{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_3736/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_3736","id":"gutenberg_3736","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3736","summary":null,"tags":["Bestsellers, American, 1895-1923","Category: American Literature","Category: Novels","Ethics -- Fiction","Religion and sociology -- Fiction","Upper class families -- Fiction"],"text":"Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\nA FAR COUNTRY\n\nBy Winston Churchill\n\n\nBOOK 1.\n\n\n\nI.\n\nMy name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means a\ntypical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, and\ndue, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am about\nto write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist. In\nthat sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding my\ncountry as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as a\nfunction of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of this\nromantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence is to\neradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean task!\n\nI have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, with\nwhat frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection of\nwhich I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; the\npassions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write a\nbiography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have to\nrelate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place in\nthe world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the school\nand university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business and\npolitics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that have\nimpelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture of good\nand evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks of\nmemory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and better\nthan I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child who\nbelieves in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose desires are\ndreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge of the\nprinciples of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless activity,\nadmitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions. What he wants,\nhe wants very badly indeed. This wanting things was the corner-stone of\nmy character, and I believe that the science of the future will bear me\nout when I say that it might have been differently built upon. Certain it\nis that the system of education in vogue in the 70's and 80's never\ncontemplated the search for natural corner-stones.\n\nAt all events, when I look back upon the boy I was, I see the beginnings\nof a real person who fades little by little as manhood arrives and\nadvances, until suddenly I am aware that a stranger has taken his\nplace....\n\nI lived in a city which is now some twelve hours distant from the\nAtlantic seaboard. A very different city, too, it was in youth, in my\ngrandfather's day and my father's, even in my own boyhood, from what it\nhas since become in this most material of ages.\n\nThere is a book of my photographs, preserved by my mother, which I have\nbeen looking over lately. First is presented a plump child of two, gazing\nin smiling trustfulness upon a world of sunshine; later on a lean boy in\nplaided kilts, whose wavy, chestnut-brown hair has been most carefully\nparted on the side by Norah, his nurse. The face is still childish. Then\nappears a youth of fourteen or thereabout in long trousers and the\nqueerest of short jackets, standing beside a marble table against a\nclassic background; he is smiling still in undiminished hope and trust,\ndespite increasing vexations and crossings, meaningless lessons which had\nto be learned, disciplines to rack an aspiring soul, and long,\nuncomfortable hours in the stiff pew of the First Presbyterian Church.\nAssociated with this torture is a peculiar Sunday smell and the faint\nrustling of silk dresses. I can see the stern black figure of Dr. Pound,\nwho made interminable statements to the Lord.\n\n\"Oh, Lord,\" I can hear him say, \"thou knowest...\"\n\nThese pictures, though yellowed and faded, suggest vividly the being I\nonce was, the feelings that possessed and animated me, love for my\nplaymates, vague impulses struggling for expression in a world forever\nthwarting them. I recall, too, innocent dreams of a future unidentified,\ndreams from which I emerged vibrating with an energy that was lost for\nlack of a definite objective: yet it was constantly being renewed. I\noften wonder what I might have become if it could have been harnessed,\ndirected! Speculations are vain. Calvinism, though it had begun to make\ncompromises, was still a force in those days, inimical to spontaneity and\nhuman instincts. And when I think of Calvinism I see, not Dr. Pound, who\npreached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him,\nbut he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy,\nbut punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of\naspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no\nshining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters for\nsuspicion and distrust.\n\nI sometimes ask myself, as I gaze upon his portrait now, the duplicate of\nthe one painted for the Bar Association, whether he ever could have felt\nthe secret, hot thrills I knew and did not identify with religion. His\nreligion was real to him, though he failed utterly to make it\ncomprehensible to me. The apparent calmness, evenness of his life awed\nme. A successful lawyer, a respected and trusted citizen, was he lacking\nsomewhat in virility, vitality? I cannot judge him, even to-day. I never\nknew him. There were times in my youth when the curtain of his unfamiliar\nspirit was withdrawn a little: and once, after I had passed the crisis of\nsome childhood disease, I awoke to find him bending over my bed with a\ntender expression that surprised and puzzled me.\n\nHe was well educated, and from his portrait a shrewd observer might\ndivine in him a genteel taste for literature. The fine features bear\nwitness to the influence of an American environment, yet suggest the\nintellectual Englishman of Matthew Arnold's time. The face is\ndistinguished, ascetic, the chestnut hair lighter and thinner than my\nown; the side whiskers are not too obtrusive, the eyes blue-grey. There\nis a large black cravat crossed and held by a cameo pin, and the coat has\nodd, narrow lapels. His habits of mind were English, although he\nharmonized well enough with the manners and traditions of a city whose\ninheritance was Scotch-Irish; and he invariably drank tea for breakfast.\nOne of my earliest recollections is of the silver breakfast service and\negg-cups which my great-grandfather brought with him from Sheffield to\nPhiladelphia shortly after the Revolution. His son, Dr. Hugh Moreton\nParet, after whom I was named, was the best known physician of the city\nin the decorous, Second Bank days.\n\nMy mother was Sarah Breck. Hers was my Scotch-Irish side. Old Benjamin\nBreck, her grandfather, undaunted by sea or wilderness, had come straight\nfrom Belfast to the little log settlement by the great river that\nmirrored then the mantle of primeval forest on the hills. So much for\nchance. He kept a store with a side porch and square-paned windows, where\nhams and sides of bacon and sugar loaves in blue glazed paper hung beside\nploughs and calico prints, barrels of flour, of molasses and rum, all of\nwhich had been somehow marvellously transported over the passes of those\nforbidding mountains,--passes we blithely thread to-day in dining cars\nand compartment sleepers. Behind the store were moored the barges that\nfloated down on the swift current to the Ohio, carrying goods to even\nremoter settlements in the western wilderness.\n\nBenjamin, in addition to his emigrant's leather box, brought with him\nsome of that pigment that was to dye the locality for generations a deep\nblue. I refer, of course, to his Presbyterianism. And in order the better\nto ensure to his progeny the fastness of this dye, he married the\ngranddaughter of a famous divine, celebrated in the annals of New\nEngland,--no doubt with some injustice,--as a staunch advocate on the\ndoctrine of infant damnation. My cousin Robert Breck had old Benjamin's\nportrait, which has since gone to the Kinley's. Heaven knows who painted\nit, though no great art were needed to suggest on canvas the tough fabric\nof that sitter, who was more Irish than Scotch. The heavy stick he holds\nmight, with a slight stretch of the imagination, be a blackthorn; his\nhead looks capable of withstanding many blows; his hand of giving many.\nAnd, as I gazed the other day at this picture hanging in the shabby\nsuburban parlour, I could only contrast him with his anaemic descendants\nwho possessed the likeness. Between the children of poor Mary\nKinley,--Cousin Robert's daughter, and the hardy stock of the old country\nthere is a gap indeed!\n\nBenjamin Breck made the foundation of a fortune. It was his son who built\non the Second Bank the wide, corniced mansion in which to house\ncomfortably his eight children. There, two tiers above the river, lived\nmy paternal grandfather, Dr. Paret, the Breck's physician and friend; the\nDurretts and the Hambletons, iron-masters; the Hollisters, Sherwins, the\nMcAlerys and Ewanses,--Breck connections,--the Willetts and Ogilvys; in\nshort, everyone of importance in the days between the 'thirties and the\nCivil War. Theirs were generous houses surrounded by shade trees, with\nglorious back yards--I have been told--where apricots and pears and\npeaches and even nectarines grew.\n\nThe business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to my\nmother's first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore. The very\nsound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight; but the\nClaremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis, and the place\nis now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots and connected\nwith Boyne Street and the business section of the city by trolley lines.\nThen it was \"the country,\" and fairly saturated with romance. Cousin\nRobert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought\nwith him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was no\nsuburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper contempt\nfor dwellers in towns.\n\nEvery summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And such\nwas my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when I\nheard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect--\n\n\"If you're really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr.\nParet\" (she generally addressed my father thus formally), \"I think I'll\ngo to Robert's and take Hugh.\"\n\n\"Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother,\" I would exclaim, starting up.\n\n\"We'll see what your father thinks, my dear.\"\n\n\"Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh,\" he would say.\n\nReleased at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with me,\nand then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters domain\nnext door, eager, with the refreshing lack of consideration\ncharacteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses--who were to remain\nat home the news of my good fortune. There would be Tom and Alfred and\nRussell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained knees, faring\nforth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady western yard. Myra\nwas too young not to look wistful at my news, but the others pretended\nindifference, seeking to lessen my triumph. And it was Julia who\ninvariably retorted \"We can go out to Uncle Jake's farm whenever we want\nto. Can't we, Tom?\"...\n\nNo journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely trip\nof thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hot\nfields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smelling\nwoods to Claremore. No silent palace \"sleeping in the sun,\" no edifice\ndecreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house of\nCousin Robert Breck.\n\nIt stood half a mile from the drowsy village, deep in its own grounds\namidst lawns splashed with shadows, with gravel paths edged--in barbarous\nfashion, if you please with shells. There were flower beds of equally\nbarbarous design; and two iron deer, which, like the figures on Keats's\nGrecian urn, were ever ready poised to flee,--and yet never fled. For\nCousin Robert was rich, as riches went in those days: not only rich, but\ncomfortable. Stretching behind the house were sweet meadows of hay and\nred clover basking in the heat, orchards where the cows cropped beneath\nthe trees, arbours where purple clusters of Concords hung beneath warm\nleaves: there were woods beyond, into which, under the guidance of Willie\nBreck, I made adventurous excursions, and in the autumn gathered\nhickories and walnuts. The house was a rambling, wooden mansion painted\ngrey, with red scroll-work on its porches and horsehair furniture inside.\nOh, the smell of its darkened interior on a midsummer day! Like the\nflavour of that choicest of tropical fruits, the mangosteen, it baffles\nanalysis, and the nearest I can come to it is a mixture of matting and\ncorn-bread, with another element too subtle to define.\n\nThe hospitality of that house! One would have thought we had arrived, my\nmother and I, from the ends of the earth, such was the welcome we got\nfrom Cousin Jenny, Cousin Robert's wife, from Mary and Helen with the\nflaxen pig-tails, from Willie, whom I recall as permanently without shoes\nor stockings. Met and embraced by Cousin Jenny at the station and driven\nto the house in the squeaky surrey, the moment we arrived she and my\nmother would put on the dressing-sacks I associated with hot weather, and\nsit sewing all day long in rocking-chairs at the coolest end of the\npiazza. The women of that day scorned lying down, except at night, and as\nevening came on they donned starched dresses; I recall in particular one\nmy mother wore, with little vertical stripes of black and white, and a\nfull skirt. And how they talked, from the beginning of the visit until\nthe end! I have often since wondered where the topics came from.\n\nIt was not until nearly seven o'clock that the train arrived which\nbrought home my Cousin Robert. He was a big man; his features and even\nhis ample moustache gave a disconcerting impression of rugged integrity,\nand I remember him chiefly in an alpaca or seersucker coat. Though much\nless formal, more democratic--in a word--than my father, I stood in awe\nof him for a different reason, and this I know now was because he\npossessed the penetration to discern the flaws in my youthful\ncharacter,--flaws that persisted in manhood. None so quick as Cousin\nRobert to detect deceptions which were hidden from my mother.\n\nHis hobby was carpentering, and he had a little shop beside the stable\nfilled with shining tools which Willie and I, in spite of their\nattractions, were forbidden to touch. Willie, by dire experience, had\nlearned to keep the law; but on one occasion I stole in alone, and\npromptly cut my finger with a chisel. My mother and Cousin Jenny accepted\nthe fiction that the injury had been done with a flint arrowhead that\nWillie had given me, but when Cousin Robert came home and saw my bound\nhand and heard the story, he gave me a certain look which sticks in my\nmind.\n\n\"Wonderful people, those Indians were!\" he observed. \"They could make\narrowheads as sharp as chisels.\"\n\nI was most uncomfortable....\n\nHe had a strong voice, and spoke with a rising inflection and a marked\naccent that still remains peculiar to our locality, although it was much\nmodified in my mother and not at all noticeable in my father; with an odd\nnasal alteration of the burr our Scotch-Irish ancestors had brought with\nthem across the seas. For instance, he always called my father Mr.\nPar-r-ret. He had an admiration and respect for him that seemed to forbid\nthe informality of \"Matthew.\" It was shared by others of my father's\nfriends and relations.\n\n\"Sarah,\" Cousin Robert would say to my mother, \"you're coddling that boy,\nyou ought to lam him oftener. Hand him over to me for a couple of\nmonths--I'll put him through his paces.... So you're going to send him to\ncollege, are you? He's too good for old Benjamin's grocery business.