'll write your theme for you, " I exclaimed, when he had finished. 

"Gee, not about that!"

"Why not? It's a personal experience. "

His gratitude was pathetic. .. . By this time I was so full of the subjectthat it fairly clamoured for expression, and as I wrote the hours flew. Once in a while I paused to ask him a question as he sat with his chairtilted back and his feet on the table, reading a detective story. Isketched in the scene with bold strokes; the desolate bois brule on themountain side, the polished crystal surface of the pool broken here andthere with the circles left by rising fish; I pictured Armand, the guide, his pipe between his teeth, holding the canoe against the current; and Iseemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear the roar of therapids below. Then came the sudden hooking of the big trout, habitantoaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness, confusion; ahalf-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and sunlight, andthen strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation, the sense ofbeing picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a blindingwhiteness, in which it was impossible to breathe, one sharp, almostunbearable pain, then another, then oblivion. .. . Finally, awakening, tobe confronted by a much worried Uncle Jake. 

By this time the detective story had fallen to the floor, and Tom washuddled up in his chair, asleep. He arose obediently and wrapped a wettowel around his head, and began to write. Once he paused long enough tomutter:--"Yes, that's about it, --that's the way I felt!" and set to workagain, mechanically, --all the praise I got for what I deemed a literaryachievement of the highest order! At three o'clock, a. M. , he finished, pulled off his clothes automatically and tumbled into bed. I had nodesire for sleep. My brain was racing madly, like an engine without agovernor. I could write! I could write! I repeated the words over andover to myself. All the complexities of my present life were blotted out, and I beheld only the long, sweet vista of the career for which I was nowconvinced that nature had intended me. My immediate fortunes becameunimportant, immaterial. No juice of the grape I had ever tasted made mehalf so drunk. .. . With the morning, of course, came the reaction, and Isuffered the after sensations of an orgie, awaking to a world ofnecessity, cold and grey and slushy, and necessity alone made me risefrom my bed. My experience of the night before might have taught me thathappiness lies in the trick of transforming necessity, but it did not. The vision had faded, --temporarily, at least; and such was thedistraction of the succeeding days that the subject of the theme passedfrom my mind. .. . 

One morning Tom was later than usual in getting home. I was writing aletter when he came in, and did not notice him, yet I was vaguely awareof his standing over me. When at last I looked up I gathered from hisexpression that something serious had happened, so mournful was his face, and yet so utterly ludicrous. 

"Say, Hugh, I'm in the deuce of a mess, " he announced. 

"What's the matter?" I inquired. 

He sank down on the table with a groan. 

"It's Alonzo, " he said. 

Then I remembered the theme. 

"What--what's he done?" I demanded. 

"He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm ayoung Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel!He says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality, he'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh, hell!"

In spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive laughter. Tom stood staring at me moodily. 

"You think it's funny, --don't you? I guess it is, but what's going tobecome of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before, but never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!"

Here was gratitude!

"You've got to go on writing 'em, now. " His voice became desperatelypleading. "Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down--temper 'em downgradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about normalagain. "

He seemed actually shivering. 

"The end of the year!" I cried, the predicament striking me for the firsttime in its fulness. "Say, you've got a crust!"

"You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you, " he announced grimly. 

Mingled with my anxiety, which was real, was an exultation that would notdown. Nevertheless, the idea of developing Tom into a Shakespeare, --Tom, who had not the slightest desire to be one I was appalling, besideshaving in it an element of useless self-sacrifice from which I recoiled. On the other hand, if Alonzo should discover that I had written histheme, there were penalties I did not care to dwell upon . .. . With such acloud hanging over me I passed a restless night. 

As luck would have it the very next evening in the level light under theelms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which Irecognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me anamused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulatingmyself that he had passed me he stopped. 

"Fine weather for March, Paret, " he observed. 

"Yes, sir, " I agreed in a strange voice. 

"By the way, " he remarked, contemplating the bare branches above ourheads, "that was an excellent theme your roommate handed in. I had noidea that he possessed such--such genius. Did you, by any chance, happento read it?"

"Yes, sir, --I read it. "

"Weren't you surprised?" inquired Mr. Cheyne. 

"Well, yes, sir--that is--I mean to say he talks just like that, sometimes--that is, when it's anything he cares about. "

"Indeed!" said Mr. Cheyne. "That's interesting, most interesting. In allmy experience, I do not remember a case in which a gift has beendeveloped so rapidly. I don't want to give the impression--ah that thereis no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for anundergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in Peters, and it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness inconversation. " He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost inreflection. "I may be wrong, " he went on presently, "I have an idea it isyou--" I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a moment, without apparently noticing my panic, "that it is you who have influencedPeters. "

"Sir?"

"I am wrong, then. Or is this merely commendable modesty on your part?"

"Oh, no, sir. "

"Then my hypothesis falls to the ground. I had greatly hoped, " he addedmeaningly, "that you might be able to throw some light on this mystery. "

I was dumb. 

"Paret, " he asked, "have you time to come over to my rooms for a fewminutes this evening?"

"Certainly, sir. "

He gave me his number in Brattle Street. .. . 

Like one running in a nightmare and making no progress I made my wayhome, only to learn from Hallam, --who lived on the same floor, --that Tomhad inconsiderately gone to Boston for the evening, with four other wearyspirits in search of relaxation! Avoiding our club table, I took whatlittle nourishment I could at a modest restaurant, and restlessly pacedthe moonlit streets until eight o'clock, when I found myself in front ofone of those low-gabled colonial houses which, on less soul-shakingoccasions, had exercised a great charm on my imagination. My hand hungfor an instant over the bell. .. . I must have rung it violently, for thereappeared almost immediately an old lady in a lace cap, who greeted mewith gentle courtesy, and knocked at a little door with glisteningpanels. The latch was lifted by Mr. Cheyne himself. 

"Come in, Paret, " he said, in a tone that was unexpectedly hospitable. 

I have rarely seen a more inviting room. A wood fire burned brightly onthe brass andirons, flinging its glare on the big, white beam thatcrossed the ceiling, and reddening the square panes of the windows intheir panelled recesses. Between these were rows of books, --attractivebooks in chased bindings, red and blue; books that appealed to be takendown and read. There was a table covered with reviews and magazines inneat piles, and a lamp so shaded as to throw its light only on the whiteblotter of the pad. Two easy chairs, covered with flowered chintz, wereranged before the fire, in one of which I sank, much bewildered, uponbeing urged to do so. 

I utterly failed to recognize "Alonzo" in this new atmosphere. And hehad, moreover, dropped the subtly sarcastic manner I was wont toassociate with him. 

"Jolly old house, isn't it?" he observed, as though I had casuallydropped in on him for a chat; and he stood, with his hands behind himstretched to the blaze, looking down at me. "It was built by a certainColonel Draper, who fought at Louisburg, and afterwards fled to Englandat the time of the Revolution. He couldn't stand the patriots, I'm not sosure that I blame him, either. Are you interested in colonial things, Mr. Paret?"

I said I was. If the question had concerned Aztec relics my answer wouldundoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he tookdown a silver porringer from the shallow mantel shelf. 

"It's not a Revere, " he said, in a slightly apologetic tone as though toforestall a comment, "but it's rather good, I think. I picked it up at asale in Dorchester. But I have never been able to identify the coat ofarms. "

He showed me a ladle, with the names of "Patience and William Simpson"engraved quaintly thereon, and took down other articles in which Imanaged to feign an interest. Finally he seated himself in the chairopposite, crossed his feet, putting the tips of his fingers together andgazing into the fire. 

"So you thought you could fool me, " he said, at length. 

I became aware of the ticking of a great clock in the corner. My mouthwas dry. 

"I am going to forgive you, " he went on, more gravely, "for severalreasons. I don't flatter, as you know. It's because you carried out thething so perfectly that I am led to think you have a gift that may becultivated, Paret. You wrote that theme in the way Peters would havewritten it if he had not been--what shall I say?--scripturallyinarticulate. And I trust it may do you some good if I say it wassomething of a literary achievement, if not a moral one. "

"Thank you, sir, " I faltered. 

"Have you ever, " he inquired, lapsing a little into his lecture-roommanner, "seriously thought of literature as a career? Have you everthought of any career seriously?"

"I once wished to be a writer, sir, " I replied tremulously, but refrainedfrom telling him of my father's opinion of the profession. Ambition--apurer ambition than I had known for years--leaped within me at his words. He, Alonzo Cheyne, had detected in me the Promethean fire!

I sat there until ten o'clock talking to the real Mr. Cheyne, a human Mr. Cheyne unknown in the lecture-room. Nor had I suspected one in whomcynicism and distrust of undergraduates (of my sort) seemed so ingrained, of such idealism. He did not pour it out in preaching; delicately, unobtrusively and on the whole rather humorously he managed to present tome in a most disillusionizing light that conception of the universityheld by me and my intimate associates. After I had left him I walked thequiet streets to behold as through dissolving mists another Harvard, andthere trembled in my soul like the birth-struggle of a flame something ofthe vision later to be immortalized by St. Gaudens, the spirit of Harvardresponding to the spirit of the Republic--to the call of Lincoln, whovoiced it. The place of that bronze at the corner of Boston Common was asyet empty, but I have since stood before it to gaze in wonder at thelight shining in darkness on mute, uplifted faces, black faces! atHarvard's son leading them on that the light might live and prevail. 

I, too, longed for a Cause into which I might fling myself, in which Imight lose myself. .. I halted on the sidewalk to find myself staring fromthe opposite side of the street at a familiar house, my old landlady's, Mrs. Bolton's, and summoned up before me was the tired, smiling face ofHermann Krebs. Was it because when he had once spoken so crudely of theUniversity I had seen the reflection of her spirit in his eyes? A lightstill burned in the extension roof--Krebs's light; another shone dimlythrough the ground glass of the front door. Obeying a sudden impulse, Icrossed the street. 

Mrs. Bolton, in the sky-blue wrapper, and looking more forbidding thanever, answered the bell. Life had taught her to be indifferent tosurprises, and it was I who became abruptly embarrassed. 

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Paret, " she said, as though I had been a frequentcaller. I had never once darkened her threshold since I had left herhouse. 

"Yes, " I answered, and hesitated. .. . "Is Mr. Krebs in?"

"Well, " she replied in a lifeless tone, which nevertheless had in it atouch of bitterness, "I guess there's no reason why you and your friendsshould have known he was sick. "

"Sick!" I repeated. "Is he very sick?"

"I calculate he'll pull through, " she said. "Sunday the doctor gave himup. And no wonder! He hasn't had any proper food since he's be'n here!"She paused, eyeing me. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I was just goingup to him when you rang. "

"Certainly, " I replied awkwardly. "Would you be so kind as to tellhim--when he's well enough--that I came to see him, and that I'm sorry?"

There was another pause, and she stood with a hand defensively clutchingthe knob. 

"Yes, I'll tell him, " she said. 

With a sense of having been baffled, I turned away. 

Walking back toward the Yard my attention was attracted by a slowlyapproaching cab whose occupants were disturbing the quiet of the nightwith song. 

"Shollity--'tis wine, 'tis wine, that makesh--shollity. "

The vehicle drew up in front of a new and commodious building, --I believethe first of those designed to house undergraduates who were willing topay for private bathrooms and other modern luxuries; out of one window ofthe cab protruded a pair of shoeless feet, out of the other a hatlesshead I recognized as belonging to Tom Peters; hence I surmised that thefeet were his also. The driver got down from the box, and a livelyargument was begun inside--for there were other occupants--as to how Mr. Peters was to be disembarked; and I gathered from his frequent referencesto the "Shgyptian obelisk" that the engineering problem presented struckhim as similar to the unloading of Cleopatra's Needle. 