\"\n\nHe was very fond of my mother, though he lectured her soundly for her\nweakness in indulging me. I can see him as he sat at the head of the\nsupper table, carving liberal helpings which Mary and Helen and Willie\ndevoured with country appetites, watching our plates.\n\n\"What's the matter, Hugh? You haven't eaten all your lamb.\"\n\n\"He doesn't like fat, Robert,\" my mother explained.\n\n\"I'd teach him to like it if he were my boy.\"\n\n\"Well, Robert, he isn't your boy,\" Cousin Jenny would remind him.... His\nbark was worse than his bite. Like many kind people he made use of\nbrusqueness to hide an inner tenderness, and on the train he was hail\nfellow well met with every Tom, Dick and Harry that commuted,--although\nthe word was not invented in those days,--and the conductor and brakeman\ntoo. But he had his standards, and held to them....\n\nMine was not a questioning childhood, and I was willing to accept the\nscheme of things as presented to me entire. In my tenderer years, when I\nhad broken one of the commandments on my father's tablet (there were more\nthan ten), and had, on his home-coming, been sent to bed, my mother would\ncome softly upstairs after supper with a book in her hand; a book of\nselected Bible stories on which Dr. Pound had set the seal of his\napproval, with a glazed picture cover, representing Daniel in the lions'\nden and an angel standing beside him. On the somewhat specious plea that\nHoly Writ might have a chastening effect, she was permitted to minister\nto me in my shame. The amazing adventure of Shadrach, Meshach and\nAbednego particularly appealed to an imagination needing little\nstimulation. It never occurred to me to doubt that these gentlemen had\ntriumphed over caloric laws. But out of my window, at the back of the\nsecond storey, I often saw a sudden, crimson glow in the sky to the\nsouthward, as though that part of the city had caught fire. There were\nthe big steel-works, my mother told me, belonging to Mr. Durrett and Mr.\nHambleton, the father of Ralph Hambleton and the grandfather of Hambleton\nDurrett, my schoolmates at Miss Caroline's. I invariably connected the\nglow, not with Hambleton and Ralph, but with Shadrach, Meshach and\nAbednego! Later on, when my father took me to the steel-works, and I\nbeheld with awe a huge pot filled with molten metal that ran out of it\nlike water, I asked him--if I leaped into that stream, could God save me?\nHe was shocked. Miracles, he told me, didn't happen any more.\n\n\"When did they stop?\" I demanded.\n\n\"About two thousand years ago, my son,\" he replied gravely.\n\n\"Then,\" said I, \"no matter how much I believed in God, he wouldn't save\nme if I jumped into the big kettle for his sake?\"\n\nFor this I was properly rebuked and silenced.\n\nMy boyhood was filled with obsessing desires. If God, for example, had\ncast down, out of his abundant store, manna and quail in the desert, why\ncouldn't he fling me a little pocket money? A paltry quarter of a dollar,\nlet us say, which to me represented wealth. To avoid the reproach of the\nPharisees, I went into the closet of my bed-chamber to pray, requesting\nthat the quarter should be dropped on the north side of Lyme Street,\nbetween Stamford and Tryon; in short, as conveniently near home as\npossible. Then I issued forth, not feeling overconfident, but hoping. Tom\nPeters, leaning over the ornamental cast-iron fence which separated his\nfront yard from the street, presently spied me scanning the sidewalk.\n\n\"What are you looking for, Hugh?\" he demanded with interest.\n\n\"Oh, something I dropped,\" I answered uneasily.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nNaturally, I refused to tell. It was a broiling, midsummer day; Julia and\nRussell, who had been warned to stay in the shade, but who were engaged\nin the experiment of throwing the yellow cat from the top of the lattice\nfence to see if she would alight on her feet, were presently attracted,\nand joined in the search. The mystery which I threw around it added to\nits interest, and I was not inconsiderably annoyed. Suppose one of them\nwere to find the quarter which God had intended for me? Would that be\njustice?\n\n\"It's nothing,\" I said, and pretended to abandon the quest--to be renewed\nlater. But this ruse failed; they continued obstinately to search; and\nafter a few minutes Tom, with a shout, picked out of a hot crevice\nbetween the bricks--a nickel!\n\n\"It's mine!\" I cried fiercely.\n\n\"Did you lose it?\" demanded Julia, the canny one, as Tom was about to\ngive it up.\n\nMy lying was generally reserved for my elders.\n\n\"N-no,\" I said hesitatingly, \"but it's mine all the same. It was--sent to\nme.\"\n\n\"Sent to you!\" they exclaimed, in a chorus of protest and derision. And\nhow, indeed, was I to make good my claim? The Peterses, when assembled,\nwere a clan, led by Julia and in matters of controversy, moved as one.\nHow was I to tell them that in answer to my prayers for twenty-five\ncents, God had deemed five all that was good for me?\n\n\"Some--somebody dropped it there for me.\"\n\n\"Who?\" demanded the chorus. \"Say, that's a good one!\"\n\nTears suddenly blinded me. Overcome by chagrin, I turned and flew into\nthe house and upstairs into my room, locking the door behind me. An\ninterval ensued, during which I nursed my sense of wrong, and it pleased\nme to think that the money would bring a curse on the Peters family. At\nlength there came a knock on the door, and a voice calling my name.\n\n\"Hugh! Hugh!\"\n\nIt was Tom.\n\n\"Hughie, won't you let me in? I want to give you the nickel.\"\n\n\"Keep it!\" I shouted back. \"You found it.\"\n\nAnother interval, and then more knocking.\n\n\"Open up,\" he said coaxingly. \"I--I want to talk to you.\"\n\nI relented, and let him in. He pressed the coin into my hand. I refused;\nhe pleaded.\n\n\"You found it,\" I said, \"it's yours.\"\n\n\"But--but you were looking for it.\"\n\n\"That makes no difference,\" I declared magnanimously.\n\nCuriosity overcame him.\n\n\"Say, Hughie, if you didn't drop it, who on earth did?\"\n\n\"Nobody on earth,\" I replied cryptically....\n\nNaturally, I declined to reveal the secret. Nor was this by any means the\nonly secret I held over the Peters family, who never quite knew what to\nmake of me. They were not troubled with imaginations. Julia was a little\nolder than Tom and had a sharp tongue, but over him I exercised a\ndistinct fascination, and I knew it. Literal himself, good-natured and\nwarm-hearted, the gift I had of tingeing life with romance (to put the\nthing optimistically), of creating kingdoms out of back yards--at which\nJulia and Russell sniffed--held his allegiance firm.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nI must have been about twelve years of age when I realized that I was\npossessed of the bard's inheritance. A momentous journey I made with my\nparents to Boston about this time not only stimulated this gift, but gave\nme the advantage of which other travellers before me have likewise\navailed themselves--of being able to take certain poetic liberties with a\ndistant land that my friends at home had never seen. Often during the\nheat of summer noons when we were assembled under the big maple beside\nthe lattice fence in the Peters' yard, the spirit would move me to relate\nthe most amazing of adventures. Our train, for instance, had been held up\nin the night by a band of robbers in black masks, and rescued by a\ntraveller who bore a striking resemblance to my Cousin Robert Breck. He\nhad shot two of the robbers. These fabrications, once started, flowed\nfrom me with ridiculous ease. I experienced an unwonted exhilaration,\nexaltation; I began to believe that they had actually occurred. In vain\nthe astute Julia asserted that there were no train robbers in the east.\nWhat had my father done? Well, he had been very brave, but he had had no\npistol. Had I been frightened? No, not at all; I, too, had wished for a\npistol. Why hadn't I spoken of this before? Well, so many things had\nhappened to me I couldn't tell them all at once. It was plain that Julia,\nthough often fascinated against her will, deemed this sort of thing\ndistinctly immoral.\n\nI was a boy divided in two. One part of me dwelt in a fanciful realm of\nhis own weaving, and the other part was a commonplace and protesting\ninhabitant of a world of lessons, disappointments and discipline. My\ninstincts were not vicious. Ideas bubbled up within me continually from\nan apparently inexhaustible spring, and the very strength of the longings\nthey set in motion puzzled and troubled my parents: what I seem to see\nmost distinctly now is a young mind engaged in a ceaseless struggle for\nself-expression, for self-development, against the inertia of a tradition\nof which my father was the embodiment. He was an enigma to me then. He\nsincerely loved me, he cherished ambitions concerning me, yet thwarted\nevery natural, budding growth, until I grew unconsciously to regard him\nas my enemy, although I had an affection for him and a pride in him that\nflared up at times. Instead of confiding to him my aspirations, vague\nthough they were, I became more and more secretive as I grew older. I\nknew instinctively that he regarded these aspirations as evidences in my\ncharacter of serious moral flaws. And I would sooner have suffered many\nafternoons of his favourite punishment--solitary confinement in my\nroom--than reveal to him those occasional fits of creative fancy which\ncaused me to neglect my lessons in order to put them on paper. Loving\nliterature, in his way, he was characteristically incapable of\nrecognizing the literary instinct, and the symptoms of its early stages\nhe mistook for inherent frivolity, for lack of respect for the truth; in\nbrief, for original sin. At the age of fourteen I had begun secretly\n(alas, how many things I did secretly!) to write stories of a sort,\nstories that never were finished.\n\nHe regarded reading as duty, not pleasure. He laid out books for me,\nwhich I neglected. He was part and parcel of that American environment in\nwhich literary ambition was regarded as sheer madness. And no one who has\nnot experienced that environment can have any conception of the pressure\nit exerted to stifle originality, to thrust the new generation into its\nreligious and commercial moulds. Shall we ever, I wonder, develop the\nenlightened education that will know how to take advantage of such\ninitiative as was mine? that will be on the watch for it, sympathize with\nit and guide it to fruition?\n\nI was conscious of still another creative need, that of dramatizing my\nideas, of converting them into action. And this need was to lead me\nfarther than ever afield from the path of righteousness. The concrete\nrealization of ideas, as many geniuses will testify, is an expensive\nundertaking, requiring a little pocket money; and I have already touched\nupon that subject. My father did not believe in pocket money. A sea story\nthat my Cousin Donald Ewan gave me at Christmas inspired me to compose\none of a somewhat different nature; incidentally, I deemed it a vast\nimprovement on Cousin Donald's book. Now, if I only had a boat, with the\nassistance of Ham Durrett and Tom Peters, Gene Hollister and Perry\nBlackwood and other friends, this story of mine might be staged. There\nwere, however, as usual, certain seemingly insuperable difficulties: in\nthe first place, it was winter time; in the second, no facilities existed\nin the city for operations of a nautical character; and, lastly, my\nChristmas money amounted only to five dollars. It was my father who\npointed out these and other objections. For, after a careful perusal of\nthe price lists I had sent for, I had been forced to appeal to him to\nsupply additional funds with which to purchase a row-boat. Incidentally,\nhe read me a lecture on extravagance, referred to my last month's report\nat the Academy, and finished by declaring that he would not permit me to\nhave a boat even in the highly improbable case of somebody's presenting\nme with one. Let it not be imagined that my ardour or my determination\nwere extinguished. Shortly after I had retired from his presence it\noccurred to me that he had said nothing to forbid my making a boat, and\nthe first thing I did after school that day was to procure, for\ntwenty-five cents, a second-hand book on boat construction. The woodshed\nwas chosen as a shipbuilding establishment. It was convenient--and my\nfather never went into the back yard in cold weather. Inquiries of\nlumber-yards developing the disconcerting fact that four dollars and\nseventy-five cents was inadequate to buy the material itself, to say\nnothing of the cost of steaming and bending the ribs, I reluctantly\nabandoned the ideal of the graceful craft I had sketched, and compromised\non a flat bottom. Observe how the ways of deception lead to\ntransgression: I recalled the cast-off lumber pile of Jarvis, the\ncarpenter, a good-natured Englishman, coarse and fat: in our\nneighbourhood his reputation for obscenity was so well known to mothers\nthat I had been forbidden to go near him or his shop. Grits Jarvis, his\nson, who had inherited the talent, was also contraband. I can see now the\nhuge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting, soot-powdered\nsnow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my pertinacity.\n\n\"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd\n'elp 'im!\"\n\n\"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?\" I\ndemanded, indignant.\n\nHe laughed with his customary lack of moderation.\n\n\"You mind what old Jarvis says,\" he cried. \"What you wants, you gets.\"\n\nI did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very\nvaluable, and without question he more than made up for them in my\nmother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the\nmoment,--the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I\nsmuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise the\nservices of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem.\nTom always had to be \"worked up\" to participation in my ideas, but in the\nend he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in the\ndead of winter, and so far from her native element, naturally struck him\nat first as ridiculous. Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it if I\never got it made? He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent wagon\ndrivers.\n\nAll that Tom saw, at first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dim\nrecesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature was\nsomewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered\nenthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blotted\nout, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her way\nacross blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island, alas, was as yet\nunwritten; but among my father's books were two old volumes in which I\nhad hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings of palms and coral\nreefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle, the\nadventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by a\nlater traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to the\ngreat neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the\nSouthern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a\nremote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, of\ntyphoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on you while you were\ndismantling galleons, when desperate hand-to-hand encounters ensued.\nLittle by little as I wove all this into personal adventures soon to be\nrealized, Tom forgot the snowballs and the maddened grocery-men who\nchased him around the block; while Grits would occasionally stop sawing\nand cry out:--\"Ah, s'y!\" frequently adding that he would be G--d--d.\n\nThe cold woodshed became a chantry on the New England coast, the alley\nthe wintry sea soon to embrace our ship, the saw-horses--which stood\nbetween a coal-bin on one side and unused stalls filled with rubbish and\nkindling on the other--the ways; the yard behind the lattice fence became\na backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refuge\nthere--on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with\nunparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the\npresent, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the\nhousemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were\nfriendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my\nearliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the\nwindows and scrubbed the steps.