"Careful, careful!" he cautioned, as certain expelling movements beganfrom within, "Easy, Ham, you jam-fool, keep the door shut, y'll breakme. "

"Now, Jerry, all heave sh'gether!" exclaimed a voice from the blacknessof the interior. 

"Will ye wait a minute, Mr. Durrett, sir?" implored the cabdriver. "You'll be after ruining me cab entirely. " (Loud roars and vigorousresistance from the obelisk, the cab rocking violently. ) "This gintleman"(meaning me) "will have him by the head, and I'll get hold of his feet, sir. " Which he did, after a severe kick in the stomach. 

"Head'sh all right, Martin. "

"To be sure it is, Mr. Peters. Now will ye rest aisy awhile, sir?"

"I'm axphyxiated, " cried another voice from the darkness, the mined voiceof Jerome Kyme, our classmate. 

"Get the tackles under him!" came forth in commanding tones fromConybear. 

In the meantime many windows had been raised and much gratuitous advicewas being given. The three occupants of the cab's seat who had previouslyclamoured for Mr. Peters' removal, now inconsistently resisted it;suddenly he came out with a jerk, and we had him fairly upright on thepavement minus a collar and tie and the buttons of his evening waistcoat. Those who remained in the cab engaged in a riotous game of hunt theslipper, while Tom peered into the dark interior, observing gravely theprogress of the sport. First flew out an overcoat and a much-batteredhat, finally the pumps, all of which in due time were adjusted to hisperson, and I started home with him, with much parting counsel from theother three. 

"Whereinell were you, Hughie?" he inquired. "Hunted all over for you. Hada sousin' good time. Went to Babcock's--had champagne--then to see Babeshin--th'--Woods. Ham knows one of the Babesh had supper with four of 'em. Nice Babesh!"

"For heaven's sake don't step on me again!" I cried. 

"Sh'poloshize, old man. But y'know I'm William Shakespheare. C'n dowhat I damplease. " He halted in the middle of the street and reciteddramatically:--

 "'Not marble, nor th' gilded monuments Of prinches sh'll outlive m' powerful rhyme. '"

"How's that, Alonzho, b'gosh?"

"Where did you learn it?" I demanded, momentarily forgetting hiscondition. 

"Fr'm Ralph, " he replied, "says I wrote it. Can't remember. .. . "

After I had got him to bed, --a service I had learned to perform with moreor less proficiency, --I sat down to consider the events of the evening, to attempt to get a proportional view. The intensity of my disgust wasnot hypocritical as I gazed through the open door into the bedroom andrecalled the times when I, too, had been in that condition. Tom Petersdrunk, and sleeping it off, was deplorable, without doubt; but Hugh Paretdrunk was detestable, and had no excuse whatever. Nor did I mean by thisto set myself on a higher ethical plane, for I felt nothing but despairand humility. In my state of clairvoyance I perceived that he was abetter man, than I, and that his lapses proceeded from a love of liquorand the transcendent sense of good-fellowship that liquor brings. 

VII. 

The crisis through which I passed at Cambridge, inaugurated by the eventsI have just related, I find very difficult to portray. It was a religiouscrisis, of course, and my most pathetic memory concerning it is of thevain attempts to connect my yearnings and discontents with the theology Ihad been taught; I began in secret to read my Bible, yet nothing I hitupon seemed to point a way out of my present predicament, to give anydefinite clew to the solution of my life. I was not mature enough toreflect that orthodoxy was a Sunday religion unrelated to a world whosewheels were turned by the motives of self-interest; that it consisted ofideals not deemed practical, since no attempt was made to put them intopractice in the only logical manner, --by reorganizing civilization toconform with them. The implication was that the Christ who had preachedthese ideals was not practical. .. . There were undoubtedly men in thefaculty of the University who might have helped me had I known of them;who might have given me, even at that time, a clew to the modern, logicalexplanation of the Bible as an immortal record of the thoughts and actsof men who had sought to do just what I was seeking to do, --connect thereligious impulse to life and make it fruitful in life: an explanation, by the way, a thousand-fold more spiritual than the old. But I washopelessly entangled in the meshes of the mystic, the miraculous andsupernatural. If I had analyzed my yearnings, I might have realized thatI wanted to renounce the life I had been leading, not because it wassinful, but because it was aimless. I had not learned that the Greek wordfor sin is "a missing of the mark. " Just aimlessness! I had been stirredwith the desire to perform some service for which the world would begrateful: to write great literature, perchance. But it had never beensuggested to me that such swellings of the soul are religious, thatreligion is that kind of feeling, of motive power that drives the writerand the scientist, the statesman and the sculptor as well as the priestand the Prophet to serve mankind for the joy of serving: that religion iscreative, or it is nothing: not mechanical, not a force imposed fromwithout, but a driving power within. The "religion" I had learned wassalvation from sin by miracle: sin a deliberate rebellion, not a patheticmissing of the mark of life; useful service of man, not the wandering ofuntutored souls who had not been shown the way. I felt religious. Iwanted to go to church, I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, thatexaltation I dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, andwhich also was identical with my desire to write, to create. .. . 

I bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley andShakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and myfriends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses fornot joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's andinquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed thathe had gone out. .. . There were lapses, of course, when I went off on theold excursions, --for the most part the usual undergraduate follies, though some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care todwell. Sex was still a mystery. .. . Always I awoke afterwards to bitterself-hatred and despair. .. . But my work in English improved, and I earnedthe commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom for which Iwas grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it in classes, butthe fact that he was "getting soft on me" was evident enough to beregarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had fallen becamea matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried every meansfrom ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake me out of it. The theory most accepted was that I was in love. 

"Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away, " Tomwould beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with thesisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these partiesTom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called"social life, " never could be induced to go. 

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as noother man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves, the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world anddefied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light oftreason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to himas the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and aremarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exerciseof his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; ifthey "swore off, " Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again, andhaving accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new oathand see that it was kept. Alcohol seemed to have no effect whatever onhim. Though he was in the class above me, I met him frequently at a clubto which I had the honour to belong, then a suite of rooms over a shopfurnished with a pool and a billiard table, easy-chairs and a bar. It hassince achieved the dignity of a house of its own. 

We were having, one evening, a "religious" argument, Cinibar, Laurens andmyself and some others. I can't recall how it began; I think Cinibar hadattacked the institution of compulsory chapel, which nobody defended;there was something inherently wrong, he maintained, with a religion towhich men had to be driven against their wills. Somewhat to my surprise Ifound myself defending a Christianity out of which I had been able toextract but little comfort and solace. Neither Laurens nor Conybear, however, were for annihilating it: although they took the other side ofthe discussion of a subject of which none of us knew anything, theirattacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still under the spellexerted by a youthful training. 

We were all of us aware of Ralph, who sat at some distance looking overthe pages of an English sporting weekly. Presently he flung it down. 

"Haven't you found out yet that man created God, Hughie?" he inquired. "And even if there were a personal God, what reason have you to thinkthat man would be his especial concern, or any concern of his whatever?The discovery of evolution has knocked your Christianity into a cockedhat. "

I don't remember how I answered him. In spite of the superficiality ofhis own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I wasingloriously routed. Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was allthere was to it. .. . After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurensadmitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring that Ralph had gone toofar. I spent a miserable night, recalling the naturalistic assertions hehad made so glibly, asking myself again and again how it was that thereligion to which I so vainly clung had no greater effect on my actionsand on my will, had not prevented me from lapses into degradation. And Ihated myself for having argued upon a subject that was still sacred. Ibelieved in Christ, which is to say that I believed that in someinscrutable manner he existed, continued to dominate the world and hadsuffered on my account. 

To whom should I go now for a confirmation of my wavering beliefs? One ofthe results--it will be remembered of religion as I was taught it was apernicious shyness, and even though I had found a mentor and confessor, Imight have hesitated to unburden myself. This would be different fromarguing with Ralph Hambleton. In my predicament, as I was wanderingthrough the yard, I came across a notice of an evening talk to studentsin Holder Chapel, by a clergyman named Phillips Brooks. This was beforethe time, let me say in passing, when his sermons at Harvard wereattended by crowds of undergraduates. Well, I stood staring at thenotice, debating whether I should go, trying to screw up my courage; forI recognized clearly that such a step, if it were to be of any value, must mean a distinct departure from my present mode of life; and I recallthinking with a certain revulsion that I should have to "turn good. " Mypresence at the meeting would be known the next day to all my friends, for the idea of attending a religious gathering when one was not forcedto do so by the authorities was unheard of in our set. I should beclassed with the despised "pious ones" who did such things regularly. Ishrank from the ridicule. I had, however, heard of Mr. Brooks from NedSymonds, who was by no means of the pious type, and whose parentsattended Mr. Brooks's church in Boston. .. . I left my decision inabeyance. But when evening came I stole away from the club table, on theplea of an engagement, and made my way rapidly toward Holder Chapel. Ihad almost reached it--when I caught a glimpse of Symonds and of someothers approaching, --and I went on, to turn again. By this time themeeting, which was in a room on the second floor, had already begun. Palpitating, I climbed the steps; the door of the room was slightly ajar;I looked in; I recall a distinct sensation of surprise, --the atmosphereof that meeting was so different from what I had expected. Not a "pious"atmosphere at all! I saw a very tall and heavy gentleman, dressed inblack, who sat, wholly at ease, on the table! One hand was in his pocket, one foot swung clear of the ground; and he was not preaching, but talkingin an easy, conversational tone to some forty young men who sat intent onhis words. I was too excited to listen to what he was saying, I wasmaking a vain attempt to classify him. But I remember the thought, for itstruck me with force, --that if Christianity were so thoroughlydiscredited by evolution, as Ralph Hambleton and other agnostics wouldhave one believe, why should this remarkably sane and able-looking personbe standing up for it as though it were still an established andincontrovertible fact?

He had not, certainly, the air of a dupe or a sentimentalist, butinspired confidence by his very personality. Youthlike, I watched himnarrowly for flaws, for oratorical tricks, for all kinds of histrionicsymptoms. Again I was near the secret; again it escaped me. The argumentfor Christianity lay not in assertions about it, but in being it. Thisman was Christianity. .. . I must have felt something of this, even thoughI failed to formulate it. And unconsciously I contrasted his strength, which reinforced the atmosphere of the room, with that of RalphHambleton, who was, a greater influence over me than I have recorded, andhad come to sway me more and more, as he had swayed others. The strengthof each was impressive, yet this Mr. Brooks seemed to me the bodilypresentment of a set of values which I would have kept constantly beforemy eyes. .. . I felt him drawing me, overcoming my hesitation, belittlingmy fear of ridicule. I began gently to open the door--when somethinghappened, --one of those little things that may change the course of alife. The door made little noise, yet one of the men sitting in the backof the room chanced to look around, and I recognized Hermann Krebs. Hisface was still sunken from his recent illness. Into his eyes seemed toleap a sudden appeal, an appeal to which my soul responded yet I hurrieddown the stairs and into the street. Instantly I regretted my retreat, Iwould have gone back, but lacked the courage; and I strayed unhappily forhours, now haunted by that look of Krebs, now wondering what theremarkably sane-looking and informal clergyman whose presence dominatedthe little room had been talking about. I never learned, but I did liveto read his biography, to discover what he might have talked about, --forhe if any man believed that life and religion are one, and preachedconsecration to life's task. 

Of little use to speculate whether the message, had I learned it then, would have fortified and transformed me!

In spite of the fact that I was unable to relate to a satisfyingconception of religion my new-born determination, I made up my mind, atleast, to renounce my tortuous ways. I had promised my father to be alawyer; I would keep my promise, I would give the law a fair trial; lateron, perhaps, I might demonstrate an ability to write. All verypraiseworthy! The season was Lent, a fitting time for renunciations andresolves. Although I had more than once fallen from grace, I believedmyself at last to have settled down on my true course--when somethinghappened. The devil interfered subtly, as usual--now in the person ofJerry Kyme. It should be said in justice to Jerry that he did not lookthe part. He had sunny-red, curly hair, mischievous blue eyes with longlashes, and he harboured no respect whatever for any individual orinstitution, sacred or profane; he possessed, however, a shrewd sense ofhis own value, as many innocent and unsuspecting souls discovered asearly as our freshman year, and his method of putting down thepresumptuous was both effective and unique. If he liked you, there couldbe no mistake about it. 