\n\nOne afternoon Tom went to work....\n\nThe history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that of\nall created things, a story of trial and error and waste. At last, one\nMarch day she stood ready for launching. She had even been caulked; for\nGrits, from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source, had procured a\nbucket of tar, which we heated over afire in the alley and smeared into\nevery crack. It was natural that the news of such a feat as we were\naccomplishing should have leaked out, that the \"yard\" should have been\nvisited from time to time by interested friends, some of whom came to\nadmire, some to scoff, and all to speculate. Among the scoffers, of\ncourse, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets and\ncheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always a\nsuperior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an amazing\nself-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, the\niron-master. He was older than I.\n\n\"She won't float five minutes, if you ever get her to the water,\" was his\ncomment, and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia and\nRussell Peters. Ralph would have none of the Petrel, or of the South Seas\neither; but he wanted,--so he said,--\"to be in at the death.\" The\nHambletons were one of the few families who at that time went to the sea\nfor the summer, and from a practical knowledge of craft in general Ralph\nwas not slow to point out the defects of ours. Tom and I defended her\npassionately.\n\nRalph was not a romanticist. He was a born leader, excelling at organized\ngames, exercising over boys the sort of fascination that comes from doing\neverything better and more easily than others. It was only during the\nprogress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that I\nsucceeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom's had been won,\nfanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer,\nrecruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowing\ncolours. Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they went\nback to him. Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he\ndeparted, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around the\nPetrel in the shed: Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhat\nhampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph's cousin Ham Durrett,\nwho was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don and\nHarry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and Sophy\nMcAlery. Nancy was a tomboy, not to be denied, and Sophy her shadow. We\nheld a council, the all-important question of which was how to get the\nPetrel to the water, and what water to get her to. The river was not to\nbe thought of, and Blackstone Lake some six miles from town. Finally,\nLogan's mill-pond was decided on,--a muddy sheet on the outskirts of the\ncity. But how to get her to Logan's mill-pond? Cephas was at length\nconsulted. It turned out that he had a coloured friend who went by the\nimpressive name of Thomas Jefferson Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), who\nwas in the express business; and who, after surveying the boat with some\nmisgivings,--for she was ten feet long,--finally consented to transport\nher to \"tide-water\" for the sum of two dollars. But it proved that our\ncombined resources only amounted to a dollar and seventy-five cents. Ham\nDurrett never contributed to anything. On this sum Thomas Jefferson\ncompromised.\n\nSaturday dawned clear, with a stiff March wind catching up the dust into\neddies and whirling it down the street. No sooner was my father safely on\nhis way to his office than Thomas Jefferson was reported to be in the\nalley, where we assembled, surveying with some misgivings Thomas\nJefferson's steed, whose ability to haul the Petrel two miles seemed\nsomewhat doubtful. Other difficulties developed; the door in the back of\nthe shed proved to be too narrow for our ship's beam. But men embarked on\na desperate enterprise are not to be stopped by such trifles, and the\nproblem was solved by sawing out two adjoining boards. These were\nafterwards replaced with skill by the ship's carpenter, Able Seaman Grits\nJarvis. Then the Petrel by heroic efforts was got into the wagon, the\nseat of which had been removed, old Thomas Jefferson perched himself\nprecariously in the bow and protestingly gathered up his rope-patched\nreins.\n\n\"Folks'll 'low I'se plum crazy, drivin' dis yere boat,\" he declared,\nobserving with concern that some four feet of the stern projected over\nthe tail-board. \"Ef she topples, I'll git to heaven quicker'n a bullet.\"\n\nWhen one is shanghaied, however,--in the hands of buccaneers,--it is too\nlate to withdraw. Six shoulders upheld the rear end of the Petrel, others\nshoved, and Thomas Jefferson's rickety horse began to move forward in\nspite of himself. An expression of sheer terror might have been observed\non the old negro's crinkled face, but his voice was drowned, and we swept\nout of the alley. Scarcely had we travelled a block before we began to be\njoined by all the boys along the line of march; marbles, tops, and even\nincipient baseball games were abandoned that Saturday morning; people ran\nout of their houses, teamsters halted their carts. The breathless\nexcitement, the exaltation I had felt on leaving the alley were now\ntinged with other feelings, unanticipated, but not wholly lacking in\ndelectable quality,--concern and awe at these unforeseen forces I had\nraised, at this ever growing and enthusiastic body of volunteers\nspringing up like dragon's teeth in our path. After all, was not I the\nhero of this triumphal procession? The thought was consoling,\nexhilarating. And here was Nancy marching at my side, a little subdued,\nperhaps, but unquestionably admiring and realizing that it was I who had\ncreated all this. Nancy, who was the aptest of pupils, the most loyal of\nfollowers, though I did not yet value her devotion at its real worth,\nbecause she was a girl. Her imagination kindled at my touch. And on this\neventful occasion she carried in her arms a parcel, the contents of which\nwere unknown to all but ourselves. At length we reached the muddy shores\nof Logan's pond, where two score eager hands volunteered to assist the\nPetrel into her native element.\n\nAlas! that the reality never attains to the vision. I had beheld, in my\ndreams, the Petrel about to take the water, and Nancy Willett standing\nvery straight making a little speech and crashing a bottle of wine across\nthe bows. This was the content of the mysterious parcel; she had stolen\nit from her father's cellar. But the number of uninvited spectators,\nwhich had not been foreseen, considerably modified the programme,--as the\nnewspapers would have said. They pushed and crowded around the ship, and\nmade frank and even brutal remarks as to her seaworthiness; even Nancy,\ninured though she was to the masculine sex, had fled to the heights, and\nit looked at this supreme moment as though we should have to fight for\nthe Petrel. An attempt to muster her doughty buccaneers failed; the\ngunner too had fled,--Gene Hollister; Ham Durrett and the Ewanses were\nnowhere to be seen, and a muster revealed only Tom, the fidus Achates,\nand Grits Jarvis.\n\n\"Ah, s'y!\" he exclaimed in the teeth of the menacing hordes. \"Stand back,\ncarn't yer? I'll bash yer face in, Johnny. Whose boat is this?\"\n\nShall it be whispered that I regretted his belligerency? Here, in truth,\nwas the drama staged,--my drama, had I only been able to realize it. The\ngood ship beached, the headhunters hemming us in on all sides, the scene\nprepared for one of those struggles against frightful odds which I had so\ngraphically related as an essential part of our adventures.\n\n\"Let's roll the cuss in the fancy collar,\" proposed one of the\nhead-hunters,--meaning me.\n\n\"I'll stove yer slats if yer touch him,\" said Grits, and then resorted to\nappeal. \"I s'y, carn't yer stand back and let a chap 'ave a charnst?\"\n\nThe head-hunters only jeered. And what shall be said of the Captain in\nthis moment of peril? Shall it be told that his heart was beating\nwildly?--bumping were a better word. He was trying to remember that he\nwas the Captain. Otherwise, he must admit with shame that he, too, should\nhave fled. So much for romance when the test comes. Will he remain to\nfall fighting for his ship? Like Horatius, he glanced up at the hill,\nwhere, instead of the porch of the home where he would fain have been, he\nbeheld a wisp of a girl standing alone, her hat on the back of her head,\nher hair flying in the wind, gazing intently down at him in his danger.\nThe renegade crew was nowhere to be seen. There are those who demand the\npresence of a woman in order to be heroes....\n\n\"Give us a chance, can't you?\" he cried, repeating Grits's appeal in not\nquite such a stentorian tone as he would have liked, while his hand\ntrembled on the gunwale. Tom Peters, it must be acknowledged, was much\nmore of a buccaneer when it was a question of deeds, for he planted\nhimself in the way of the belligerent chief of the head-hunters (who\nspoke with a decided brogue).\n\n\"Get out of the way!\" said Tom, with a little squeak in his voice. Yet\nthere he was, and he deserves a tribute.\n\nAn unlooked-for diversion saved us from annihilation, in the shape of one\nwho had a talent for creating them. We were bewilderingly aware of a\ngirlish figure amongst us.\n\n\"You cowards!\" she cried. \"You cowards!\"\n\nLithe, and fairly quivering with passion, it was Nancy who showed us how\nto face the head-hunters. They gave back. They would have been brave\nindeed if they had not retreated before such an intense little nucleus of\nenergy and indignation!...\n\n\"Ah, give 'em a chanst,\" said their chief, after a moment.... He even\nhelped to push the boat towards the water. But he did not volunteer to be\none of those to man the Petrel on her maiden voyage. Nor did Logan's\npond, that wild March day, greatly resemble the South Seas. Nevertheless,\nmy eye on Nancy, I stepped proudly aboard and seized an \"oar.\" Grits and\nTom followed,--when suddenly the Petrel sank considerably below the\nwater-line as her builders had estimated it. Ere we fully realized this,\nthe now friendly head-hunters had given us a shove, and we were off! The\nCaptain, who should have been waving good-bye to his lady love from the\npoop, sat down abruptly,--the crew likewise; not, however, before she had\nheeled to the scuppers, and a half-bucket of iced water had run it.\nHead-hunters were mere daily episodes in Grits's existence, but water...\nHe muttered something in cockney that sounded like a prayer.... The wind\nwas rapidly driving us toward the middle of the pond, and something cold\nand ticklish was seeping through the seats of our trousers. We sat like\nstatues....\n\nThe bright scene etched itself in my memory--the bare brown slopes with\nwhich the pond was bordered, the Irish shanties, the clothes-lines with\nred flannel shirts snapping in the biting wind; Nancy motionless on the\nbank; the group behind her, silent now, impressed in spite of itself at\nthe sight of our intrepidity.\n\nThe Petrel was sailing stern first.... Would any of us, indeed, ever see\nhome again? I thought of my father's wrath turned to sorrow because he\nhad refused to gratify a son's natural wish and present him with a real\nrowboat.... Out of the corners of our eyes we watched the water creeping\naround the gunwale, and the very muddiness of it seemed to enhance its\ncoldness, to make the horrors of its depths more mysterious and hideous.\nThe voice of Grits startled us.\n\n\"O Gawd,\" he was saying, \"we're a-going to sink, and I carn't swim! The\nblarsted tar's give way back here.\"\n\n\"Is she leaking?\" I cried.\n\n\"She's a-filling up like a bath tub,\" he lamented.\n\nSlowly but perceptibly, in truth, the bow was rising, and above the\nwhistling of the wind I could hear his chattering as she settled.... Then\nseveral things happened simultaneously: an agonized cry behind me,\ndistant shouts from the shore, a sudden upward lunge of the bow, and the\ntorture of being submerged, inch by inch, in the icy, yellow water.\nDespite the splashing behind me, I sat as though paralyzed until I was\nwaist deep and the boards turned under me, and then, with a spasmodic\ncontraction of my whole being I struck out--only to find my feet on the\nmuddy bottom. Such was the inglorious end of the good ship Petrel! For\nshe went down, with all hands, in little more than half a fathom of\nwater.... It was not until then I realized that we had been blown clear\nacross the pond!\n\nFigures were running along the shore. And as Tom and I emerged dragging\nGrits between us,--for he might have been drowned there abjectly in the\nshallows,--we were met by a stout and bare-armed Irishwoman whose scanty\nhair, I remember, was drawn into a tight knot behind her head; and who\nseized us, all three, as though we were a bunch of carrots.\n\n\"Come along wid ye!\" she cried.\n\nShivering, we followed her up the hill, the spectators of the tragedy,\nwho by this time had come around the pond, trailing after. Nancy was not\namong them. Inside the shanty into which we were thrust were two small\nchildren crawling about the floor, and the place was filled with steam\nfrom a wash-tub against the wall and a boiler on the stove. With a\nvigorous injunction to make themselves scarce, the Irishwoman slammed the\ndoor in the faces of the curious and ordered us to remove our clothes.\nGrits was put to bed in a corner, while Tom and I, provided with various\ngarments, huddled over the stove. There fell to my lot the red flannel\nshirt which I had seen on the clothes-line. She gave us hot coffee, and\nwas back at her wash-tub in no time at all, her entire comment on a\nproceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravity\nbeing, \"By's will be by's!\" The final ironical touch was given the\nanti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief of\nthe head-hunters himself! He had lingered perforce with his brothers and\nsister outside the cabin until dinner time, and when he came in he was\nmeek as Moses.\n\nThus the ready hospitality of the poor, which passed over the heads of\nTom and me as we ate bread and onions and potatoes with a ravenous\nhunger. It must have been about two o'clock in the afternoon when we bade\ngood-bye to our preserver and departed for home....\n\nAt first we went at a dog-trot, but presently slowed down to discuss the\nfuture looming portentously ahead of us. Since entire concealment was now\nimpossible, the question was,--how complete a confession would be\nnecessary? Our cases, indeed, were dissimilar, and Tom's incentive to\nhold back the facts was not nearly so great as mine. It sometimes seemed\nto me in those days unjust that the Peterses were able on the whole to\nkeep out of criminal difficulties, in which I was more or less\ncontinuously involved: for it did not strike me that their sins were not\nthose of the imagination. The method of Tom's father was the slipper. He\nand Tom understood each other, while between my father and myself was a\ngreat gulf fixed. Not that Tom yearned for the slipper; but he regarded\nits occasional applications as being as inevitable as changes in the\nweather; lying did not come easily to him, and left to himself he much\npreferred to confess and have the matter over with. I have already\nsuggested that I had cultivated lying, that weapon of the weaker party,\nin some degree, at least, in self-defence.\n\nTom was loyal. Moreover, my conviction would probably deprive him for six\nwhole afternoons of my company, on which he was more or less dependent.\nBut the defence of this case presented unusual difficulties, and we\nstopped several times to thrash them out. We had been absent from dinner,\nand doubtless by this time Julia had informed Tom's mother of the\nexpedition, and anyone could see that our clothing had been wet. So I\nlingered in no little anxiety behind the Peters stable while he made the\ninvestigation. Our spirits rose considerably when he returned to report\nthat Julia had unexpectedly been a trump, having quieted his mother by\nthe surmise that he was spending the day with his Aunt Fanny. So far, so\ngood. The problem now was to decide upon what to admit. For we must both\ntell the same story.\n\nIt was agreed that we had fallen into Logan's Pond from a raft: my\nsuggestion. Well, said Tom, the Petrel hadn't proved much better than a\nraft, after all. I was in no mood to defend her.\n\nThis designation of the Petrel as a \"raft\" was my first legal quibble.\nThe question to be decided by the court was, What is a raft? just as the\nsupreme tribunal of the land has been required, in later years, to\ndecide, What is whiskey? The thing to be concealed if possible was the\nbuilding of the \"raft,\" although this information was already in the\npossession of a number of persons, whose fathers might at any moment see\nfit to congratulate my own on being the parent of a genius. It was a\nrisk, however, that had to be run. And, secondly, since Grits Jarvis was\ncontraband, nothing was to be said about him.\n\nI have not said much about my mother, who might have been likened on such\noccasions to a grand jury compelled to indict, yet torn between loyalty\nto an oath and sympathy with the defendant. I went through the Peters\nyard, climbed the wire fence, my object being to discover first from\nElla, the housemaid, or Hannah, the cook, how much was known in high\nquarters. It was Hannah who, as I opened the kitchen door, turned at the\nsound, and set down the saucepan she was scouring.\n\n\"Is it home ye are? Mercy to goodness!\" (this on beholding my shrunken\ncostume) \"Glory be to God you're not drownded! and your mother worritin'\nher heart out! So it's into the wather ye were?\"\n\nI admitted it.\n\n\"Hannah?\" I said softly.\n\n\"What then?\"\n\n\"Does mother know--about the boat?\"\n\n\"Now don't ye be wheedlin'.\"\n\nI managed to discover, however, that my mother did not know, and surmised\nthat the best reason why she had not been told had to do with Hannah's\ncriminal acquiescence concerning the operations in the shed. I ran into\nthe front hall and up the stairs, and my mother heard me coming and met\nme on the landing.\n\n\"Hugh, where have you been?\"\n\nAs I emerged from the semi-darkness of the stairway she caught sight of\nmy dwindled garments, of the trousers well above my ankles. Suddenly she\nhad me in her arms and was kissing me passionately. As she stood before\nme in her grey, belted skirt, the familiar red-and-white cameo at her\nthroat, her heavy hair parted in the middle, in her eyes was an odd,\nappealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling with\na Presbyterian conscience. Though she inherited that conscience, I have\noften thought she might have succeeded in casting it off--or at least\nsome of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she\nworshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father. Her voice trembled\na little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.\n\n\"Tell me about what happened, my son,\" she said.\n\nIt was a terrible moment for me. For my affections were still quiveringly\nalive in those days, and I loved her. I had for an instant an instinctive\nimpulse to tell her the whole story,--South Sea Islands and all! And I\ncould have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figure\nwhich represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow made\nher, suddenly, of small account. Not that she would have understood the\nromance, but she would have comprehended me. I knew that she was\npowerless to save me from the wrath to come. I wept. It was because I\nhated to lie to her,--yet I did so. Fear gripped me, and--like some\nrespectable criminals I have since known--I understood that any\nconfession I made would inexorably be used against me.... I wonder\nwhether she knew I was lying? At any rate, the case appeared to be a\ngrave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over for\ntrial....\n\nVividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while\nawaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper\nand steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields\nand groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had become\nmorne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yard\nwhich the wind of the morning had strewn with chips from the Petrel. At\nlast, when shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, I heard\nfootsteps. Ella appeared, prim and virtuous, yet a little commiserating.\nMy father wished to see me, downstairs. It was not the first time she had\nbrought that summons, and always her manner was the same!\n\nThe scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim books\nin their walnut cases. And my father sat, like a judge, behind the big\ndesk where he did his work when at home. Oh, the distance between us at\nsuch an hour! I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in his\neye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth.\n\n\"Hugh,\" he said, \"your mother tells me that you have confessed to going,\nwithout permission, to Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft and\nfell into the water.\"\n\nThe slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a colder\nshiver down my spine than the iced water had done. What did he know? or\nwas this mere suspicion? Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty.\n\n\"It was a sort of a raft, sir,\" I stammered.\n\n\"A sort of a raft,\" repeated my father. \"Where, may I ask, did you find\nit?\"\n\n\"I--I didn't exactly find it, sir.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at the\njury.) The prisoner gulped. \"You didn't exactly find it, then. Will you\nkindly explain how you came by it?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, we--I--put it together.\"\n\n\"Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you made\nit?\"\n\n\"No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it.\"\n\n\"Or that it was intended for a row-boat?\"\n\nHere was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted a\nrow-boat.\n\n\"Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir,\" I said abjectly.\n\n\"Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbidding\nyou to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a whim,\nyou constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of the back\npartition, thus destroying property that did, not belong to you, and had\nthe boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?\" I was silent, utterly\nundone. Evidently he had specific information.... There are certain\nexpressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of speech, and now\nmy father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added visibly to his\nstature.\n\n\"Hugh,\" he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of my\nsoul, \"I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son of\nmine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness and\nhonour--can be a liar.\" (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!)\n\"Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for it\nbefore. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instil\ninto you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess that\nI am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever,\nno conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not only\npersistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for many\nmonths, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you were\nsecretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where this\ndetermination of yours to have what you desire at any price will lead you\nin the future. It is just such a desire that distinguishes wicked men\nfrom good.\"\n\nI will not linger upon a scene the very remembrance of which is painful\nto this day.... I went from my father's presence in disgrace, in an agony\nof spirit that was overwhelming, to lock the door of my room and drop\nface downward on the bed, to sob until my muscles twitched. For he had,\nindeed, put into me an awful fear. The greatest horror of my boyish\nimagination was a wicked man. Was I, as he had declared, utterly depraved\nand doomed in spite of myself to be one?\n\nThere came a knock at my door--Ella with my supper. I refused to open,\nand sent her away, to fall on my knees in the darkness and pray wildly to\na God whose attributes and character were sufficiently confused in my\nmind. On the one hand was the stern, despotic Monarch of the Westminster\nCatechism, whom I addressed out of habit, the Father who condemned a\nportion of his children from the cradle. Was I one of those who he had\ndecreed before I was born must suffer the tortures of the flames of hell?\nPutting two and two together, what I had learned in Sunday school and\ngathered from parts of Dr. Pound's sermons, and the intimation of my\nfather that wickedness was within me, like an incurable disease,--was not\nmine the logical conclusion? What, then, was the use of praying?... My\nsupplications ceased abruptly. And my ever ready imagination, stirred to\nits depths, beheld that awful scene of the last day: the darkness, such\nas sometimes creeps over the city in winter, when the jaundiced smoke\nfalls down and we read at noonday by gas-light. I beheld the tortured\nfaces of the wicked gathered on the one side, and my mother on the other\namongst the blessed, gazing across the gulf at me with yearning and\ncompassion. Strange that it did not strike me that the sight of the\ncondemned whom they had loved in life would have marred if not destroyed\nthe happiness of the chosen, about to receive their crowns and harps!\nWhat a theology--that made the Creator and Preserver of all mankind thus\nillogical!\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nAlthough I was imaginative, I was not morbidly introspective, and by the\nend of the first day of my incarceration my interest in that solution had\nwaned. At times, however, I actually yearned for someone in whom I could\nconfide, who could suggest a solution. I repeat, I would not for worlds\nhave asked my father or my mother or Dr. Pound, of whom I had a wholesome\nfear, or perhaps an unwholesome one. Except at morning Bible reading and\nat church my parents never mentioned the name of the Deity, save to\ninstruct me formally. Intended or no, the effect of my religious training\nwas to make me ashamed of discussing spiritual matters, and naturally I\nfailed to perceive that this was because it laid its emphasis on personal\nsalvation.... I did not, however, become an unbeliever, for I was not of\na nature to contemplate with equanimity a godless universe....\n\nMy sufferings during these series of afternoon confinements did not come\nfrom remorse, but were the result of a vague sense of injury; and their\neffect was to generate within me a strange motive power, a desire to do\nsomething that would astound my father and eventually wring from him the\nconfession that he had misjudged me. To be sure, I should have to wait\nuntil early manhood, at least, for the accomplishment of such a coup.\nMight it not be that I was an embryonic literary genius? Many were the\nbooks I began in this ecstasy of self-vindication, only to abandon them\nwhen my confinement came to an end.\n\nIt was about this time, I think, that I experienced one of those shocks\nwhich have a permanent effect upon character. It was then the custom for\nladies to spend the day with one another, bringing their sewing; and\nsometimes, when I unexpectedly entered the sitting-room, the voices of my\nmother's visitors would drop to a whisper. One afternoon I returned from\nschool to pause at the head of the stairs. Cousin Bertha Ewan and Mrs.\nMcAlery were discussing with my mother an affair that I judged from the\nawed tone in which they spoke might prove interesting.\n\n\"Poor Grace,\" Mrs. McAlery was saying, \"I imagine she's paid a heavy\npenalty. No man alive will be faithful under those circumstances.\"\n\nI stopped at the head of the stairs, with a delicious, guilty feeling.\n\n\"Have they ever heard of her?\" Cousin Bertha asked.\n\n\"It is thought they went to Spain,\" replied Mrs. McAlery, solemnly, yet\nnot without a certain zest. \"Mr. Jules Hollister will not have her name\nmentioned in his presence, you know. And Whitcomb chased them as far as\nNew York with a horse-pistol in his pocket. The report is that he got to\nthe dock just as the ship sailed. And then, you know, he went to live\nsomewhere out West,--in Iowa, I believe.\"\n\n\"Did he ever get a divorce?\" Cousin Bertha inquired.\n\n\"He was too good a church member, my dear,\" my mother reminded her.\n\n\"Well, I'd have got one quick enough, church member or no church member,\"\ndeclared Cousin Bertha, who had in her elements of daring.\n\n\"Not that I mean for a moment to excuse her,\" Mrs. McAlery put in, \"but\nEdward Whitcomb did have a frightful temper, and he was awfully strict\nwith her, and he was old enough, anyhow, to be her father. Grace\nHollister was the last woman in the world I should have suspected of\ndoing so hideous a thing. She was so sweet and simple.\"\n\n\"Jennings was very attractive,\" said my Cousin Bertha. \"I don't think I\never saw a handsomer man. Now, if he had looked at me--\"\n\nThe sentence was never finished, for at this crucial moment I dropped a\ngrammar....\n\nI had heard enough, however, to excite my curiosity to the highest pitch.\nAnd that evening, when I came in at five o'clock to study, I asked my\nmother what had become of Gene Hollister's aunt.\n\n\"She went away, Hugh,\" replied my mother, looking greatly troubled.\n\n\"Why?\" I persisted.\n\n\"It is something you are too young to understand.\"\n\nOf course I started an investigation, and the next day at school I asked\nthe question of Gene Hollister himself, only to discover that he believed\nhis aunt to be dead! And that night he asked his mother if his Aunt Grace\nwere really alive, after all? Whereupon complications and explanations\nensued between our parents, of which we saw only the surface signs.... My\nfather accused me of eavesdropping (which I denied), and sentenced me to\nan afternoon of solitary confinement for repeating something which I had\nheard in private. I have reason to believe that my mother was also\nreprimanded.\n\nIt must not be supposed that I permitted the matter to rest. In addition\nto Grits Jarvis, there was another contraband among my acquaintances,\nnamely, Alec Pound, the scrape-grace son of the Reverend Doctor Pound.\nAlec had an encyclopaedic mind, especially well stocked with the kind of\nknowledge I now desired; first and last he taught me much, which I would\nbetter have got in another way. To him I appealed and got the story, my\nworst suspicions being confirmed. Mrs. Whitcomb's house had been across\nthe alley from that of Mr. Jennings, but no one knew that anything was\n\"going on,\" though there had been signals from the windows--the\nneighbours afterwards remembered....\n\nI listened shudderingly.\n\n\"But,\" I cried, \"they were both married!\"\n\n\"What difference does that make when you love a woman?\" Alec replied\ngrandly. \"I could tell you much worse things than that.\"\n\nThis he proceeded to do. Fascinated, I listened with a sickening\nsensation. It was a mild afternoon in spring, and we stood in the deep\nlimestone gutter in front of the parsonage, a little Gothic wooden house\nset in a gloomy yard.\n\n\"I thought,\" said I, \"that people couldn't love any more after they were\nmarried, except each other.\"\n\nAlec looked at me pityingly.\n\n\"You'll get over that notion,\" he assured me.\n\nThus another ingredient entered my character. Denied its food at home,\ngood food, my soul eagerly consumed and made part of itself the\nfermenting stuff that Alec Pound so willing distributed. And it was\nfermenting stuff. Let us see what it did to me. Working slowly but\nsurely, it changed for me the dawning mystery of sex into an evil instead\nof a holy one. The knowledge of the tragedy of Grace Hollister started me\nto seeking restlessly, on bookshelves and elsewhere, for a secret that\nforever eluded me, and forever led me on. The word fermenting aptly\ndescribes the process begun, suggesting as it does something closed up,\naway from air and sunlight, continually working in secret, engendering\nforces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly this\nsecretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of their\northodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, and\nthe flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to be\ndeplored and condemned, exorcised and transformed by the miracle of\ngrace. Now love had become a terrible power (gripping me) whose\nenchantment drove men and women from home and friends and kindred to the\nuttermost parts of the earth....