One evening when I was engaged in composing a theme for Mr. Cheyne on noless a subject than the interpretation of the work of William Wordsworth, I found myself unexpectedly sprawling on the floor, in my descent kickingthe table so vigorously as to send the ink-well a foot or two toward theceiling. This, be it known, was a typical proof of Jerry's esteem. For hehad entered noiselessly, jerking the back of my chair, which chanced tobe tilted, and stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying the ruin hehad wrought, watching the ink as it trickled on the carpet. Then hepicked up the book. 

"Poetry, you darned old grind!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Say, Parry, Idon't know what's got into you, but I want you to come home with me forthe Easter holidays. It'll do you good. We'll be on the Hudson, you know, and we'll manage to make life bearable somehow. "

I forgot my irritation, in sheer surprise. 

"Why, that's mighty good of you, Jerry--" I began, struggling to my feet. 

"Oh, rot!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't ask you if I didn't want you. "

There was no denying the truth of this, and after he had gone I sat for along time with my pen in my mouth, reflecting as to whether or not Ishould go. For I had the instinct that here was another cross-roads, thatmore depended on my decision than I cared to admit. But even then I knewwhat I should do. Ridiculous not to--I told myself. How could a week orten days with Jerry possibly affect my newborn, resolve?

Yet the prospect, now, of a visit to the Kymes' was by no means soglowing as it once would have been. For I had seen visions, I had dreameddreams, beheld a delectable country of my very own. A year ago--nay, evena month ago--how such an invitation would have glittered!. .. I returnedat length to my theme, over which, before Jerry's arrival, I had beenworking feverishly. But now the glamour had gone from it. 

Presently Tom came in. 

"Anyone been here?" he demanded. 

"Jerry, " I told him. 

"What did he want?"

"He wanted me to go home with him at Easter. "

"You're going, of course. "

"I don't know. I haven't decided. "

"You'd be a fool not to, " was Tom's comment. It voiced, succinctly, aprevailing opinion. 

It was the conclusion I arrived at in my own mind. But just why I hadbeen chosen for the honour, especially at such a time, was a riddle. Jerry's invitations were charily given, and valued accordingly; and morethan once, at our table, I had felt a twinge of envy when Conybear orsomeone else had remarked, with the proper nonchalance, in answer to aquestion, that they were going to Weathersfield. Such was the name of theKyme place. .. . 

I shall never forget the impression made on me by the decorous luxury ofthat big house, standing amidst its old trees, halfway up the gentleslope that rose steadily from the historic highway where poor Andre wascaptured. I can see now the heavy stone pillars of its portico vignettedin a flush of tenderest green, the tulips just beginning to flame forththeir Easter colours in the well-kept beds, the stately, well-groomedevergreens, the vivid lawns, the clipped hedges. And like an overwhelmingwave of emotion that swept all before it, the impressiveness of wealthtook possession of me. For here was a kind of wealth I had never known, that did not exist in the West, nor even in the still Puritan environs ofBoston where I had visited. It took itself for granted, proclaimed itselfcomplacently to have solved all problems. By ignoring them, perhaps. ButI was too young to guess this. It was order personified, gaining effectat every turn by a multitude of details too trivial to mention were itnot for the fact that they entered deeply into my consciousness, untilthey came to represent, collectively, the very flower of achievement. Itwas a wealth that accepted tribute calmly, as of inherent right. Law andtradition defended its sanctity more effectively than troops. Literaturedescended from her high altar to lend it dignity; and the long, silentlibrary displayed row upon row of the masters, appropriately clad inmorocco or calf, --Smollett, Macaulay, Gibbon, Richardson, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Irving and Thackeray, as though each had striven for atablet here. Art had denied herself that her canvases might be hung onthese walls; and even the Church, on that first Sunday of my visit, forgot the blood of her martyrs that she might adorn an appropriate nichein the setting. The clergyman, at one of the dinner parties, gravelyasked a blessing as upon an Institution that included and absorbed allother institutions in its being. .. . 

The note of that house was a tempered gaiety. Guests arrived from NewYork, spent the night and departed again without disturbing the eventenor of its ways. Unobtrusive servants ministered to their wants, --andto mine. .. . 

Conybear was there, and two classmates from Boston, and we were treatedwith the amiable tolerance accorded to college youths and intimates ofthe son of the house. One night there was a dance in our honour. Nor haveI forgotten Jerry's sister, Nathalie, whom I had met at Class Days, aslim and willowy, exotic young lady of the Botticelli type, with a crownof burnished hair, yet more suggestive of a hothouse than of spring. Shespoke English with a French accent. Capricious, impulsive, she capturedmy interest because she put a high value on her favour; she drove me overthe hills, informing me at length that I was sympathique--different fromthe rest; in short, she emphasized and intensified what I may call theWeathersfield environment, stirred up in me new and vague aspirationsthat troubled yet excited me. 

Then there was Mrs. Kyme, a pretty, light-hearted lady, still young, whoseemed to have no intention of growing older, who romped and played songsfor us on the piano. The daughter of an old but now impecuniousWestchester family, she had been born to adorn the position she held, shewas adapted by nature to wring from it the utmost of the joys it offered. From her, rather than from her husband, both of the children seemed tohave inherited. I used to watch Mr. Grosvenor Kyme as he sat at the endof the dinner-table, dark, preoccupied, taciturn, symbolical of a wealthnew to my experience, and which had about it a certain fabulous quality. It toiled not, neither did it spin, but grew as if by magic, day andnight, until the very conception of it was overpowering. What must it beto have had ancestors who had been clever enough to sit still until acongested and discontented Europe had begun to pour its thousands andhundreds of thousands into the gateway of the western world, until thatgateway had become a metropolis? ancestors, of course, possessing whatnow suddenly appeared to me as the most desirable of gifts--since itreaped so dazzling a harvest-business foresight. From time to time theseancestors had continued to buy desirable corners, which no amount ofpersuasion had availed to make them relinquish. Lease them, yes; sellthem, never! By virtue of such a system wealth was as inevitable as humannecessity; and the thought of human necessity did not greatly bother me. Mr. Kyme's problem of life was not one of making money, but of investingit. One became automatically a personage. .. . 

It was due to one of those singular coincidences--so interesting asubject for speculation--that the man who revealed to me this goldenromance of the Kyme family was none other than a resident of my own city, Mr. Theodore Watling, now become one of our most important andinfluential citizens; a corporation lawyer, new and stimulatingqualification, suggesting as it did, a deus ex machina of great affairs. That he, of all men, should come to Weathersfield astonished me, since Iwas as yet to make the connection between that finished, decorous, secluded existence and the source of its being. The evening before mydeparture he arrived in company with two other gentlemen, a Mr. Talbotand a Mr. Saxes, whose names were spoken with respect in a sphere ofwhich I had hitherto taken but little cognizance-Wall Street. Conybearinformed me that they were "magnates, ". .. We were sitting in thedrawing-room at tea, when they entered with Mr. Watling, and no soonerhad he spoken to Mrs. Kyme than his quick eye singled me out of thegroup. 

"Why, Hugh!" he exclaimed, taking my hand. "I had no idea I should meetyou here--I saw your father only last week, the day I left home. " And headded, turning to Mrs. Kyme, "Hugh is the son of Mr. Matthew Paret, whohas been the leader of our bar for many years. "

The recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously giventhat I warmed with gratitude and pride, while Mr. Kyme smiled a little, remarking that I was a friend of Jerry's. Theodore Watling, for beinghere, had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence, thoughthe note he struck in that house was a strange one. It was, however, hisown note, and had a certain distinction, a ring of independence, of theknowledge of self-worth. Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters hadusually found rather an oppressive ceremony, with its shaded lights andprecise ritual over which Mr. Kyme presided like a high priest;conversation had been restrained. That night, as Johnnie Laurensafterwards expressed it, "things loosened up, " and Mr. Watling wasresponsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner tableappeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did, without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter inre. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I hadpaused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name wouldformerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short ofmy notion of a gentleman; it had been my father's opinion; but Mr. Watling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing withus at home. He possessed virility, vitality in a remarkable degree, yetsome elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy--though relatedto these differentiated him from the commonplace, self-made man ofability. He was just off the type. To liken him to a clothing store modelof a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a firm neck, a handsome, rather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional, droopingmoustache would be slanderous; yet he did suggest it. Suggesting it, heredeemed it: and the middle western burr in his voice was ratherattractive than otherwise. He had not so much the air of belonging there, as of belonging anywhere--one of those anomalistic American citizens ofthe world who go abroad and make intimates of princes. Before the mealwas over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride, enlisted theadmiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens; we followed himinto the smoking-room, sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behindour elders. 

Here, now that the gentlemen were alone, there was an inspiring largenessin their talk that fired the imagination. The subject was investments, atfirst those of coal and iron in my own state, for Mr. Watling, itappeared, was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works. 

"It will pay you to keep an eye on that company, Mr. Kyme, " he said, knocking the ashes from his cigar. "Now that old Mr. Durrett's gone--"

"You don't mean to say Nathaniel Durrett's dead!" said Mr. Kyme. 

The lawyer nodded. 

"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you maytake my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge ofmen, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose tobe a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on hisshoulders. .. . "

Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it rangedover a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built orprojected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded inwresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden awayamong the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing landswhich a complacent government would relinquish provided certaintechnicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly, --uponsenators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learnedthat not the least of the functions of these representatives of thepeople was to act as the medium between capital and investment, tofacilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in aposition to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development, or ratheron the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the justification, and it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new to me; this cultof prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariffenthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship of theRepublican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For theAmerican, politics and ethics were strangers. 

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in eveningclothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existedlargely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favorednumber of persons. I had a feeling of being among the initiated. Where, it may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be supposed that I believedmyself to have lost them. If so, the impression I have given of myselfhas been wholly inadequate. No, they had been transmuted, that is all, transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality ofTheodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes rarely left his face; Ihung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though hedid not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, asthough his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested. I noted therespect in which his opinions were held, and my imagination was fired byan impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of hisprofession, by the evidence of their indispensability to capitalitself. .. . At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room, Mr. Watling lingered, with his hand on my arm. 

"Of course you're going through the Law School, Hugh, " he said. 

"Yes, sir, " I replied. 

"Good!" he exclaimed emphatically. "The law, to-day, is more of a careerthan ever, especially for a young man with your antecedents andadvantages, and I know of no city in the United States where I wouldrather start practice, if I were a young man, than ours. In the nexttwenty years we shall see a tremendous growth. Of course you'll be goinginto your father's office. You couldn't do better. But I'll keep an eyeon you, and perhaps I'll be able to help you a little, too. "

I thanked him gratefully. 

A famous artist, who started out in youth to embrace a military careerand who failed to pass an examination at West Point, is said to haveremarked that if silicon had been a gas he would have been a soldier. Iam afraid I may have given the impression that if I had not gone toWeathersfield and encountered Mr. Watling I might not have been a lawyer. This impression would be misleading. And while it is certain that I havenot exaggerated the intensity of the spiritual experience I went throughat Cambridge, a somewhat belated consideration for the truth compels meto register my belief that the mood would in any case have beenephemeral. The poison generated by the struggle of my nature with itsenvironment had sunk too deep, and the very education that was supposedto make a practical man of me had turned me into a sentimentalist. Ibecame, as will be seen, anything but a practical man in the true sense, though the world in which I had been brought up and continued to livedeemed me such. My father was greatly pleased when I wrote him that I wasnow more than ever convinced of the wisdom of choosing the law as myprofession, and was satisfied that I had come to my senses at last. Hehad still been prepared to see me "go off at a tangent, " as he expressedit. On the other hand, the powerful effect of the appeal made byWeathersfield and Mr. Watling must not be underestimated. Here in oneobject lesson was emphasized a host of suggestions each of which had madeits impression. And when I returned to Cambridge Alonzo Cheyne knew thathe had lost me. .. . 