\n\nIt was long before I got to sleep that night after my talk with Alec\nPound. I alternated between the horror and the romance of the story I had\nheard, supplying for myself the details he had omitted: I beheld the\nsignals from the windows, the clandestine meetings, the sudden and\ndesperate flight. And to think that all this could have happened in our\ncity not five blocks from where I lay!\n\nMy consternation and horror were concentrated on the man,--and yet I\nrecall a curious bifurcation. Instead of experiencing that automatic\nrighteous indignation which my father and mother had felt, which had\nanimated old Mr. Jules Hollister when he had sternly forbidden his\ndaughter's name to be mentioned in his presence, which had made these\npeople outcasts, there welled up within me an intense sympathy and pity.\nBy an instinctive process somehow linked with other experiences, I seemed\nto be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts, to\nunderstand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that had led\nthem to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which I myself\nwas at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by mankind. Was\nthere something within me that might eventually draw me to do likewise?\nThe desire in me to which my father had referred, which would brook no\nopposition, which twisted and squirmed until it found its way to its\nobject? I recalled the words of Jarvis, the carpenter, that if I ever set\nmy heart on another man's wife, God help him. God help me!\n\nA wicked man! I had never beheld the handsome and fascinating Mr.\nJennings, but I visualised him now; dark, like all villains, with a black\nmoustache and snapping black eyes. He carried a cane. I always associated\ncanes with villains. Whereupon I arose, groped for the matches, lighted\nthe gas, and gazing at myself in the mirror was a little reassured to\nfind nothing sinister in my countenance....\n\nNext to my father's faith in a Moral Governor of the Universe was his\nbelief in the Tariff and the Republican Party. And this belief, among\nothers, he handed on to me. On the cinder playground of the Academy we\nRepublicans used to wage, during campaigns, pitched battles for the\nTariff. It did not take a great deal of courage to be a Republican in our\ncity, and I was brought up to believe that Democrats were irrational,\ninferior, and--with certain exceptions like the Hollisters--dirty beings.\nThere was only one degree lower, and that was to be a mugwump. It was no\nwonder that the Hollisters were Democrats, for they had a queer streak in\nthem; owing, no doubt, to the fact that old Mr. Jules Hollister's mother\nhad been a Frenchwoman. He looked like a Frenchman, by the way, and\nalways wore a skullcap.\n\nI remember one autumn afternoon having a violent quarrel with Gene\nHollister that bade fair to end in blows, when he suddenly\ndemanded:--\"I'll bet you anything you don't know why you're a\nRepublican.\"\n\n\"It's because I'm for the Tariff,\" I replied triumphantly.\n\nBut his next question floored me. What, for example, was the Tariff? I\ntried to bluster it out, but with no success.\n\n\"Do you know?\" I cried finally, with sudden inspiration.\n\nIt turned out that he did not.\n\n\"Aren't we darned idiots,\" he asked, \"to get fighting over something we\ndon't know anything about?\"\n\nThat was Gene's French blood, of course. But his question rankled. And\nhow was I to know that he would have got as little satisfaction if he had\nhurled it into the marching ranks of those imposing torch-light\nprocessions which sometimes passed our house at night, with drums beating\nand fifes screaming and torches waving,--thousands of citizens who were\nfor the Tariff for the same reason as I: to wit, because they were\nRepublicans.\n\nYet my father lived and died in the firm belief that the United States of\nAmerica was a democracy!\n\nResolved not to be caught a second time in such a humiliating position by\na Democrat, I asked my father that night what the Tariff was. But I was\ntoo young to understand it, he said. I was to take his word for it that\nthe country would go to the dogs if the Democrats got in and the Tariff\nwere taken away. Here, in a nutshell, though neither he nor I realized\nit, was the political instruction of the marching hordes. Theirs not to\nreason why. I was too young, they too ignorant. Such is the method of\nAuthority!\n\nThe steel-mills of Mr. Durrett and Mr. Hambleton, he continued, would be\nforced to shut down, and thousands of workmen would starve. This was just\na sample of what would happen. Prosperity would cease, he declared. That\nword, Prosperity, made a deep impression on me, and I recall the certain\nreverential emphasis he laid on it. And while my solicitude for the\nworkmen was not so great as his and Mr. Durrett's, I was concerned as to\nwhat would happen to us if those twin gods, the Tariff and Prosperity,\nshould take their departure from the land. Knowing my love for the good\nthings of the table, my father intimated, with a rare humour I failed to\nappreciate, that we should have to live henceforth in spartan simplicity.\nAfter that, like the intelligent workman, I was firmer than ever for the\nTariff.\n\nSuch was the idealistic plane on which--and from a good man--I received\nmy first political instruction! And for a long time I connected the\ndominance of the Republican Party with the continuation of manna and\nquails, in other words, with nothing that had to do with the spiritual\nwelfare of any citizen, but with clothing and food and material comforts.\nMy education was progressing....\n\nThough my father revered Plato and Aristotle, he did not, apparently,\ntake very seriously the contention that that government alone is good\n\"which seeks to attain the permanent interests of the governed by\nevolving the character of its citizens.\" To put the matter brutally,\npolitics, despite the lofty sentiments on the transparencies in\ntorchlight processions, had only to do with the belly, not the soul.\n\nPolitics and government, one perceives, had nothing to do with religion,\nnor education with any of these. A secularized and disjointed world! Our\nleading citizens, learned in the classics though some of them might be,\npaid no heed to the dictum of the Greek idealist, who was more practical\nthan they would have supposed. \"The man who does not carry his city\nwithin his heart is a spiritual starveling.\"\n\nOne evening, a year or two after that tariff campaign, I was pretending\nto study my lessons under the student lamp in the sitting-room while my\nmother sewed and my father wrote at his desk, when there was a ring at\nthe door-bell. I welcomed any interruption, even though the visitor\nproved to be only the druggist's boy; and there was always the\npossibility of a telegram announcing, for instance, the death of a\nrelative. Such had once been the case when my Uncle Avery Paret had died\nin New York, and I was taken out of school for a blissful four days for\nthe funeral.\n\nI went tiptoeing into the hall and peeped over the banisters while Ella\nopened the door. I heard a voice which I recognized as that of Perry\nBlackwood's father asking for Mr. Paret; and then to my astonishment, I\nsaw filing after him into the parlour some ten or twelve persons. With\nthe exception of Mr. Ogilvy, who belonged to one of our old families, and\nMr. Watling, a lawyer who had married the youngest of Gene Hollister's\naunts, the visitors entered stealthily, after the manner of burglars;\nsome of these were heavy-jowled, and all had an air of mystery that\nraised my curiosity and excitement to the highest pitch. I caught hold of\nElla as she came up the stairs, but she tore herself free, and announced\nto my father that Mr. Josiah Blackwood and other gentlemen had asked to\nsee him. My father seemed puzzled as he went downstairs.... A long\ninterval elapsed, during which I did not make even a pretence of looking\nat my arithmetic. At times the low hum of voices rose to what was almost\nan uproar, and on occasions I distinguished a marked Irish brogue.\n\n\"I wonder what they want?\" said my mother, nervously.\n\nAt last we heard the front door shut behind them, and my father came\nupstairs, his usually serene face wearing a disturbed expression.\n\n\"Who in the world was it, Mr. Paret?\" asked my mother.\n\nMy father sat down in the arm-chair. He was clearly making an effort for\nself-control.\n\n\"Blackwood and Ogilvy and Watling and some city politicians,\" he\nexclaimed.\n\n\"Politicians!\" she repeated. \"What did they want? That is, if it's\nanything you can tell me,\" she added apologetically.\n\n\"They wished me to be the Republican candidate for the mayor of this\ncity.\"\n\nThis tremendous news took me off my feet. My father mayor!\n\n\"Of course you didn't consider it, Mr. Paret,\" my mother was saying.\n\n\"Consider it!\" he echoed reprovingly. \"I can't imagine what Ogilvy and\nWatling and Josiah Blackwood were thinking of! They are out of their\nheads. I as much as told them so.\"\n\nThis was more than I could bear, for I had already pictured myself\ntelling the news to envious schoolmates.\n\n\"Oh, father, why didn't you take it?\" I cried.\n\nBy this time, when he turned to me, he had regained his usual expression.\n\n\"You don't know what you're talking about, Hugh,\" he said. \"Accept a\npolitical office! That sort of thing is left to politicians.\"\n\nThe tone in which he spoke warned me that a continuation of the\nconversation would be unwise, and my mother also understood that the\ndiscussion was closed. He went back to his desk, and began writing again\nas though nothing had happened.\n\nAs for me, I was left in a palpitating state of excitement which my\nfather's self-control or sang-froid only served to irritate and enhance,\nand my head was fairly spinning as, covertly, I watched his pen steadily\ncovering the paper.\n\nHow could he--how could any man of flesh and blood sit down calmly after\nhaving been offered the highest honour in the gift of his community! And\nhe had spurned it as if Mr. Blackwood and the others had gratuitously\ninsulted him! And how was it, if my father so revered the Republican\nParty that he would not suffer it to be mentioned slightingly in his\npresence, that he had refused contemptuously to be its mayor?...\n\nThe next day at school, however, I managed to let it be known that the\noffer had been made and declined. After all, this seemed to make my\nfather a bigger man than if he had accepted it. Naturally I was asked why\nhe had declined it.\n\n\"He wouldn't take it,\" I replied scornfully. \"Office-holding should be\nleft to politicians.\"\n\nRalph Hambleton, with his precocious and cynical knowledge of the world,\nminimized my triumph by declaring that he would rather be his\ngrandfather, Nathaniel Durrett, than the mayor of the biggest city in the\ncountry. Politicians, he said, were bloodsuckers and thieves, and the\nonly reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal the\ntaxpayers' money....\n\nAs I have intimated, my vision of a future literary career waxed and\nwaned, but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me.\nIf not a literary lion, what was that Somebody to be? Such an environment\nas mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romantic\nsoul. In view of the experience I have just related, it is not surprising\nthat the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me; nor is it\nto be wondered at, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe in\nwhich Ralph's grandfather was held by my father and other influential\npersons, that I failed to be stirred by the elements of greatness in the\ngrim personality of our first citizen, the iron-master. For he possessed\nsuch elements. He lived alone in Ingrain Street in an uncompromising\nmansion I always associated with the Sabbath, not only because I used to\nbe taken there on decorous Sunday visits by my father, but because it was\nthe very quintessence of Presbyterianism. The moment I entered its\n\"portals\"--as Mr. Hawthorne appropriately would have called them--my\nspirit was overwhelmed and suffocated by its formality and orderliness.\nWithin its stern walls Nathaniel Durrett had made a model universe of his\nown, such as the Deity of the Westminster Confession had no doubt meant\nhis greater one to be if man had not rebelled and foiled him.... It was a\nworld from which I was determined to escape at any cost.\n\nMy father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library, with its\nhigh ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo\ncornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a\ntombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow\nbindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was one\nof those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted\nby a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind this table Mr. Durrett sat\nreading a volume of sermons, a really handsome old man in his black tie\nand pleated shirt; tall and spare, straight as a ramrod, with a finely\nmoulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberry\nstain. He called my father by his first name, an immense compliment,\nconsidering how few dared to do so.\n\n\"Well, Matthew,\" the old man would remark, after they had discussed Dr.\nPound's latest flight on the nature of the Trinity or the depravity of\nman, or horticulture, or the Republican Party, \"do you have any better\nnews of Hugh at school?\"\n\n\"I regret to say, Mr. Durrett,\" my father would reply, \"that he does not\nyet seem to be aroused to a sense of his opportunities.\"\n\nWhereupon Mr. Durrett would gimble me with a blue eye that lurked beneath\ngrizzled brows, quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an iron tool.\nI almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger I was in\ntheir company. They two, indeed, were of one kind, and I of another sort\nwho could never understand them,--nor they me. To what depths of despair\nthey reduced me they never knew, and yet they were doing it all for my\ngood! They only managed to convince me that my love of folly was\nineradicable, and that I was on my way head first for perdition. I always\nlooked, during these excruciating and personal moments, at the coloured\nglass bottle.\n\n\"It grieves me to hear it, Hugh,\" Mr. Durrett invariably declared.\n\"You'll never come to any good without study. Now when I was your age...\"\n\nI knew his history by heart, a common one in this country, although he\nmade an honourable name instead of a dishonourable one. And when I\ncontrast him with those of his successors whom I was to know later...!\nBut I shall not anticipate. American genius had not then evolved the\nfalse entry method of overcapitalization. A thrilling history, Mr.\nDurrett's, could I but have entered into it. I did not reflect then that\nthis stern old man must have throbbed once; nay, fire and energy still\nremained in his bowels, else he could not have continued to dominate a\ncity. Nor did it occur to me that the great steel-works that lighted the\nsouthern sky were the result of a passion, of dreams similar to those\npossessing me, but which I could not express. He had founded a family\nwhose position was virtually hereditary, gained riches which for those\ndays were great, compelled men to speak his name with a certain awe. But\nof what use were such riches as his when his religion and morality\ncompelled him to banish from him all the joys in the power of riches to\nbring?\n\nNo, I didn't want to be an iron-master. But it may have been about this\ntime that I began to be impressed with the power of wealth, the adulation\nand reverence it commanded, the importance in which it clothed all who\nshared in it....\n\nThe private school I attended in the company of other boys with whom I\nwas brought up was called Densmore Academy, a large, square building of a\nthen hideous modernity, built of smooth, orange-red bricks with threads\nof black mortar between them. One reads of happy school days, yet I fail\nto recall any really happy hours spent there, even in the yard, which was\ncovered with black cinders that cut you when you fell. I think of it as a\npenitentiary, and the memory of the barred lower windows gives substance\nto this impression.\n\nI suppose I learned something during the seven years of my incarceration.\nAll of value, had its teachers known anything of youthful psychology, of\nnatural bent, could have been put into me in three. At least four\ncriminally wasted years, to say nothing of the benumbing and desiccating\neffect of that old system of education! Chalk and chalk-dust! The\nMediterranean a tinted portion of the map, Italy a man's boot which I\ndrew painfully, with many yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as it\nunrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous\ndistillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and\ncounter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be\nlearned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. \"On June the 7th General\nSo-and-so proceeded with his whole army--\" where? What does it matter?\nOne little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding,\nwere worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil!\n\"Paret\" (a shiver), \"begin at the one hundred and thirtieth line and\ntranslate!\" I can hear myself droning out in detestable English a\nmeaningless portion of that endless journey of the pious AEneas; can see\nGene Hollister, with heart-rending glances of despair, stumbling through\nCornelius Nepos in an unventilated room with chalk-rubbed blackboards and\nheavy odours of ink and stale lunch. And I graduated from Densmore\nAcademy, the best school in our city, in the 80's, without having been\ntaught even the rudiments of citizenship.\n\nKnowledge was presented to us as a corpse, which bit by bit we painfully\ndissected. We never glimpsed the living, growing thing, never experienced\nthe Spirit, the same spirit that was able magically to waft me from a\nwintry Lyme Street to the South Seas, the energizing, electrifying Spirit\nof true achievement, of life, of God himself. Little by little its flames\nwere smothered until in manhood there seemed no spark of it left alive.\nMany years were to pass ere it was to revive again, as by a miracle. I\ntravelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed in a port-hole, rose-red\nSeriphos set in a living blue that paled the sapphire; the seas Ulysses\nhad sailed, and the company of the Argonauts. My soul was steeped in\nunimagined colour, and in the memory of one rapturous instant is gathered\nwhat I was soon to see of Greece, is focussed the meaning of history,\npoetry and art. I was to stand one evening in spring on the mound where\nheroes sleep and gaze upon the plain of Marathon between darkening\nmountains and the blue thread of the strait peaceful now, flushed with\npink and white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on the\ncliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis fought\nand lost.... In that port-hole glimpse a Themistocles was revealed, a\nSocrates, a Homer and a Phidias, an AEschylus, and a Pericles; yes, and a\nJohn brooding Revelations on his sea-girt rock as twilight falls over the\nwaters....\n\nI saw the Roman Empire, that Scarlet Woman whose sands were dyed crimson\nwith blood to appease her harlotry, whose ships were laden with treasures\nfrom the immutable East, grain from the valley of the Nile, spices from\nArabia, precious purple stuffs from Tyre, tribute and spoil, slaves and\njewels from conquered nations she absorbed; and yet whose very emperors\nwere the unconscious instruments of a Progress they wot not of, preserved\nto the West by Marathon and Salamis. With Caesar's legions its message\nwent forth across Hispania to the cliffs of the wild western ocean,\nthrough Hercynian forests to tribes that dwelt where great rivers roll up\ntheir bars by misty, northern seas, and even to Celtic fastnesses beyond\nthe Wall....\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nIn and out of my early memories like a dancing ray of sunlight flits the\nspirit of Nancy. I was always fond of her, but in extreme youth I\naccepted her incense with masculine complacency and took her allegiance\nfor granted, never seeking to fathom the nature of the spell I exercised\nover her. Naturally other children teased me about her; but what was\nworse, with that charming lack of self-consciousness and consideration\nfor what in after life are called the finer feelings, they teased her\nabout me before me, my presence deterring them not at all. I can see them\nhopping around her in the Peters yard crying out:--\"Nancy's in love with\nHugh! Nancy's in love with Hugh!\"\n\nA sufficiently thrilling pastime, this, for Nancy could take care of\nherself. I was a bungler beside her when it came to retaliation, and not\nthe least of her attractions for me was her capacity for anger: fury\nwould be a better term. She would fly at them--even as she flew at the\nhead-hunters when the Petrel was menaced; and she could run like a deer.\nWoe to the unfortunate victim she overtook! Masculine strength, exercised\napologetically, availed but little, and I have seen Russell Peters and\nGene Hollister retire from such encounters humiliated and weeping. She\nnever caught Ralph; his methods of torture were more intelligent and\nsubtle than Gene's and Russell's, but she was his equal when it came to a\nquestion of tongues.\n\n\"I know what's the matter with you, Ralph Hambleton,\" she would say.\n\"You're jealous.\" An accusation that invariably put him on the defensive.\n\"You think all the girls are in love with you, don't you?\"\n\nThese scenes I found somewhat embarrassing. Not so Nancy. After\ndiscomfiting her tormenters, or wounding and scattering them, she would\nreturn to my side.... In spite of her frankly expressed preference for me\nshe had an elusiveness that made a continual appeal to my imagination.\nShe was never obvious or commonplace, and long before I began to\nexperience the discomforts and sufferings of youthful love I was\nfascinated by a nature eloquent with contradictions and inconsistencies.\nShe was a tomboy, yet her own sex was enhanced rather than overwhelmed by\ncontact with the other: and no matter how many trees she climbed she\nnever seemed to lose her daintiness. It was innate.\n\nShe could, at times, be surprisingly demure. These impressions of her\ndaintiness and demureness are particularly vivid in a picture my memory\nhas retained of our walking together, unattended, to Susan Blackwood's\nbirthday party. She must have been about twelve years old. It was the\nfirst time I had escorted her or any other girl to a party; Mrs. Willett\nhad smiled over the proceeding, but Nancy and I took it most seriously,\nas symbolic of things to come. I can see Powell Street, where Nancy\nlived, at four o'clock on a mild and cloudy December afternoon, the\ndecorous, retiring houses, Nancy on one side of the pavement by the iron\nfences and I on the other by the tree boxes. I can't remember her dress,\nonly the exquisite sense of her slimness and daintiness comes back to me,\nof her dark hair in a long braid tied with a red ribbon, of her slender\nlegs clad in black stockings of shining silk. We felt the occasion to be\nsomehow too significant, too eloquent for words....\n\nIn silence we climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the\nBlackwood mansion, when suddenly the door was opened, letting out sounds\nof music and revelry. Mr. Blackwood's coloured butler, Ned, beamed at us\nhospitably, inviting us to enter the brightness within. The shades were\ndrawn, the carpets were covered with festal canvas, the folding doors\nbetween the square rooms were flung back, the prisms of the big\nchandeliers flung their light over animated groups of matrons and\nchildren. Mrs. Watling, the mother of the Watling twins--too young to be\npresent was directing with vivacity the game of \"King William was King\nJames's son,\" and Mrs. McAlery was playing the piano.\n\n       \"Now choose you East, now choose you West,\n        Now choose the one you love the best!\"\n\nTom Peters, in a velvet suit and consequently very miserable, refused to\nembrace Ethel Hollister; while the scornful Julia lurked in a corner:\nnothing would induce her to enter such a foolish game. I experienced a\nnovel discomfiture when Ralph kissed Nancy.... Afterwards came the feast,\nfrom which Ham Durrett, in a pink paper cap with streamers, was at length\nforcibly removed by his mother. Thus early did he betray his love for the\nflesh pots....\n\nIt was not until I was sixteen that a player came and touched the keys of\nmy soul, and it awoke, bewildered, at these first tender notes. The music\nquickened, tripping in ecstasy, to change by subtle phrases into themes\nof exquisite suffering hitherto unexperienced. I knew that I loved Nancy.\n\nWith the advent of longer dresses that reached to her shoe tops a change\nhad come over her. The tomboy, the willing camp-follower who loved me and\nwas unashamed, were gone forever, and a mysterious, transfigured being,\nneither girl nor woman, had magically been evolved. Could it be possible\nthat she loved me still? My complacency had vanished; suddenly I had\nbecome the aggressor, if only I had known how to \"aggress\"; but in her\npresence I was seized by an accursed shyness that paralyzed my tongue,\nand the things I had planned to say were left unuttered. It was\nsomething--though I did not realize it--to be able to feel like that.\n\nThe time came when I could no longer keep this thing to myself. The need\nof an outlet, of a confidant, became imperative, and I sought out Tom\nPeters. It was in February; I remember because I had ventured--with\nincredible daring--to send Nancy an elaborate, rosy Valentine; written on\nthe back of it in a handwriting all too thinly disguised was the\nfollowing verse, the triumphant result of much hard thinking in school\nhours:--\n\n          Should you of this the sender guess\n          Without another sign,\n          Would you repent, and rest content\n          To be his Valentine\n\nI grew hot and cold by turns when I thought of its possible effects on my\nchances.\n\nOne of those useless, slushy afternoons, I took Tom for a walk that led\nus, as dusk came on, past Nancy's house. Only by painful degrees did I\nsucceed in overcoming my bashfulness; but Tom, when at last I had blurted\nout the secret, was most sympathetic, although the ailment from which I\nsuffered was as yet outside of the realm of his experience. I have used\nthe word \"ailment\" advisedly, since he evidently put my trouble in the\nsame category with diphtheria or scarlet fever, remarking that it was\n\"darned hard luck.\" In vain I sought to explain that I did not regard it\nas such in the least; there was suffering, I admitted, but a degree of\nbliss none could comprehend who had not felt it. He refused to be\nenvious, or at least to betray envy; yet he was curious, asking many\nquestions, and I had reason to think before we parted that his admiration\nfor me was increased. Was it possible that he, too, didn't love Nancy?\nNo, it was funny, but he didn't. He failed to see much in girls: his tone\nremained commiserating, yet he began to take an interest in the progress\nof my suit.\n\nFor a time I had no progress to report. Out of consideration for those\nmembers of our weekly dancing class whose parents were Episcopalians the\nmeetings were discontinued during Lent, and to call would have demanded a\ncourage not in me; I should have become an object of ridicule among my\nfriends and I would have died rather than face Nancy's mother and the\nmembers of her household. I set about making ingenious plans with a view\nto encounters that might appear casual. Nancy's school was dismissed at\ntwo, so was mine. By walking fast I could reach Salisbury Street, near\nSt. Mary's Seminary for Young Ladies, in time to catch her, but even then\nfor many days I was doomed to disappointment. She was either in company\nwith other girls, or else she had taken another route; this I surmised\nled past Sophy McAlery's house, and I enlisted Tom as a confederate. He\nwas to make straight for the McAlery's on Elm while I followed Powell,\ntwo short blocks away, and if Nancy went to Sophy's and left there alone\nhe was to announce the fact by a preconcerted signal. Through long and\npersistent practice he had acquired a whistle shrill enough to wake the\ndead, accomplished by placing a finger of each hand between his teeth;--a\ngift that was the envy of his acquaintances, and the subject of much\ndiscussion as to whether his teeth were peculiar. Tom insisted that they\nwere; it was an added distinction.\n\nOn this occasion he came up behind Nancy as she was leaving Sophy's gate\nand immediately sounded the alarm. She leaped in the air, dropped her\nschool-books and whirled on him.\n\n\"Tom Peters! How dare you frighten me so!\" she cried.\n\nTom regarded her in sudden dismay.\n\n\"I--I didn't mean to,\" he said. \"I didn't think you were so near.\"\n\n\"But you must have seen me.\"\n\n\"I wasn't paying much attention,\" he equivocated,--a remark not\ncalculated to appease her anger.\n\n\"Why were you doing it?\"\n\n\"I was just practising,\" said Tom.\n\n\"Practising!\" exclaimed Nancy, scornfully. \"I shouldn't think you needed\nto practise that any more.\"\n\n\"Oh, I've done it louder,\" he declared, \"Listen!\"\n\nShe seized his hands, snatching them away from his lips. At this critical\nmoment I appeared around the corner considerably out of breath, my heart\nbeating like a watchman's rattle. I tried to feign nonchalance.\n\n\"Hello, Tom,\" I said. \"Hello, Nancy. What's the matter?\"\n\n\"It's Tom--he frightened me out of my senses.\" Dropping his wrists, she\ngave me a most disconcerting look; there was in it the suspicion of a\nsmile. \"What are you doing here, Hugh?\"\n\n\"I heard Tom,\" I explained.\n\n\"I should think you might have. Where were you?\"\n\n\"Over in another street,\" I answered, with deliberate vagueness. Nancy\nhad suddenly become demure. I did not dare look at her, but I had a most\nuncomfortable notion that she suspected the plot. Meanwhile we had begun\nto walk along, all three of us, Tom, obviously ill at ease and\ndiscomfited, lagging a little behind. Just before we reached the corner I\nmanaged to kick him. His departure was by no means graceful.\n\n\"I've got to go;\" he announced abruptly, and turned down the side street.\nWe watched his sturdy figure as it receded.\n\n\"Well, of all queer boys!\" said Nancy, and we walked on again.\n\n\"He's my best friend,\" I replied warmly.\n\n\"He doesn't seem to care much for your company,\" said Nancy.\n\n\"Oh, they have dinner at half past two,\" I explained.\n\n\"Aren't you afraid of missing yours, Hugh?\" she asked wickedly.\n\n\"I've got time. I'd--I'd rather be with you.\" After making which\naudacious remark I was seized by a spasm of apprehension. But nothing\nhappened. Nancy remained demure. She didn't remind me that I had\nreflected upon Tom.\n\n\"That's nice of you, Hugh.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm not saying it because it's nice,\" I faltered. \"I'd rather be\nwith you than--with anybody.\"\n\nThis was indeed the acme of daring. I couldn't believe I had actually\nsaid it. But again I received no rebuke; instead came a remark that set\nme palpitating, that I treasured for many weeks to come.\n\n\"I got a very nice valentine,\" she informed me.\n\n\"What was it like?\" I asked thickly.\n\n\"Oh, beautiful! All pink lace and--and Cupids, and the picture of a young\nman and a young woman in a garden.\"\n\n\"Was that all?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, there was a verse, in the oddest handwriting. I wonder who sent\nit?\"\n\n\"Perhaps Ralph,\" I hazarded ecstatically.\n\n\"Ralph couldn't write poetry,\" she replied disdainfully. \"Besides, it was\nvery good poetry.\"\n\nI suggested other possible authors and admirers. She rejected them all.\nWe reached her gate, and I lingered. As she looked down at me from the\nstone steps her eyes shone with a soft light that filled me with\nradiance, and into her voice had come a questioning, shy note that\nthrilled the more because it revealed a new Nancy of whom I had not\ndreamed.\n\n\"Perhaps I'll meet you again--coming from school,\" I said.\n\n\"Perhaps,\" she answered. \"You'll be late to dinner, Hugh, if you don't\ngo....\"\n\nI was late, and unable to eat much dinner, somewhat to my mother's alarm.