I pass over the rest of my college course, and the years I spent at theHarvard Law School, where were instilled into me without difficulty thedictums that the law was the most important of all professions, thatthose who entered it were a priestly class set aside to guard fromprofanation that Ark of the Covenant, the Constitution of the UnitedStates. In short, I was taught law precisely as I had been taughtreligion, --scriptural infallibility over again, --a static law and astatic theology, --a set of concepts that were supposed to be equal to anyproblems civilization would have to meet until the millennium. What weare wont to call wisdom is often naively innocent of impending change. Ithas no barometric properties. 

I shall content myself with relating one incident only of this period. Inthe January of my last year I went with a party of young men and girls tostay over Sunday at Beverly Farms, where Mrs. Fremantle--a young Bostonmatron had opened her cottage for the occasion. This "cottage, " a roomy, gabled structure, stood on a cliff, at the foot of which roared thewintry Atlantic, while we danced and popped corn before the open fires. During the daylight hours we drove about the country in sleighs, or maderidiculous attempts to walk on snow-shoes. 

On Sunday afternoon, left temporarily to my own devices, I wandered alongthe cliff, crossing into the adjoining property. The wind had fallen; thewaves, much subdued, broke rhythmically against the rocks; during thenight a new mantle of snow had been spread, and the clouds were still lowand menacing. As I strolled I became aware of a motionless figure aheadof me, --one that seemed oddly familiar; the set of the shabby overcoat onthe stooping shoulders, the unconscious pose contributed to a certainsharpness of individuality; in the act of challenging my memory, Ihalted. The man was gazing at the seascape, and his very absorption gaveme a sudden and unfamiliar thrill. The word absorption preciselyexpresses my meaning, for he seemed indeed to have become a part of hissurroundings, --an harmonious part. Presently he swung about and looked atme as though he had expected to find me there--and greeted me by name. 

"Krebs!" I exclaimed. 

He smiled, and flung out his arm, indicating the scene. His eyes at thatmoment seemed to reflect the sea, --they made the gaunt face suddenlybeautiful. 

"This reminds me of a Japanese print, " he said. 

The words, or the tone in which he spoke, curiously transformed thepicture. It was as if I now beheld it, anew, through his vision: the greywater stretching eastward to melt into the grey sky, the massed, blacktrees on the hillside, powdered with white, the snow in rounded, fantastic patches on the huge boulders at the foot of the cliff. Krebsdid not seem like a stranger, but like one whom I had known always, --onewho stood in a peculiar relationship between me and something greater Icould not define. The impression was fleeting, but real. .. . I rememberwondering how he could have known anything about Japanese prints. 

"I didn't think you were still in this part of the country, " I remarkedawkwardly. 

"I'm a reporter on a Boston newspaper, and I've been sent up here tointerview old Mr. Dome, who lives in that house, " and he pointed to aroof above the trees. "There is a rumour, which I hope to verify, that hehas just given a hundred thousand dollars to the University. "

"And--won't he see you?"

"At present he's taking a nap, " said Krebs. "He comes here occasionallyfor a rest. "

"Do you like interviewing?" I asked. 

He smiled again. 

"Well, I see a good many different kinds of people, and that'sinteresting. "

"But--being a reporter?" I persisted. 

This continued patronage was not a conscious expression of superiority onmy part, but he did not seem to resent it. He had aroused my curiosity. 

"I'm going into the law, " he said. 

The quiet confidence with which he spoke aroused, suddenly, a twinge ofantagonism. He had every right to go into the law, of course, and yet!. .. My query would have made it evident to me, had I been introspective inthose days, that the germ of the ideal of the profession, implanted byMr. Watling, was expanding. Were not influential friends necessary forthe proper kind of career? and where were Krebs's? In spite of thehistory of Daniel Webster and a long line of American tradition, I feltan incongruity in my classmate's aspiration. And as he stood there, gauntand undoubtedly hungry, his eyes kindling, I must vaguely have classedhim with the revolutionaries of all the ages; must have felt in him, instinctively, a menace to the stability of that Order with which I hadthrown my fortunes. And yet there were comparatively poor men in the LawSchool itself who had not made me feel this way! He had impressed meagainst my will, taken me by surprise, commiseration had been mingledwith other feelings that sprang out of the memory of the night I hadcalled on him, when he had been sick. Now I resented something in himwhich Tom Peters had called "crust. "

"The law!" I repeated. "Why?"

"Well, " he said, "even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used tothink if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch ofhuman dignity. "

Once more his smile disarmed me. 

"And now" I asked curiously. 

"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsiblefor that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to thiscountry, he expected to find Utopia. " The smile emerged again, like thesun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism againstruggled within me. "And then came frightful troubles. For years hecould get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he neverlost his faith in America. 'It is man, ' he would say, 'man has to grow upto it--to liberty. ' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth nothing. And he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had comehere, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made thatmistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help tomake them better. 

"That helped me, " he continued, after a moment's pause. "For I've seen agood many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper. I've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against thosewhom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great dealmore about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute theirprofession to profit making, --profit making for themselves and others. And they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high standing, whom you would not think would do such things. They are on the side ofthe powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich men andcorporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I think, that can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the courts. He is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men won't seeit. "

It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance. Icould indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;quotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me fromdoing this, --something in his manner, which was neither argumentative norcombative. 

"That's why I am going into the law, " he added. "And I intend to stay init if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us. Aren'tyou at the Law School?"

I nodded. Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came thatsuggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I couldreply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded, was seen coming down the path. 

"Are you the reporter?" he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs. "Ifyou want to see Mr. Dome, you'd better come right away. He's going outfor a drive. "

For a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in thesnow, looking after him. .. . 

VIII

On the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father's sudden andserious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived athome it was too late to see him again alive. It was my first experiencewith death, and what perplexed me continually during the following dayswas an inability to feel the loss more deeply. When a child, I had beeneasily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow. Had I, during recent years, asa result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationshipslead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell, until now I was incapable of natural feelings? Of late I had seemedcloser to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidenceof his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that helooked forward to the time when I was to practise with him. Why was itthen, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced nointensity of sorrow? What was it in me that would not break down? Heseemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, neverattributed to him any yearning. And now he was released. 

I wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his privateopinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of realknowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensiveeducation which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact thatlife was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fateof all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in themaking. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with nopowers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, whereevery article evoked some childhood scene. Here was the dent in thewalnut foot-board of the bed made, one wintry day, by the impact of mybox of blocks; the big arm-chair, covered with I know not what stiffembroidery, which had served on countless occasions as a chariot drivento victory. I even remembered how every Wednesday morning I had beenbanished from the room, which had been so large a part of my childhooduniverse, when Ella, the housemaid, had flung open all its windows andcrowded its furniture into the hall. 

The thought of my wanderings since then became poignant, almostterrifying. The room, with all its memories, was unchanged. How safe Ihad been within its walls! Why could I not have been, content with whatit represented? of tradition, of custom, --of religion? And what was itwithin me that had lured me away from these?

I was miserable, indeed, but my misery was not of the kind I thought itought to be. At moments, when my mother relapsed into weeping, I glancedat her almost in wonder. Such sorrow as hers was incomprehensible. Onceshe surprised and discomfited me by lifting her head and gazing fixedlyat me through her tears. 

I recall certain impressions of the funeral. There, among thepall-bearers, was my Cousin Robert Breck, tears in the furrows of hischeeks. Had he loved my father more than I? The sight of his grief movedme suddenly and strongly. .. . It seemed an age since I had worked in hisstore, and yet here he was still, coming to town every morning andreturning every evening to Claremore, loving his friends, and mourningthem one by one. Was this, the spectacle presented by my Cousin Robert, the reward of earthly existence? Were there no other prizes save thoseknown as greatness of character and depth of human affections? CousinRobert looked worn and old. The other pall-bearers, men of weight, oflong standing in the community, were aged, too; Mr. Blackwood, and Mr. Jules Hollister; and out of place, somehow, in this new church building. It came to me abruptly that the old order was gone, --had slipped awayduring my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn downto make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice inwhich I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seeminglytransitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and redorgan-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript, likewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuouslyin front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely resented hislaudatory references to my father. 

The old church, with its severity, had actually stood for something. Itwas the Westminster Catechism in wood and stone, and Dr. Pound had beenthe human incarnation of that catechism, the fit representative of awrathful God, a militant shepherd who had guarded with vigilance hisrespectable flock, who had protested vehemently against the sins of theworld by which they were surrounded, against the "dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth andmaketh a lie. " How Dr. Pound would have put the emphasis of theEverlasting into those words!

Against what was Mr. Randlett protesting?

My glance wandered to the pews which held the committees from variousorganizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Bar Association, which had come to do honour to my father. And there, differentiated fromthe others, I saw the spruce, alert figure of Theodore Watling. He, too, represented a new type and a new note, --this time a forceful note, asecular note that had not belonged to the old church, and seemed likewiseanomalistic in the new. .. . 

During the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my motherdid not raise her veil. It was not until she reached out and seized myhand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my existence. 

In the days that followed I became aware that my father's death hadremoved a restrictive element, that I was free now to take withoutcriticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire. It may bethat I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would nothave coincided with my own. Mingled with this sense of emancipation was acurious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never valued, something fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock and arefuge of which I had never availed myself!. .. When his will was openedit was found that the property had been left to my mother during herlifetime. It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousanddollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate. Myfather had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had nointerest in them. 

Three or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten lettersigned by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, andasking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city. In contrast to the somewhat dingy offices where my father had practisedin the Blackwood Block, the quarters of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon on theeighth floor of the new Durrett Building were modern to a degree, finished in oak and floored with marble, with a railed-off space whereyoung women with nimble fingers played ceaselessly on typewriters. One ofthem informed me that Mr. Watling was busy, but on reading my card addedthat she would take it in. Meanwhile, in company with two others who mayhave been clients, I waited. This, then, was what it meant to be a lawyerof importance, to have, like a Chesterfield, an ante-room where clientscooled their heels and awaited one's pleasure. .. 

The young woman returned, and led me through a corridor to a door onwhich was painted Mr. Wailing. 

I recall him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside hispolished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to himwas a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave theimpression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights. Mr. Watling rose briskly. 

"How are you, Hugh?" he said, the warmth of his greeting tempered by justthe note of condolence suitable to my black clothes. "I'm glad you came. I wanted to see you before you went back to Cambridge. I must introduceyou to Judge Bering, of our State Supreme Court. Judge, this is Mr. Paret's boy. "

The judge looked me over with a certain slow impressiveness, and gave mea soft and fleshy hand. 

"Glad to know you, Mr. Paret. Your father was a great loss to our bar, "he declared. 

I detected in his tone and manner a slight reservation that could not becalled precisely judicial dignity; it was as though, in these few words, he had gone to the limit of self-commitment with a stranger--a strikingcontrast to the confidential attitude towards Mr. Watling in which I hadsurprised him. 

"Judge, " said Mr. Watling, sitting down again, "do you recall that timewe all went up to Mr. Paret's house and tried to induce him to run formayor? That was before you went on the lower bench. "

The judge nodded gloomily, caressing his watch chain, and suddenly roseto go. 

"That will be all right, then?" Mr. Watling inquired cryptically, with asmile. The other made a barely perceptible inclination of the head anddeparted. Mr. Watling looked at me. "He's one of the best men we have onthe bench to-day, " he added. There was a trace of apology in his tone. 

He talked a while of my father, to whom, so he said, he had looked upever since he had been admitted to the bar. 

"It would be a pleasure to me, Hugh, as well as a matter of pride, " hesaid cordially, but with dignity, "to have Matthew Paret's son in myoffice. I suppose you will be wishing to take your mother somewhere thissummer, but if you care to come here in the autumn, you will be welcome. You will begin, of course, as other young men begin, --as I began. But Iam a believer in blood, and I'll be glad to have you. Mr. Fowndes and Mr. Ripon feel the same way. " He escorted me to the door himself. 

Everywhere I went during that brief visit home I was struck by change, bythe crumbling and decay of institutions that once had held me in thrall, by the superimposition of a new order that as yet had assumed no definitecharacter. Some of the old landmarks had disappeared; there were new andaggressive office buildings, new and aggressive residences, new andaggressive citizens who lived in them, and of whom my mother spoke withgentle deprecation. Even Claremore, that paradise of my childhood, hadgrown shrivelled and shabby, even tawdry, I thought, when we went outthere one Sunday afternoon; all that once represented the magic word"country" had vanished. The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia agesago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescriptfurniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city'sstores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, theircoiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and "ornamental" electricfixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps. Cousin Jenny had grownwhite, Willie was a staid bachelor, Helen an old maid, while Mary hadmarried a tall, anaemic young man with glasses, Walter Kinley, whomCousin Robert had taken into the store. As I contemplated the Brecks oddquestions suggested themselves: did honesty and warm-heartednessnecessarily accompany a lack of artistic taste? and was virtue its ownreward, after all? They drew my mother into the house, took off herwraps, set her down in the most comfortable rocker, and insisted onmaking her a cup of tea. 

I was touched. I loved them still, and yet I was conscious ofreservations concerning them. They, too, seemed a little on the defensivewith me, and once in a while Mary was caustic in her remarks. 

"I guess nothing but New York will be good enough for Hugh now. He'll betaking Cousin Sarah away from us. "

"Not at all, my dear, " said my mother, gently, "he's going into Mr. Watling's office next autumn. "

"Theodore Watling?" demanded Cousin Robert, pausing in his carving. 

"Yes, Robert. Mr. Watling has been good enough to say that he would liketo have Hugh. Is there anything--?"

"Oh, I'm out of date, Sarah, " Cousin Robert replied, vigorously severingthe leg of the turkey. "These modern lawyers are too smart for me. Watling's no worse than the others, I suppose, --only he's got moreability. "

"I've never heard anything against him, " said my mother in a painedvoice. "Only the other day McAlery Willett congratulated me that Hugh wasgoing to be with him. "

"You mustn't mind Robert, Sarah, " put in Cousin Jenny, --a remarkreminiscent of other days. 

"Dad has a notion that his generation is the only honest one, " saidHelen, laughingly, as she passed a plate. 

I had gained a sense of superiority, and I was quite indifferent toCousin Robert's opinion of Mr. Watling, of modern lawyers in general. More than once a wave of self-congratulation surged through me that I hadpossessed the foresight and initiative to get out of the wholesalegrocery business while there was yet time. I looked at Willie, stillfreckled, still literal, still a plodder, at Walter Kinley, and I thoughtof the drabness of their lives; at Cousin Robert himself as he satsmoking his cigar in the bay-window on that dark February day, andsuddenly I pitied him. The suspicion struck me that he had not prosperedof late, and this deepened to a conviction as he talked. 

"The Republican Party is going to the dogs, " he asserted. 

"It used to be an honourable party, but now it is no better than theother. Politics are only conducted, now, for the purpose of makingunscrupulous men rich, sir. For years I furnished this city with goodgroceries, if I do say it myself. I took a pride in the fact that theinmates of the hospitals, yes, and the dependent poor in the city'sinstitutions, should have honest food. You can get anything out of thecity if you are willing to pay the politicians for it. I lost my citycontracts. Why? Because I refused to deal with scoundrels. Weill andCompany and other unscrupulous upstarts are willing to do so, and poisonthe poor and the sick with adulterated groceries! The first thing I knewwas that the city auditor was holding back my bills for supplies, andpaying Weill's. That's what politics and business, yes, sir, and the law, have come to in these days. If a man wants to succeed, he must turn intoa rascal. "

I was not shocked, but I was silent, uncomfortable, wishing that it weretime to take the train back to the city. Cousin Robert's face was moreworn than I had thought, and I contrasted him inevitably with theforceful person who used to stand, in his worn alpaca coat, on thepavement in front of his store, greeting with clear-eyed content hisfellow merchants of the city. Willie Breck, too, was silent, and WalterKinley took off his glasses and wiped them. In the meanwhile Helen hadleft the group in which my mother sat, and, approaching us, laid herhands on her father's shoulders. 

"Now, dad, " she said, in affectionate remonstrance, "you're excited aboutpolitics again, and you know it isn't good for you. And besides, they'renot worth it. "

"You're right, Helen, " he replied. Under the pressure of her hands hemade a strong effort to control himself, and turned to address my motheracross the room. 

"I'm getting to be a crotchety old man, " he said. "It's a good thing Ihave a daughter to remind me of it. "

"It is a good thing, Robert, " said my mother. 

During the rest of our visit he seemed to have recovered something of hisformer spirits and poise, taking refuge in the past. They talked of theirown youth, of families whose houses had been landmarks on the SecondBank. 

"I'm worried about your Cousin Robert, Hugh, " my mother confided to me, when we were at length seated in the train. "I've heard rumours thatthings are not so well at the store as they might be. " We looked out atthe winter landscape, so different from that one which had thrilled everyfibre of my being in the days when the railroad on which we travelled hadbeen a winding narrow gauge. The orchards--those that remained--werebare; stubble pricked the frozen ground where tassels had once waved inthe hot, summer wind. We flew by row after row of ginger-bread, suburbanhouses built on "villa plots, " and I read in large letters on a hideoussign-board, "Woodbine Park. "

"Hugh, have you ever heard anything against--Mr. Watling?"

"No, mother, " I said. "So far as I knew, he is very much looked up to bylawyers and business men. He is counsel, I believe, for Mr. Blackwood'sstreet car line on Boyne Street. And I told you, I believe, that I methim once at Mr. Kyme's. "

"Poor Robert!" she sighed. "I suppose business trouble does make onebitter, --I've seen it so often. But I never imagined that it wouldovertake Robert, and at his time of life! It is an old and respectedfirm, and we have always had a pride in it. " . .. 

That night, when I was going to bed, it was evident that the subject wasstill in her mind. She clung to my hand a moment. 

"I, too, am afraid of the new, Hugh, " she said, a little tremulously. "Weall grow so, as age comes on. "

"But you are not old, mother, " I protested. 

"I have a feeling, since your father has gone, that I have lived my life, my dear, though I'd like to stay long enough to see you happilymarried--to have grandchildren. I was not young when you were born. " Andshe added, after a little while, "I know nothing about business affairs, and now--now that your father is no longer here, sometimes I'm afraid--"

"Afraid of what, mother?"

She tried to smile at me through her tears. We were in the oldsitting-room, surrounded by the books. 

"I know it's foolish, and it isn't that I don't trust you. I know thatthe son of your father couldn't do anything that was not honourable. Andyet I am afraid of what the world is becoming. The city is growing sofast, and so many new people are coming in. Things are not the same. Robert is right, there. And I have heard your father say the same thing. Hugh, promise me that you will try to remember always what he was, andwhat he would wish you to be!"

"I will, mother, " I answered. "But I think you would find that CousinRobert exaggerates a little, makes things seem worse than they reallyare. Customs change, you know. And politics were never well--Sundayschools. " I, too, smiled a little. "Father knew that. And he would nevertake an active part in them. "

"He was too fine!" she exclaimed. 

"And now, " I continued, "Cousin Robert has happened to come in contactwith them through business. That is what has made the difference in him. Before, he always knew they were corrupt, but he rarely thought aboutthem. "

"Hugh, " she said suddenly, after a pause, "you must remember onething, --that you can afford to be independent. I thank God that yourfather has provided for that!"

I was duly admitted, the next autumn, to the bar of my own state, and wasassigned to a desk in the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. LarryWeed was my immediate senior among the apprentices, and Larry was ahero-worshipper. I can see him now. He suggested a bullfrog as he sat inthe little room we shared in common, his arms akimbo over a law book, hislittle legs doubled under him, his round, eyes fixed expectantly on thedoorway. And even if I had not been aware of my good fortune in beingconnected with such a firm as Theodore Watling's, Larry would shortlyhave brought it home to me. During those weeks when I was making my firstdesperate attempts at briefing up the law I was sometimes interrupted byhis exclamations when certain figures went by in the corridor. 

"Say, Hugh, do you know who that was?"

"No. "

"Miller Gorse. "

"Who's he?"

"Do you mean to say you never heard of Miller Gorse?"

"I've been away a long time, " I would answer apologetically. A person ofsome importance among my contemporaries at Harvard, I had looked forwardto a residence in my native city with the complacency of one who has seensomething of the world, --only to find that I was the least in the newkingdom. And it was a kingdom. Larry opened up to me something of thesignificance and extent of it, something of the identity of the men whocontrolled it. 

"Miller Gorse, " he said impressively, "is the counsel for the railroad. "

"What railroad? You mean the--" I was adding, when he interrupted mepityingly. 

"After you've been here a while you'll find out there's only one railroadin this state, so far as politics are concerned. The Ashuela andNorthern, the Lake Shore and the others don't count. "

I refrained from asking any more questions at that time, but afterwards Ialways thought of the Railroad as spelled with a capital. 

"Miller Gorse isn't forty yet, " Larry told me on another occasion. "That's doing pretty well for a man who comes near running this state. "

For the sake of acquiring knowledge, I endured Mr. Weed's patronage. Iinquired how Mr. Gorse ran the state. 

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough, " he assured me. 

"But Mr. Barbour's president of the Railroad. "

"Sure. Once in a while they take something up to him, but as a rule heleaves things to Gorse. "

Whereupon I resolved to have a good look at Mr. Gorse at the firstopportunity. One day Mr. Watling sent out for some papers. 

"He's in there now;" said Larry. "You take 'em. "

"In there" meant Mr. Watling's sanctum. And in there he was. I had only aglance at the great man, for, with a kindly but preoccupied "Thank you, Hugh, " Mr. Watling took the papers and dismissed me. Heaviness, blacknessand impassivity, --these were the impressions of Mr. Gorse which I carriedaway from that first meeting. The very solidity of his flesh seemed tosuggest the solidity of his position. Such, say the psychologists, is theeffect of prestige. 

I remember well an old-fashioned picture puzzle in one of my boyhoodbooks. The scene depicted was to all appearances a sylvan, peaceful one, with two happy lovers seated on a log beside a brook; but presently, asone gazed at the picture, the head of an animal stood forth among thebranches, and then the body; more animals began to appear, bit by bit; atiger, a bear, a lion, a jackal, a fox, until at last, whenever I lookedat the page, I did not see the sylvan scene at all, but only thepredatory beasts of the forest. So, one by one, the figures of the realrulers of the city superimposed themselves for me upon the simple anddemocratic design of Mayor, Council, Board of Aldermen, Police Force, etc. , that filled the eye of a naive and trusting electorate which fondlyimagined that it had something to say in government. Miller Gorse was oneof these rulers behind the screen, and Adolf Scherer, of the Boyne IronWorks, another; there was Leonard Dickinson of the Corn National Bank;Frederick Grierson, becoming wealthy in city real estate; Judah B. Tallant, who, though outlawed socially, was deferred to as the owner ofthe Morning Era; and even Ralph Hambleton, rapidly superseding theelderly and conservative Mr. Lord, who had hitherto managed the greatHambleton estate. Ralph seemed to have become, in a somewhat gnosticmanner, a full-fledged financier. Not having studied law, he had beenhome for four years when I became a legal fledgling, and during the earlydays of my apprenticeship I was beholden to him for many "eye openers"concerning the conduct of great affairs. I remember him sauntering intomy room one morning when Larry Weed had gone out on an errand. 