\nLove had taken away my appetite.... After dinner, when I was wandering\naimlessly about the yard, Tom appeared on the other side of the fence.\n\n\"Don't ever ask me to do that again,\" he said gloomily.\n\nI did meet Nancy again coming from school, not every day, but nearly\nevery day. At first we pretended that there was no arrangement in this,\nand we both feigned surprise when we encountered one another. It was\nNancy who possessed the courage that I lacked. One afternoon she\nsaid:--\"I think I'd better walk with the girls to-morrow, Hugh.\"\n\nI protested, but she was firm. And after that it was an understood thing\nthat on certain days I should go directly home, feeling like an exile.\nSophy McAlery had begun to complain: and I gathered that Sophy was\nNancy's confidante. The other girls had begun to gossip. It was Nancy who\nconceived the brilliant idea--the more delightful because she said\nnothing about it to me--of making use of Sophy. She would leave school\nwith Sophy, and I waited on the corner near the McAlery house. Poor\nSophy! She was always of those who piped while others danced. In those\ndays she had two straw-coloured pigtails, and her plain, faithful face is\nbefore me as I write. She never betrayed to me the excitement that filled\nher at being the accomplice of our romance.\n\nGossip raged, of course. Far from being disturbed, we used it, so to\nspeak, as a handle for our love-making, which was carried on in an\ninferential rather than a direct fashion. Were they saying that we were\nlovers? Delightful! We laughed at one another in the sunshine.... At last\nwe achieved the great adventure of a clandestine meeting and went for a\nwalk in the afternoon, avoiding the houses of our friends. I've forgotten\nwhich of us had the boldness to propose it. The crocuses and tulips had\nbroken the black mould, the flower beds in the front yards were beginning\nto blaze with scarlet and yellow, the lawns had turned a living green.\nWhat did we talk about? The substance has vanished, only the flavour\nremains.\n\nOne awoke of a morning to the twittering of birds, to walk to school\namidst delicate, lace-like shadows of great trees acloud with old gold:\nthe buds lay curled like tiny feathers on the pavements. Suddenly the\nshade was dense, the sunlight white and glaring, the odour of lilacs\nheavy in the air, spring in all its fulness had come,--spring and Nancy.\nJust so subtly, yet with the same seeming suddenness had budded and come\nto leaf and flower a perfect understanding, which nevertheless remained\nundefined. This, I had no doubt, was my fault, and due to the\nincomprehensible shyness her presence continued to inspire. Although we\ndid not altogether abandon our secret trysts, we began to meet in more\nnatural ways; there were garden parties and picnics where we strayed\ntogether through the woods and fields, pausing to tear off, one by one,\nthe petals of a daisy, \"She loves me, she loves me not.\" I never ventured\nto kiss her; I always thought afterwards I might have done so, she had\nseemed so willing, her eyes had shone so expectantly as I sat beside her\non the grass; nor can I tell why I desired to kiss her save that this was\nthe traditional thing to do to the lady one loved. To be sure, the very\ntouch of her hand was galvanic. Paradoxically, I saw the human side of\nher, the yielding gentleness that always amazed me, yet I never overcame\nmy awe of the divine; she was a being sacrosanct. Whether this idealism\nwere innate or the result of such romances as I had read I cannot say....\nI got, indeed, an avowal of a sort. The weekly dancing classes having\nbegun again, on one occasion when she had waltzed twice with Gene\nHollister I protested.\n\n\"Don't be silly, Hugh,\" she whispered. \"Of course I like you better than\nanyone else--you ought to know that.\"\n\nWe never got to the word \"love,\" but we knew the feeling.\n\nOne cloud alone flung its shadow across these idyllic days. Before I was\nfully aware of it I had drawn very near to the first great junction-point\nof my life, my graduation from Densmore Academy. We were to \"change\ncars,\" in the language of Principal Haime. Well enough for the fortunate\nones who were to continue the academic journey, which implied a\npostponement of the serious business of life; but month after month of\nthe last term had passed without a hint from my father that I was to\nchange cars. Again and again I almost succeeded in screwing up my courage\nto the point of mentioning college to him,--never quite; his manner,\nthough kind and calm, somehow strengthened my suspicion that I had been\njudged and found wanting, and doomed to \"business\": galley slavery, I\ndeemed it, humdrum, prosaic, degrading! When I thought of it at night I\nexperienced almost a frenzy of self-pity. My father couldn't intend to do\nthat, just because my monthly reports hadn't always been what he thought\nthey ought to be! Gene Hollister's were no better, if as good, and he was\ngoing to Princeton. Was I, Hugh Paret, to be denied the distinction of\nbeing a college man, the delights of university existence, cruelly\nseparated and set apart from my friends whom I loved! held up to the\nworld and especially to Nancy Willett as good for nothing else! The\nthought was unbearable. Characteristically, I hoped against hope.\n\nI have mentioned garden parties. One of our annual institutions was Mrs.\nWillett's children's party in May; for the Willett house had a garden\nthat covered almost a quarter of a block. Mrs. Willett loved children,\nthe greatest regret of her life being that providence had denied her a\nlarge family. As far back as my memory goes she had been something of an\ninvalid; she had a sweet, sad face, and delicate hands so thin as to seem\nalmost transparent; and she always sat in a chair under the great tree on\nthe lawn, smiling at us as we soared to dizzy heights in the swing, or\nplayed croquet, or scurried through the paths, and in and out of the\nlatticed summer-house with shrieks of laughter and terror. It all ended\nwith a feast at a long table made of sawhorses and boards covered with a\nwhite cloth, and when the cake was cut there was wild excitement as to\nwho would get the ring and who the thimble.\n\nWe were more decorous, or rather more awkward now, and the party began\nwith a formal period when the boys gathered in a group and pretended\nindifference to the girls. The girls were cleverer at it, and actually\nachieved the impression that they were indifferent. We kept an eye on\nthem, uneasily, while we talked. To be in Nancy's presence and not alone\nwith Nancy was agonizing, and I wondered at a sang-froid beyond my power\nto achieve, accused her of coldness, my sufferings being the greater\nbecause she seemed more beautiful, daintier, more irreproachable than I\nhad ever seen her. Even at that early age she gave evidence of the social\ngift, and it was due to her efforts that we forgot our best clothes and\nour newly born self-consciousness. When I begged her to slip away with me\namong the currant bushes she whispered:--\"I can't, Hugh. I'm the hostess,\nyou know.\"\n\nI had gone there in a flutter of anticipation, but nothing went right\nthat day. There was dancing in the big rooms that looked out on the\ngarden; the only girl with whom I cared to dance was Nancy, and she was\nbusy finding partners for the backward members of both sexes; though she\nwas my partner, to be sure, when it all wound up with a Virginia reel on\nthe lawn. Then, at supper, to cap the climax of untoward incidents, an\nanimated discussion was begun as to the relative merits of the various\ncolleges, the girls, too, taking sides. Mac Willett, Nancy's cousin, was\ngoing to Yale, Gene Hollister to Princeton, the Ewan boys to our State\nUniversity, while Perry Blackwood and Ralph Hambleton and Ham Durrett\nwere destined for Harvard; Tom Peters, also, though he was not to\ngraduate from the Academy for another year. I might have known that Ralph\nwould have suspected my misery. He sat triumphantly next to Nancy\nherself, while I had been told off to entertain the faithful Sophy.\nNoticing my silence, he demanded wickedly:--\"Where are you going, Hugh?\"\n\n\"Harvard, I think,\" I answered with as bold a front as I could muster. \"I\nhaven't talked it over with my father yet.\" It was intolerable to admit\nthat I of them all was to be left behind.\n\nNancy looked at me in surprise. She was always downright.\n\n\"Oh, Hugh, doesn't your father mean to put you in business?\" she\nexclaimed.\n\nA hot flush spread over my face. Even to her I had not betrayed my\napprehensions on this painful subject. Perhaps it was because of this\nvery reason, knowing me as she did, that she had divined my fate. Could\nmy father have spoken of it to anyone?\n\n\"Not that I know of,\" I said angrily. I wondered if she knew how deeply\nshe had hurt me. The others laughed. The colour rose in Nancy's cheeks,\nand she gave me an appealing, almost tearful look, but my heart had\nhardened. As soon as supper was over I left the table to wander, nursing\nmy wrongs, in a far corner of the garden, gay shouts and laughter still\nechoing in my ears. I was negligible, even my pathetic subterfuge had\nbeen detected and cruelly ridiculed by these friends whom I had always\nloved and sought out, and who now were so absorbed in their own prospects\nand happiness that they cared nothing for mine. And Nancy! I had been\nbetrayed by Nancy!... Twilight was coming on. I remember glancing down\nmiserably at the new blue suit I had put on so hopefully for the first\ntime that afternoon.\n\nSeparating the garden from the street was a high, smooth board fence with\na little gate in it, and I had my hand on the latch when I heard the\nsound of hurrying steps on the gravel path and a familiar voice calling\nmy name.\n\n\"Hugh! Hugh!\"\n\nI turned. Nancy stood before me.\n\n\"Hugh, you're not going!\"\n\n\"Yes, I am.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"If you don't know, there's no use telling you.\"\n\n\"Just because I said your father intended to put you in business! Oh,\nHugh, why are you so foolish and so proud? Do you suppose that\nanyone--that I--think any the worse of you?\"\n\nYes, she had read me, she alone had entered into the source of that\nprevarication, the complex feelings from which it sprang. But at that\nmoment I could not forgive her for humiliating me. I hugged my grievance.\n\n\"It was true, what I said,\" I declared hotly. \"My father has not spoken.\nIt is true that I'm going to college, because I'll make it true. I may\nnot go this year.\"\n\nShe stood staring in sheer surprise at sight of my sudden, quivering\npassion. I think the very intensity of it frightened her. And then,\nwithout more ado, I opened the gate and was gone....\n\nThat night, though I did not realize it, my journey into a Far Country\nwas begun.\n\nThe misery that followed this incident had one compensating factor.\nAlthough too late to electrify Densmore and Principal Haime with my\nscholarship, I was determined to go to college now, somehow, sometime. I\nwould show my father, these companions of mine, and above all Nancy\nherself the stuff of which I was made, compel them sooner or later to\nadmit that they had misjudged me. I had been possessed by similar\nresolutions before, though none so strong, and they had a way of sinking\nbelow the surface of my consciousness, only to rise again and again until\nby sheer pressure they achieved realization.\n\nYet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which I\nwould have thought unbelievable: she began to show a marked preference\nfor Ralph Hambleton. At first I regarded this affair as the most obvious\nof retaliations. She, likewise, had pride. Gradually, however, a feeling\nof uneasiness crept over me: as pretence, her performance was altogether\ntoo realistic; she threw her whole soul into it, danced with Ralph as\noften as she had ever danced with me, took walks with him, deferred to\nhis opinions until, in spite of myself, I became convinced that the\npreference was genuine. I was a curious mixture of self-confidence and\nself-depreciation, and never had his superiority seemed more patent than\nnow. His air of satisfaction was maddening.\n\nHow well I remember his triumph on that hot, June morning of our\ngraduation from Densmore, a triumph he had apparently achieved without\nlabour, and which he seemed to despise. A fitful breeze blew through the\nchapel at the top of the building; we, the graduates, sat in two rows\nnext to the platform, and behind us the wooden benches nicked by many\nknives--were filled with sisters and mothers and fathers, some anxious,\nsome proud and some sad. So brief a span, like that summer's day, and\nyouth was gone! Would the time come when we, too, should sit by the\nwaters of Babylon and sigh for it? The world was upside down.\n\nWe read the one hundred and third psalm. Then Principal Haime, in his\nlong \"Prince Albert\" and a ridiculously inadequate collar that emphasized\nhis scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we had formed,\nof the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who were the\nprivileged of the city. \"We had crossed to-day,\" he said, \"an invisible\nthreshold. Some were to go on to higher institutions of learning.\nOthers...\" I gulped. Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented those who\nhad made the most of their opportunities. And it was then that he called\nout, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton. Summa cum\nlaude! Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets at the\nsound of the applause. I might have been the prize scholar, instead of\nRalph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what this focussing\nday of graduation meant! I might have been a marked individual, with\npeople murmuring words of admiration, of speculation concerning the\nbrilliancy of my future!... When at last my name was called and I rose to\nreceive my diploma it seemed as though my incompetency had been\nproclaimed to the world...\n\nThat evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasium\nand watched Nancy dancing with Ralph.\n\nI let her go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed to\nhave taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with\nsadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hitherto\nspontaneous, warm and living was withering within me.\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nIt was true to my father's character that he should have waited until the\nday after graduation to discuss my future, if discussion be the proper\nword. The next evening at supper he informed me that he wished to talk to\nme in the sitting-room, whither I followed him with a sinking heart. He\nseated himself at his desk, and sat for a moment gazing at me with a\ncurious and benumbing expression, and then the blow fell.\n\n\"Hugh, I have spoken to your Cousin Robert Breck about you, and he has\nkindly consented to give you a trial.\"\n\n\"To give me a trial, sir!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"To employ you at a small but reasonable salary.\"\n\nI could find no words to express my dismay. My dreams had come to this,\nthat I was to be made a clerk in a grocery store! The fact that it was a\nwholesale grocery store was little consolation.\n\n\"But father,\" I faltered, \"I don't want to go into business.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" The sharpness of the exclamation might have betrayed to me the pain\nin which he was, but he recovered himself instantly. And I could see\nnothing but an inexorable justice closing in on me mechanically; a blind\njustice, in its inability to read my soul. \"The time to have decided\nthat,\" he declared, \"was some years ago, my son. I have given you the\nbest schooling a boy can have, and you have not shown the least\nappreciation of your advantages. I do not enjoy saying this, Hugh, but in\nspite of all my efforts and of those of your mother, you have remained\nundeveloped and irresponsible. My hope, as you know, was to have made you\na professional man, a lawyer, and to take you into my office. My father\nand grandfather were professional men before me. But you are wholly\nlacking in ambition.\"\n\nAnd I had burned with it all my life!\n\n\"I have ambition,\" I cried, the tears forcing themselves to my eyes.\n\n\"Ambition--for what, my son?