"Hello, Hughie, " he said, with his air of having nothing to do. "Grindingit out? Where's Watling?"

"Isn't he in his office?"

"No. "

"Well, what can we do for you?" I asked. 

Ralph grinned. 

"Perhaps I'll tell you when you're a little older. You're too young. " Andhe sank down into Larry Weed's chair, his long legs protruding on theother side of the table. "It's a matter of taxes. Some time ago I foundout that Dickinson and Tallant and others I could mention were paying agood deal less on their city property than we are. We don't propose to doit any more--that's all. "

"How can Mr. Watling help you?" I inquired. 

"Well, I don't mind giving you a few tips about your profession, Hughie. I'm going to get Watling to fix it up with the City Hall gang. Old Lorddoesn't like it, I'll admit, and when I told him we had been contributingto the city long enough, that I proposed swinging into line with otherproperty holders, he began to blubber about disgrace and what mygrandfather would say if he were alive. Well, he isn't alive. A good dealof water has flowed under the bridges since his day. It's a mere matterof business, of getting your respectable firm to retain a City Hallattorney to fix it up with the assessor. "

"How about the penitentiary?" I ventured, not too seriously. 

"I shan't go to the penitentiary, neither will Watling. What I do is topay a lawyer's fee. There isn't anything criminal in that, is there?"

For some time after Ralph had departed I sat reflecting upon this newknowledge, and there came into my mind the bitterness of Cousin RobertBreck against this City Hall gang, and his remarks about lawyers. Irecalled the tone in which he had referred to Mr. Watling. But Ralph'sphilosophy easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of asituation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of beingoverwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation toMr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessarytransactions did not interfere in any way with his personalrelationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr. Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of thecommunity, conducting advanced Bible classes every week in the Church ofthe Redemption?. .. The unfolding of mysteries kept me alert. And Iunderstood that, if I was to succeed, certain esoteric knowledge must beacquired, as it were, unofficially. I kept my eyes and ears open, andapplied myself, with all industry, to the routine tasks with which everyyoung man in a large legal firm is familiar. I recall distinctly my pridewhen, the Board of Aldermen having passed an ordinance lowering the waterrates, I was intrusted with the responsibility of going before the courtin behalf of Mr. Ogilvy's water company, obtaining a temporaryrestricting order preventing the ordinance from going at once intoeffect. Here was an affair in point. Were it not for lawyers of thecalibre of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon, hard-earned private property wouldsoon be confiscated by the rapacious horde. Once in a while I was madeaware that Mr. Watling had his eye on me. 

"Well, Hugh, " he would say, "how are you getting along? That's right, stick to it, and after a while we'll hand the drudgery over to somebodyelse. "

He possessed the supreme quality of a leader of men in that he took painsto inform himself concerning the work of the least of his subordinates;and he had the gift of putting fire into a young man by a word or a touchof the hand on the shoulder. It was not difficult for me, therefore, tocomprehend Larry Weed's hero-worship, the loyalty of other members of thefirm or of those occupants of the office whom I have not mentioned. Myfirst impression of him, which I had got at Jerry Kyme's, deepened astime went on, and I readily shared the belief of those around me that hislegal talents easily surpassed those of any of his contemporaries. I canrecall, at this time, several noted cases in the city when I sat in courtlistening to his arguments with thrills of pride. He made us all feel--nomatter how humble may have been our contributions to thepreparation--that we had a share in his triumphs. We remembered hismanner with judges and juries, and strove to emulate it. He spoke as ifthere could be no question as to his being right as to the law and thefacts, and yet, in some subtle way that bated analysis, managed not toantagonize the court. Victory was in the air in that office. I do notmean to say there were not defeats; but frequently these defeats, byresourcefulness, by a never-say-die spirit, by a consummate knowledge, not only of the law, but of other things at which I have hinted, wereturned into ultimate victories. We fought cases from one court toanother, until our opponents were worn out or the decision was reversed. We won, and that spirit of winning got into the blood. What was mostimpressed on me in those early years, I think, was the discovery thatthere was always a path--if one were clever enough to find it--from oneterrace to the next higher. Staying power was the most prized of all thevirtues. One could always, by adroitness, compel a legal opponent tofight the matter out all over again on new ground, or at least on groundpartially new. If the Court of Appeals should fail one, there was theSupreme Court; there was the opportunity, also, to shift from the stateto the federal courts; and likewise the much-prized device known as achange of venue, when a judge was supposed to be "prejudiced. "

IX. 

As my apprenticeship advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants ofour city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, whowere separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which theclassification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed. Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affairtook me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the citypenned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who hadspent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presentedto the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catchthe eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazedforth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, withscrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these Ibeheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the uglyand inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all, must be practical men. I came to know the justices of these policecourts, as well as other judges. And underlying my acquaintance with allof them was the knowledge--though not on the threshold of myconsciousness--that they depended for their living, every man of them, those who were appointed and those who were elected, upon a politicalorganization which derived its sustenance from the element whence cameour clients. Thus by degrees the sense of belonging to a specialpriesthood had grown on me. 

I recall an experience with that same Mr. Nathan. Weill, the wholesalegrocer of whose commerce with the City Hall my Cousin Robert Breck had sobitterly complained. Late one afternoon Mr. Weill's carriage ran over achild on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. Theparents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This waslate in the afternoon, and I was alone in the office when the telephonerang. Hurrying to the police station, I found Mr. Weill in a state ofexcitement and abject fear, for an ugly crowd had gathered outside. 

"Could not Mr. Watling or Mr. Fowndes come?" demanded the grocer. 

With an inner contempt for the layman's state of mind on such occasions Iassured him of my competency to handle the case. He was impressed, Ithink, by the sergeant's deference, who knew what it meant to have suchan office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecutingattorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a releasefor the coachman on his own recognizance, one of many signed in blank andleft there by the justice for privileged cases. The coachman was hustledout by a back door, and the crowd dispersed. 

The next morning, while a score or more of delinquents sat in the anxiousseats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me precedence. And Mr. Weill, with a sigh of relief, paid his fine. 

"Mr. Paret, is it?" he asked, as we stood together for a moment on thesidewalk outside the court. "You have managed this well. I willremember. "

He was sued, of course. When he came to the office he insisted ondiscussing the case with Mr. Watling, who sent for me. 

"That is a bright young man, " Mr. Weill declared, shaking my hand. "Hewill get on. "

"Some day, " said Mr. Watling, "he may save you a lot of money, Weill. "

"When my friend Mr. Watling is United States Senator, --eh?"

Mr. Watling laughed. "Before that, I hope. I advise you to compromisethis suit, Weill, " he added. "How would a thousand dollars strike you?I've had Paret look up the case, and he tells me the little girl has hadto have an operation. "

"A thousand dollars!" cried the grocer. "What right have these people tolet their children play on the streets? It's an outrage. "

"Where else have the children to play?" Mr. Watling touched his arm. "Weill, " he said gently, "suppose it had been your little girl?" Thegrocer pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his bald forehead. But herallied a little. 

"You fight these damage cases for the street railroads all through thecourts. "

"Yes, " Mr. Watling agreed, "but there a principle is involved. If therailroads once got into the way of paying damages for every carelessemployee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here youhave a child whose father is a poor janitor and can't afford sickness. And your coachman, I imagine, will be more particular in the future. "

In the end Mr. Weill made out a cheque and departed in a good humour, convinced that he was well out of the matter. Here was one of manyinstances I could cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt, moreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who hadrecommended the compromise. For I had been to the hospital and had seenthe child on the cot, --a dark little thing, lying still in her pain, withthe bewildered look of a wounded animal. .. . 

Not long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a moreor less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He hadsuddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a placein Denver, and paid his expenses west. 

The first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes andRipon were of importance to my future career, but there is little torelate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in acquiringthat esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be had from myseniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to a successful andlucrative practice. My former comparison of the organization of our cityto a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible onlyafter long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be thehuman anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial andindustrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hallpoliticians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law, politics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous systemtoo complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hardand often late, I still found time for convivialities, for socialgaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losingzest for the companionship of my former intimates. My mind was becomingpolarized by the contemplation of one object, success, and to it humanties were unconsciously being sacrificed. 

Tom Peters began to feel this, even at a time when I believed myselfstill to be genuinely fond of him. Considering our respectivetemperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the firstto fall in love and marry. One day he astonished me by announcing hisengagement to Susan Blackwood. 

"That ends the liquor, Hughie, " he told me, beamingly. "I promised herI'd eliminate it. "

He did eliminate it, save for mild relapses on festive occasions. A moreseemingly incongruous marriage could scarcely be imagined, and yet it wasa success from the start. From a slim, silent, self-willed girl Susan hadgrown up into a tall, rather rawboned and energetic young woman. She waswhat we called in those days "intellectual, " and had gone in forkindergartens, and after her marriage she turned out to be excessivelydomestic; practising her theories, with entire success, upon a familythat showed a tendency to increase at an alarming rate. Tom, needless tosay, did not become intellectual. He settled down--prematurely, Ithought--into what is known as a family man, curiously content with theincome he derived from the commission business and with life in general;and he developed a somewhat critical view of the tendencies of thecivilization by which he was surrounded. Susan held it also, but she saidless about it. In the comfortable but unpretentious house they rented onCedar Street we had many discussions, after the babies had been put tobed and the door of the living-room closed, in order that our voicesmight not reach the nursery. Perry Blackwood, now Tom's brother-in-law, was often there. He, too, had lapsed into what I thought was an oddconservatism. Old Josiah, his father, being dead, he occupied himselfmainly with looking after certain family interests, among which was theBoyne Street car line. Among "business men" he was already getting thereputation of being a little difficult to deal with. I was often thesubject of their banter, and presently I began to suspect that theyregarded my career and beliefs with some concern. This gave me nouneasiness, though at limes I lost my temper. I realized their affectionfor me; but privately I regarded them as lacking in ambition, in force, in the fighting qualities necessary for achievement in this modern age. Perhaps, unconsciously, I pitied them a little. 

"How is Judah B. To-day, Hughie?" Tom would inquire. "I hear you've puthim up for the Boyne Club, now that Mr. Watling has got him out of thatlibel suit. "

"Carter Ives is dead, " Perry would add, sarcastically, "let bygones bebygones. "

It was well known that Mr. Tallant, in the early days of his newspaper, had blackmailed Mr. Ives out of some hundred thousand dollars. And thatthis, more than any other act, stood in the way, with certainrecalcitrant gentlemen, of his highest ambition, membership in the Boyne. 

"The trouble with you fellows is that you refuse to deal with conditionsas you find them, " I retorted. "We didn't make them, and we can't changethem. Tallant's a factor in the business life of this city, and he has tobe counted with. "

Tom would shake his head exasperatingly. 

"Why don't you get after Ralph?" I demanded. "He doesn't antagonizeTallant, either. "

"Ralph's hopeless, " said Tom. "He was born a pirate, you weren't, Hughie. We think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?"

I refused to accept the remark as flattering. 

Another object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this timehad emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into amanipulator of blocks and corners. 

"I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical billof health of every client, " I said. "I won't stand up for all ofTallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take hiscases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog abad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because he hasworked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you fellowsdon't believe in democracy, --in giving every man a chance to show what'sin him. "

"Democracy is good!" exclaimed Perry. "If the kind of thing we're comingto is democracy, God save the state!". .. 

On the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton, sometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood friendswho seemed to be able to "deal with conditions as he found them. " Indeed, he gave one the impression that, if he had had the making of them, hewould not have changed them. 

"What the deuce do you expect?" I once heard him inquire withgood-natured contempt. "Business isn't charity, it's war. 

"There are certain things, " maintained Perry, stoutly, "that gentlemenwon't do. "

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Ralph, stretching his slim six feet two: We weresitting in the Boyne Club. "It's ungentlemanly to kill, or burn a town orsink a ship, but we keep armies and navies for the purpose. For a manwith a good mind, Perry, you show a surprising inability to think things, out to a logical conclusion. What the deuce is competition, when you comedown to it? Christianity? Not by a long shot! If our nations areslaughtering men and starving populations in other countries, --arecarried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filledwith business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can'texpect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christianbasis, --if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but notfor a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of thefittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but weall know it's a sop to the 'common people. ' Ask Hughie here if there everwas a law put on the statute books that his friend Watling couldn't get'round'? Why, you've got competition even among the churches. Yours, where I believe you teach in the Sunday school, would go bankrupt if itproclaimed real Christianity. And you'll go bankrupt if you practise it, Perry, my boy. Some early, wide-awake, competitive, red-blooded bird willrelieve you of the Boyne Street car line. "

It was one of this same new and "fittest" species who had alreadyrelieved poor Mr. McAlery Willett of his fortune. Mr. Willett was atrusting soul who had never known how to take care of himself or hismoney, people said, and now that he had lost it they blamed him. Some hadbeen saved enough for him and Nancy to live on in the old house, withcareful economy. It was Nancy who managed the economy, who accomplishedremarkable things with a sum they would have deemed poverty in formerdays. Her mother had died while I was at Cambridge. Reverses did notsubdue Mr. Willett's spirits, and the fascination modern "business" hadfor him seemed to grow in proportion to the misfortunes it had causedhim. He moved into a tiny office in the Durrett Building, where heappeared every morning about half-past ten to occupy himself with heavenknows what short cuts to wealth, with prospectuses of companies in Mexicoor Central America or some other distant place: once, I remember, it wasa tea, company in which he tried to interest his friends, to raise in theSouth a product he maintained would surpass Orange Pekoe. In theafternoon between three and four he would turn up at the Boyne Club, aswell groomed, as spruce as ever, generally with a flower in hisbuttonhole. He never forgot that he was a gentleman, and he had agentleman's notions of the fitness of things, and it was against hisprinciples to use, a gentleman's club for the furtherance of his variousenterprises. 

"Drop into my office some day, Dickinson, " he would say. "I think I'vegot something there that might interest you!"

He reminded me, when I met him, that he had always predicted I would getalong in life. .. . 

The portrait of Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The declineof the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her asupon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something ofthat spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed inyouth she must have inherited from McAlery Willett, but these qualitieshad disappeared in her long before the coming of financial reverses. Shewas nearing thirty, and in spite of her beauty and the rarer distinctionthat can best be described as breeding, she had never married. Menadmired her, but from a distance; she kept them at arm's length, theysaid: strangers who visited the city invariably picked her out of anassembly and asked who she was; one man from New York who came to visitRalph and who had been madly in love with her, she had amazed many peopleby refusing, spurning all he might have given her. This incident seemed arefutation of the charge that she was calculating. As might have beenforetold, she had the social gift in a remarkable degree, and in spite ofthe limitations of her purse the knack of dressing better than otherwomen, though at that time the organization of our social life stillremained comparatively simple, the custom of luxurious and expensiveentertainment not having yet set in. 

The more I reflect upon those days, the more surprising does it seem thatI was not in love with her. It may be that I was, unconsciously, for shetroubled my thoughts occasionally, and she represented all the qualitiesI admired in her sex. The situation that had existed at the time of ourfirst and only quarrel had been reversed, I was on the highroad to theworldly success I had then resolved upon, Nancy was poor, and for thatreason, perhaps, prouder than ever. If she was inaccessible to others, she had the air of being peculiarly inaccessible to me--the more sobecause some of the superficial relics of our intimacy remained, orrather had been restored. Her very manner of camaraderie seemedparadoxically to increase the distance between us. It piqued me. Had shegiven me the least encouragement, I am sure I should have responded; andI remember that I used occasionally to speculate as to whether she stillcared for me, and took this method of hiding her real feelings. Yet, onthe whole, I felt a certain complacency about it all; I knew thatsuffering was disagreeable, I had learned how to avoid it, and I may havehad, deep within me, a feeling that I might marry her after all. Meanwhile my life was full, and gave promise of becoming even fuller, more absorbing and exciting in the immediate future. 

One of the most fascinating figures, to me, of that Order being woven, like a cloth of gold, out of our hitherto drab civilization, --an Orderinto which I was ready and eager to be initiated, --was that of AdolfScherer, the giant German immigrant at the head of the Boyne Iron Works. His life would easily lend itself to riotous romance. In the old country, in a valley below the castle perched on the rack above, he had begun lifeby tending his father's geese. What a contrast to "Steeltown" with itssmells and sickening summer heat, to the shanty where Mrs. Scherer tookboarders and bent over the wash-tub! She, too, was an immigrant, butlived to hear her native Wagner from her own box at Covent Garden; and heto explain, on the deck of an imperial yacht, to the man who might havebeen his sovereign certain processes in the manufacture of steel hithertountried on that side of the Atlantic. In comparison with Adolf Scherer, citizen of a once despised democracy, the minor prince in whose dominionshe had once tended geese was of small account indeed!

The Adolf Scherer of that day--though it is not so long ago as timeflies--was even more solid and impressive than the man he afterwardsbecame, when he reached the dizzier heights from which he delivered to aneager press opinions on politics and war, eugenics and woman's suffrageand other subjects that are the despair of specialists. Had he stuck tosteel, he would have remained invulnerable. But even then he wasbeginning to abandon the field of production for that of exploitation:figuratively speaking, he had taken to soap, which with the aid of watermay be blown into beautiful, iridescent bubbles to charm the eye. Muchgood soap, apparently, has gone that way, never to be recovered. Everybody who was anybody began to blow bubbles about that time, and thebigger the bubble the greater its attraction for investors of hard-earnedsavings. Outside of this love for financial iridescence, let it becalled, Mr. Scherer seemed to care little then for glitter of any sort. Shortly after his elevation to the presidency of the Boyne Iron Works hehad been elected a member of the Boyne Club, --an honour of which, somethought, he should have been more sensible; but generally, when in town, he preferred to lunch at a little German restaurant annexed to a saloon, where I used often to find him literally towering above the cloth, --forhe was a giant with short legs, --his napkin tucked into his shirt front, engaged in lively conversation with the ministering Heinrich. The chef atthe club, Mr. Scherer insisted, could produce nothing equal to Heinrich'ssauer-kraut and sausage. My earliest relationship with Mr. Scherer wasthat of an errand boy, of bringing to him for his approval papers whichmight not be intrusted to a common messenger. His gruffness and brevitydisturbed me more than I cared to confess. I was pretty sure that he eyedme with the disposition of the self-made to believe that collegeeducations and good tailors were the heaviest handicaps with which ayoung man could be burdened: and I suspected him of an inimical attitudetoward the older families of the city. Certain men possessed hisconfidence; and he had built, as it were, a stockade about them, sternlykeeping the rest of the world outside. In Theodore Watling he had achildlike faith. 

Thus I studied him, with a deliberation which it is the purpose of thesechapters to confess, though he little knew that he was being made thesubject of analysis. Nor did I ever venture to talk with him, but heldstrictly to my role of errand boy, --even after the conviction came overme that he was no longer indifferent to my presence. The day arrived, after some years, when he suddenly thrust toward me a big, hairy handthat held the document he was examining. 

"Who drew this, Mr. Paret!" he demanded. 

Mr. Ripon, I told him. 

The Boyne Works were buying up coal-mines, and this was a contractlooking to the purchase of one in Putman County, provided, after acertain period of working, the yield and quality should come up tospecifications. Mr. Scherer requested me to read one of the sections, which puzzled him. And in explaining it an idea flashed over me. 

"Do you mind my making a suggestion, Mr. Scherer?" I ventured. 

"What is it?" he asked brusquely. 

I showed him how, by the alteration of a few words, the difficulty towhich he had referred could not only be eliminated, but that certainpossible penalties might be evaded, while the apparent meaning of thesection remained unchanged. In other words, it gave the Boyne Iron Worksan advantage that was not contemplated. He seized the paper, stared atwhat I had written in pencil on the margin, and then stared at me. Abruptly, he began to laugh. 

"Ask Mr. Wading what he thinks of it?"

"I intended to, provided it had your approval, sir, " I replied. 

"You have my approval, Mr. Paret, " he declared, rather cryptically, andwith the slight German hardening of the v's into which he relapsed attimes. "Bring it to the Works this afternoon. "

Mr. Wading agreed to the alteration. He looked at me amusedly. 

"Yes, I think that's an improvement, Hugh, " he said. I had a feeling thatI had gained ground, and from this time on I thought I detected a changein his attitude toward me; there could be no doubt about the new attitudeof Mr. Scherer, who would often greet me now with a smile and a joke, andsometimes went so far as to ask my opinions. .. . Then, about six monthslater, came the famous Ribblevale case that aroused the moral indignationof so many persons, among whom was Perry Blackwood. 

"You know as well as I do, Hugh, how this thing is being manipulated, " hedeclared at Tom's one Sunday evening; "there was nothing the matter withthe Ribblevale Steel Company--it was as right as rain before LeonardDickinson and Grierson and Scherer and that crowd you train with began totalk it down at the Club. Oh, they're very compassionate. I've heard 'em. Dickinson, privately, doesn't think much of Ribblevale paper, and Pugh"(the president of the Ribblevale) "seems worried and looks badly. It'sall very clever, but I'd hate to tell you in plain words what I'd callit. "

"Go ahead, " I challenged him audaciously. "You haven't any proof that theRibblevale wasn't in trouble. "

"I heard Mr. Pugh tell my father the other day it was a d--d outrage. Hecouldn't catch up with these rumours, and some of his stockholders wereliquidating. "

"You, don't suppose Pugh would want to admit his situation, do you?" Iasked. 

"Pugh's a straight man, " retorted Perry. "That's more than I can say forany of the other gang, saving your presence. The unpleasant truth is thatScherer and the Boyne people want the Ribblevale, and you ought to knowit if you don't. " He looked at me very hard through the glasses he hadlately taken to wearing. Tom, who was lounging by the fire, shifted hisposition uneasily. I smiled, and took another cigar. 

"I believe Ralph is right, Perry, when he calls you a sentimentalist. Foryou there's a tragedy behind every ordinary business transaction. TheRibblevale people are having a hard time to keep their heads above water, and immediately you smell conspiracy. Dickinson and Scherer have beentalking it down. How about it, Tom?"

But Tom, in these debates, was inclined to be noncommittal, although itwas clear they troubled him. 

"Oh, don't ask me, Hughie, " he said. 

"I suppose I ought to cultivate the scientific point of view, and lookwith impartial interest at this industrial cannibalism, " returned Perry, sarcastically. "Eat or be eaten that's what enlightened self-interest hascome to. After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world overagain, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and thelawyer--how shall I put it?--facilitating the processes of swallowing anddigesting. .. . "

There was no use arguing with Perry when he was in this vein. .. . 

Since I am not writing a technical treatise, I need not go into thedetails of the Ribblevale suit. Since it to say that the affair, after awhile, came apparently to a deadlock, owing to the impossibility ofgetting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which hadbeen taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own, remained out of the state also; the ordinary course of summoning himbefore a magistrate in another state had naturally been resorted to, butthe desired evidence was not forthcoming. 

"The trouble is, " Mr. Wading explained to Mr. Scherer, "that there is nolaw in the various states with a sufficient penalty attached that willcompel the witness to divulge facts he wishes to conceal. "

It was the middle of a February afternoon, and they were seated in deep, leather chairs in one corner of the reading room of the Boyne Club. Theyhad the place to themselves. Fowndes was there also, one leg twistedaround the other in familiar fashion, a bored look on his long and sallowface. Mr. Wading had telephoned to the office for me to bring them somepapers bearing on the case. 

"Sit down, Hugh, " he said kindly. 

"Now we have present a genuine legal mind, " said Mr. Scherer, in theplayful manner he had adopted of late, while I grinned appreciatively andtook a chair. Mr. Watling presently suggested kidnapping the Ribblevaletreasurer until he should promise to produce the books as the only wayout of what seemed an impasse. But Mr. Scherer brought down a huge fiston his knee. 

"I tell you it is no joke, Watling, we've got to win that suit, " heasserted. 

"That's all very well, " replied Mr. Watling. "But we're a respectablefirm, you know. We haven't had to resort to safe-blowing, as yet. "

Mr. Scherer shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say it were a matter ofindifference to him what methods were resorted to. Mr. Watling's eyes metmine; his glance was amused, yet I thought I read in it a query as to theadvisability, in my presence, of going too deeply into the question ofways and means. I may have been wrong. At any rate, its sudden effect wasto embolden me to give voice to an idea that had begun to simmer in mymind, that excited me, and yet I had feared to utter it. This look of mychief's, and the lighter tone the conversation had taken decided me. 

"Why wouldn't it be possible to draw up a bill to fit the situation?" Iinquired. 

Mr. Wading started. 

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly. 

All three looked at me. I felt the blood come into my face, but it wastoo late to draw back. 

"Well--the legislature is in session. And since, as Mr. Watling says, there is no sufficient penalty in other states to compel the witness toproduce the information desired, why not draw up a bill and--and have itpassed--" I paused for breath--"imposing a sufficient penalty on homecorporations in the event of such evasions. The Ribblevale Steel Companyis a home corporation. "

I had shot my bolt. .. . There followed what was for me an anxious silence, while the three of them continued to stare at me. Mr. Watling put thetips of his fingers together, and I became aware that he was notoffended, that he was thinking rapidly. 

"By George, why not, Fowndes?" he demanded. 

"Well, " said Fowndes, "there's an element of risk in such a proceeding Ineed not dwell upon. "

"Risk!" cried the senior partner vigorously. "There's risk in everything. They'll howl, of course. But they howl anyway, and nobody ever listens tothem. They'll say it's special legislation, and the Pilot will printsensational editorials for a few days. But what of it? All of that hashappened before. I tell you, if we can't see those books, we'll lose thesuit. That's in black and white. And, as a matter of justice, we'reentitled to know what we want to know. "

"There might be two opinions as to that, " observed Fowndes, with hissardonic smile. 

Mr. Watling paid no attention to this remark. He was already deep inthought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize asuggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turnit into an accomplished Fact. "I believe you've hit it, Hugh, " he said. "We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'llput into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the clerk tocompel the witness to come before the court and testify, and we'llprovide for a special commissioner to take depositions in the state wherethe witness is. If the officers of a home corporation who are outside ofthe state refuse to testify, the penalty will be that the ration goesinto the hands of a receiver. "

Fowndes whistled. 

"That's going some!" he said. 

"Well, we've got to go some. How about it, Scherer?"

Even Mr. Scherer's brown eyes were snapping. 

"We have got to win that suit, Watling. "

We were all excited, even Fowndes, I think, though he remainedexpressionless. Ours was the tense excitement of primitive man in chase:the quarry which had threatened to elude us was again in view, and notunlikely to fall into our hands. Add to this feeling, on my part, thethrill that it was I who had put them on the scent. I had all thesensations of an aspiring young brave who for the first time is admittedto the councils of the tribe!

"It ought to be a popular bill, too, " Mr. Schemer was saying, with asmile of ironic appreciation at the thought of demagogues advocating it. "We should have one of Lawler's friends introduce it. "

"Oh, we shall have it properly introduced, " replied Mr. Wading. 

"It may come back at us, " suggested Fowndes pessimistically. "The BoyneIron Works is a home corporation too, if I am not mistaken. "

"The Boyne Iron Works has the firm of Wading, Fowndes and Ripon behindit, " asserted Mr. Scherer, with what struck me as a magnificent faith. 

"You mustn't forget Paret, " Mr. Watling reminded him, with a wink at me. 

We had risen. Mr. Scherer laid a hand on my arm. 

"No, no, I do not forget him. He will not permit me to forget him. "

A remark, I thought, that betrayed some insight into my character. .. Mr. Watling called for pen and paper and made then and there a draft of theproposed bill, for no time was to be lost. It was dark when we left theClub, and I recall the elation I felt and strove to conceal as Iaccompanied my chief back to the office. The stenographers and clerkswere gone; alone in the library we got down the statutes and set to work. To perfect the bill from the rough draft, on which Mr. Fowndes hadwritten his suggestions. I felt that a complete yet subtle change hadcome over my relationship with Mr. Watling. 

In the midst of our labours he asked me to call up the attorney for theRailroad. Mr. Gorse was still at his office. 

"Hello! Is that you, Miller?" Mr. Watling said. "This is Wading. When canI see you for a few minutes this evening? Yes, I am leaving forWashington at nine thirty. Eight o'clock. All right, I'll be there. "

It was almost eight before he got the draft finished to his satisfaction, and I had picked it out on the typewriter. As I handed it to him, mychief held it a moment, gazing at me with an odd smile. 

"You seem to have acquired a good deal of useful knowledge, here andthere, Hugh, " he observed. 

"I've tried to keep my eyes open, Mr. Watling, " I said. 

"Well, " he said, "there are a great many things a young man practisinglaw in these days has to learn for himself. And if I hadn't given youcredit for some cleverness, I shouldn't have wanted you here. There'sonly one way to look at--at these matters we have been discussing, myboy, that's the common-sense way, and if a man doesn't get that point ofview by himself, nobody can teach it to him. I needn't enlarge upon it"

"No, sir, " I said. 

He smiled again, but immediately became serious. 

"If Mr. Gorse should approve of this bill, I'm going to send you down tothe capital--to-night. Can you go?"

I nodded. 

"I want you to look out for the bill in the legislature. Of course therewon't be much to do, except to stand by, but you will get a better ideaof what goes on down there. "

I thanked him, and told him I would do my best. 

"I'm sure of that, " he replied. "Now it's time to go to see Gorse. "

The legal department of the Railroad occupied an entire floor of the CornBank building. I had often been there on various errands, having onoccasions delivered sealed envelopes to Mr. Gorse himself, approachinghim in the ordinary way through a series of offices. But now, followingMr. Watling through the dimly lighted corridor, we came to a door onwhich no name was painted, and which was presently opened by astenographer. There was in the proceeding a touch of mystery that revivedkeenly my boyish love for romance; brought back the days when I had been, in turn, Captain Kidd and Ali Baba. 

I have never realized more strongly than in that moment the psychologicalforce of prestige. Little by little, for five years, an estimate of theextent of Miller Gorse's power had been coming home to me, and hisfeatures stood in my mind for his particular kind of power. He was atremendous worker, and often remained in his office until ten and elevenat night. He dismissed the stenographer by the wave of a hand whichseemed to thrust her bodily out of the room. 

"Hello, Miller, " said Mr. Watling. 

"Hello, Theodore, " replied Mr. Gorse. 

"This is Paret, of my office. "

"I know, " said Mr. Gorse, and nodded toward me. I was impressed by thefelicity with which a cartoonist of the Pilot had once caricatured him bythe use of curved lines. The circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at thewide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavyshoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discernedabout him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across hisforehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on somecurvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr. Gorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quitesure that one's words reached the mark. 

In spite of the intimacy which I knew existed between them, in mypresence at least Mr. Gorse's manner was little different with Mr. Watling than it was with other men. Mr. Wading did not seem to mind. Hepulled up a chair close to the desk and began, without any preliminaries, to explain his errand. 

"It's about the Ribblevale affair, " he said. "You know we have a suit. "

Gorse nodded. 

"We've got to get at the books, Miller, --that's all there is to it. Itold you so the other day. Well, we've found out a way, I think. "

He thrust his hand in his pocket, while the railroad attorney remainedimpassive, and drew out the draft of the bill. Mr. Gorse read it, thenread it over again, and laid it down in front of him. 

"Well, " he said. 

"I want to put that through both houses and have the governor's signatureto it by the end of the week. "

"It seems a little raw, at first sight, Theodore, " said Mr. Gorse, withthe suspicion of a smile. 

My chief laughed a little. 

"It's not half so raw as some things I might mention, that went throughlike greased lightning, " he replied. "What can they do? I believe it willhold water. Tallant's, and most of the other newspapers in the state, won't print a line about it, and only Socialists and Populists read thePilot. They're disgruntled anyway. The point is, there's no other way outfor us. Just think a moment, bearing in mind what I've told you about thecase, and you'll see it. "

Mr. Gorse took up the paper again, and read the draft over. 

"You know as well as I do, Miller, how dangerous it is to leave thisRibblevale business at loose ends. The Carlisle steel people and the LakeShore road are after the Ribblevale Company, and we can't afford to runany risk of their getting it. It's logically a part of the Boyneinterests, as Scherer says, and Dickinson is ready with the money for thereorganization. If the Carlisle people and the Lake Shore get it, theproduct will be shipped out by the L and G, and the Railroad will lose. What would Barbour say?"

Mr. Barbour, as I have perhaps mentioned, was the president of theRailroad, and had his residence in the other great city of the state. Hewas then, I knew, in the West. 

"We've got to act now, " insisted Mr. Watling. "That's open and shut. Ifyou have any other plan, I wish you'd trot it out. If not, I want aletter to Paul Varney and the governor. I'm going to send Paret down withthem on the night train. "

It was clear to me then, in the discussion following, that Mr. Watling'sgift of persuasion, though great, was not the determining factor in Mr. Gorse's decision. He, too, possessed boldness, though he preferredcaution. Nor did the friendship between the two enter into thetransaction. I was impressed more strongly than ever with the fact that alawsuit was seldom a mere private affair between two persons orcorporations, but involved a chain of relationships and nine times out often that chain led up to the Railroad, which nearly always was vitallyinterested in these legal contests. Half an hour of masterly presentationof the situation was necessary before Mr. Gorse became convinced that theintroduction of the bill was the only way out for all concerned. 

"Well, I guess you're right, Theodore, " he said at length. Whereupon heseized his pen and wrote off two notes with great rapidity. These heshowed to Mr. Watling, who nodded and returned them. They were folded andsealed, and handed to me. One was addressed to Colonel Paul Varney, andthe other to the Hon. W. W. Trulease, governor of the state. 

"You can trust this young man?" demanded Mr. Gorse. 

"I think so, " replied Mr. Watling, smiling at me. "The bill was his ownidea. "

The railroad attorney wheeled about in his chair and looked at me; lookedaround me, would better express it, with his indefinite, encompassing yetinclusive glance. I had riveted his attention. And from henceforth, Iknew, I should enter into his calculations. He had made for me acompartment in his mind. 

"His own idea!" he repeated. 

"I merely suggested it, " I was putting in, when he cut me short. 

"Aren't you the son of Matthew Paret?"

"Yes, " I said. 

He gave me a queer glance, the significance of which I left untranslated. My excitement was too great to analyze what he meant by this mention ofmy father. .. . 

When we reached the sidewalk my chief gave me a few parting instructions. 

"I need scarcely say, Hugh, " he added, "that your presence in the capitalshould not be advertised as connected with this--legislation. They willprobably attribute it to us in the end, but if you're reasonably careful, they'll never be able to prove it. And there's no use in putting ourcards on the table at the beginning. "

"No indeed, sir!" I agreed. 

He took my hand and pressed it. 

"Good luck, " he said. "I know you'll get along all right. "