\"\n\nI hesitated. How could I tell him that my longings to do something, to be\nsomebody in the world were never more keen than at that moment? Matthew\nArnold had not then written his definition of God as the stream of\ntendency by which we fulfil the laws of our being; and my father, at any\nrate, would not have acquiesced in the definition. Dimly but passionately\nI felt then, as I had always felt, that I had a mission to perform, a\nservice to do which ultimately would be revealed to me. But the\nhopelessness of explaining this took on, now, the proportions of a\ntragedy. And I could only gaze at him.\n\n\"What kind of ambition, Hugh?\" he repeated sadly.\n\n\"I--I have sometimes thought I could write, sir, if I had a chance. I\nlike it better than anything else. I--I have tried it. And if I could\nonly go to college--\"\n\n\"Literature!\" There was in his voice a scandalized note.\n\n\"Why not, father?\" I asked weakly.\n\nAnd now it was he who, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss to\nexpress himself. He turned in his chair, and with a sweep of the hand\nindicated the long rows of musty-backed volumes. \"Here,\" he said, \"you\nhave had at your disposal as well-assorted a small library as the city\ncontains, and you have not availed yourself of it. Yet you talk to me of\nliterature as a profession. I am afraid, Hugh, that this is merely\nanother indication of your desire to shun hard work, and I must tell you\nfrankly that I fail to see in you the least qualification for such a\ncareer. You have not even inherited my taste for books. I venture to say,\nfor instance, that you have never even read a paragraph of Plutarch, and\nyet when I was your age I was completely familiar with the Lives. You\nwill not read Scott or Dickens.\"\n\nThe impeachment was not to be denied, for the classics were hateful to\nme. Naturally I was afraid to make such a damning admission. My father\nhad succeeded in presenting my ambition as the height of absurdity and\npresumption, and with something of the despair of a shipwrecked mariner\nmy eyes rested on the green expanses of those book-backs, Bohn's Standard\nLibrary! Nor did it occur to him or to me that one might be great in\nliterature without having read so much as a gritty page of them....\n\nHe finished his argument by reminding me that worthless persons sought to\nenter the arts in the search for a fool's paradise, and in order to\nsatisfy a reprehensible craving for notoriety. The implication was clear,\nthat imaginative production could not be classed as hard work. And he\nassured me that literature was a profession in which no one could afford\nto be second class. A Longfellow, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, or nothing.\nThis was a practical age and a practical country. We had indeed produced\nIrvings and Hawthornes, but the future of American letters was, to say\nthe least, problematical. We were a utilitarian people who would never\ncreate a great literature, and he reminded me that the days of the\nromantic and the picturesque had passed. He gathered that I desired to be\na novelist. Well, novelists, with certain exceptions, were fantastic\nfellows who blew iridescent soap-bubbles and who had no morals. In the\nface of such a philosophy as his I was mute. The world appeared a dreary\nplace of musty offices and smoky steel-works, of coal dust, of labour\nwithout a spark of inspiration. And that other, the world of my dreams,\nsimply did not exist.\n\nIncidentally my father had condemned Cousin Robert's wholesale grocery\nbusiness as a refuge of the lesser of intellect that could not achieve\nthe professions,--an inference not calculated to stir my ambition and\nliking for it at the start.\n\nI began my business career on the following Monday morning. At breakfast,\nheld earlier than usual on my account, my mother's sympathy was the more\neloquent for being unspoken, while my father wore an air of unwonted\ncheerfulness; charging me, when I departed, to give his kindest\nremembrances to my Cousin Robert Breck. With a sense of martyrdom somehow\ndeepened by this attitude of my parents I boarded a horse-car and went\ndown town. Early though it was, the narrow streets of the wholesale\ndistrict reverberated with the rattle of trucks and echoed with the\nshouts of drivers. The day promised to be scorching. At the door of the\nwarehouse of Breck and Company I was greeted by the ineffable smell of\ngroceries in which the suggestion of parched coffee prevailed. This is\nthe sharpest remembrance of all, and even to-day that odour affects me\nsomewhat in the manner that the interior of a ship affects a person prone\nto seasickness. My Cousin Robert, in his well-worn alpaca coat, was\nalready seated at his desk behind the clouded glass partition next the\nalley at the back of the store, and as I entered he gazed at me over his\nsteel-rimmed spectacles with that same disturbing look of clairvoyance I\nhave already mentioned as one of his characteristics. The grey eyes were\nquizzical, and yet seemed to express a little commiseration.\n\n\"Well, Hugh, you've decided to honour us, have you?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm much obliged for giving me the place, Cousin Robert,\" I replied.\n\nBut he had no use for that sort of politeness, and he saw through me, as\nalways.\n\n\"So you're not too tony for the grocery business, eh?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, sir.\"\n\n\"It was good enough for old Benjamin Breck,\" he said. \"Well, I'll give\nyou a fair trial, my boy, and no favouritism on account of relationship,\nany more than to Willie.\"\n\nHis strong voice resounded through the store, and presently my cousin\nWillie appeared in answer to his summons, the same Willie who used to\nlead me, on mischief bent, through the barns and woods and fields of\nClaremore. He was barefoot no longer, though freckled still, grown lanky\nand tall; he wore a coarse blue apron that fell below his knees, and a\npencil was stuck behind his ear.\n\n\"Get an apron for Hugh,\" said his father.\n\nWillie's grin grew wider.\n\n\"I'll fit him out,\" he said.\n\n\"Start him in the shipping department,\" directed Cousin Robert, and\nturned to his letters.\n\nI was forthwith provided with an apron, and introduced to the slim and\nanaemic but cheerful Johnny Hedges, the shipping clerk, hard at work in\nthe alley. Secretly I looked down on my fellow-clerks, as one destined\nfor a higher mission, made out of better stuff,--finer stuff. Despite my\nattempt to hide this sense of superiority they were swift to discover it;\nand perhaps it is to my credit as well as theirs that they did not resent\nit. Curiously enough, they seemed to acknowledge it. Before the week was\nout I had earned the nickname of Beau Brummel.\n\n\"Say, Beau,\" Johnny Hedges would ask, when I appeared of a morning, \"what\nhappened in the great world last night?\"\n\nI had an affection for them, these fellow-clerks, and I often wondered at\ntheir contentment with the drab lives they led, at their\nself-congratulation for \"having a job\" at Breck and Company's.\n\n\"You don't mean to say you like this kind of work?\" I exclaimed one day\nto Johnny Hedges, as we sat on barrels of XXXX flour looking out at the\nhot sunlight in the alley.\n\n\"It ain't a question of liking it, Beau,\" he rebuked me. \"It's all very\nwell for you to talk, since your father's a millionaire\" (a fiction so\nfirmly embedded in their heads that no amount of denial affected it),\n\"but what do you think would happen to me if I was fired? I couldn't go\nhome and take it easy--you bet not. I just want to shake hands with\nmyself when I think that I've got a home, and a job like this. I know a\nfeller--a hard worker he was, too who walked the pavements for three\nmonths when the Colvers failed, and couldn't get nothing, and took to\ndrink, and the last I heard of him he was sleeping in police stations and\nwalking the ties, and his wife's a waitress at a cheap hotel. Don't you\nthink it's easy to get a job.\"\n\nI was momentarily sobered by the earnestness with which he brought home\nto me the relentlessness of our civilization. It seemed incredible. I\nshould have learned a lesson in that store. Barring a few discordant days\nwhen the orders came in too fast or when we were short handed because of\nsickness, it was a veritable hive of happiness; morning after morning\nclerks and porters arrived, pale, yet smiling, and laboured with\ncheerfulness from eight o'clock until six, and departed as cheerfully for\nmodest homes in obscure neighbourhoods that seemed to me areas of exile.\nThey were troubled with no visions of better things. When the travelling\nmen came in from the \"road\" there was great hilarity. Important\npersonages, these, looked up to by the city clerks; jolly, reckless,\nElizabethan-like rovers, who had tasted of the wine of liberty--and of\nother wines with the ineradicable lust for the road in their blood. No\nmore routine for Jimmy Bowles, who was king of them all. I shudder to\nthink how much of my knowledge of life I owe to this Jimmy, whose stories\nwould have filled a quarto volume, but could on no account have been\npublished; for a self-respecting post-office would not have allowed them\nto pass through the mails. As it was, Jimmy gave them circulation enough.\nI can still see his round face, with the nose just indicated, his wicked,\ntwinkling little eyes, and I can hear his husky voice fall to a whisper\nwhen \"the boss\" passed through the store. Jimmy, when visiting us, always\nhad a group around him. His audacity with women amazed me, for he never\npassed one of the \"lady clerks\" without some form of caress, which they\nresented but invariably laughed at. One day he imparted to me his code of\nmorality: he never made love to another man's wife, so he assured me, if\nhe knew the man! The secret of life he had discovered in laughter, and by\nlaughter he sold quantities of Cousin Robert's groceries.\n\nMr. Bowles boasted of a catholic acquaintance in all the cities of his\ndistrict, but before venturing forth to conquer these he had learned his\nown city by heart. My Cousin Robert was not aware of the fact that Mr.\nBowles \"showed\" the town to certain customers. He even desired to show it\nto me, but an epicurean strain in my nature held me back. Johnny Hedges\nwent with him occasionally, and Henry Schneider, the bill clerk, and I\nlistened eagerly to their experiences, afterwards confiding them to\nTom....\n\nThere were times when, driven by an overwhelming curiosity, I ventured\ninto certain strange streets, alone, shivering with cold and excitement,\ngripped by a fascination I did not comprehend, my eyes now averted, now\nirresistibly raised toward the white streaks of light that outlined the\nwindows of dark houses....\n\nOne winter evening as I was going home, I encountered at the mail-box a\nyoung woman who shot at me a queer, twisted smile. I stood still, as\nthough stunned, looking after her, and when halfway across the slushy\nstreet she turned and smiled again. Prodigiously excited, I followed her,\nfearful that I might be seen by someone who knew me, nor was it until she\nreached an unfamiliar street that I ventured to overtake her. She\nconfounded me by facing me.\n\n\"Get out!\" she cried fiercely.\n\nI halted in my tracks, overwhelmed with shame. But she continued to\nregard me by the light of the street lamp.\n\n\"You didn't want to be seen with me on Second Street, did you? You're one\nof those sneaking swells.\"\n\nThe shock of this sudden onslaught was tremendous. I stood frozen to the\nspot, trembling, convicted, for I knew that her accusation was just; I\nhad wounded her, and I had a desire to make amends.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I faltered. \"I didn't mean--to offend you. And you smiled--\"\nI got no farther. She began to laugh, and so loudly that I glanced\nanxiously about. I would have fled, but something still held me,\nsomething that belied the harshness of her laugh.\n\n\"You're just a kid,\" she told me. \"Say, you get along home, and tell your\nmamma I sent you.\"\n\nWhereupon I departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I had\nnever before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When at\nlength I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude only\nserved to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen herself to see if my\nmince-pie were hot, and served me with her own hands. My father remained\nat his place at the head of the table while I tried to eat, smiling\nindulgently at her ministrations.\n\n\"Oh, a little hard work won't hurt him, Sarah,\" he said. \"When I was his\nage I often worked until eleven o'clock and never felt the worse for it.\nBusiness must be pretty good, eh, Hugh?\"\n\nI had never seen him in a more relaxing mood, a more approving one. My\nmother sat down beside me.... Words seem useless to express the\ncomplicated nature of my suffering at that moment,--my remorse, my sense\nof deception, of hypocrisy,--yes, and my terror. I tried to talk\nnaturally, to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store,\nwhile all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room, familiar\nsince childhood. Here were warmth, love, and safety. Why could I not be\ncontent with them, thankful for them? What was it in me that drove me\nfrom these sheltering walls out into the dark places? I glanced at my\nfather. Had he ever known these wild, destroying desires? Oh, if I only\ncould have confided in him! The very idea of it was preposterous. Such\nplacidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations,\nand I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation. In\nimagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea,\nalone. Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and out,\nin spite of all I could do?\n\n     \"Give me that man\n     That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him\n     In my heart's core....\"\n\nI did not shirk my tasks at the store, although I never got over the\nfeeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser one\nwould have done equally well. There were moments when I was almost\novercome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger: for\ninstance, I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocer\nwhom I had asked to settle a long-standing account. Yet the days passed,\nthe daily grind absorbed my energies, and when I was not collecting, or\ntediously going over the stock in the dim recesses of the store, I was\nrunning errands in the wholesale district, treading the burning brick of\nthe pavements, dodging heavy trucks and drays and perspiring clerks who\nflew about with memorandum pads in their hands, or awaiting the pleasure\nof bank tellers. Save Harvey, the venerable porter, I was the last to\nleave the store in the evening, and I always came away with the taste on\nmy palate of Breck and Company's mail, it being my final duty to \"lick\"\nthe whole of it and deposit it in the box at the corner. The gum on the\nenvelopes tasted of winter-green.\n\nMy Cousin Robert was somewhat astonished at my application.\n\n\"We'll make a man of you yet, Hugh,\" he said to me once, when I had\nperformed a commission with unexpected despatch....\n\nBusiness was his all-in-all, and he had an undisguised contempt for\nhigher education. To send a boy to college was, in his opinion, to run no\ninconsiderable risk of ruining him. What did they amount to when they\ncame home, strutting like peacocks, full of fads and fancies, and much\ntoo good to associate with decent, hard-working citizens? Nevertheless\nwhen autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East, I was\ndesperate indeed! Even the contemplation of Robert Breck did not console\nme, and yet here, in truth, was a life which might have served me as a\nmodel. His store was his castle; and his reputation for integrity and\nsquare dealing as wide as the city. Often I used to watch him with a\ncertain envy as he stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, and\ngreeted fellow-merchant and banker with his genuine and dignified\ndirectness. This man was his own master. They all called him \"Robert,\"\nand they made it clear by their manner that they knew they were\naddressing one who fulfilled his obligations and asked no favours.\n\nCrusty old Nathaniel Durrett once declared that when you bought a bill of\ngoods from Robert Breck you did not have to check up the invoice or\nemploy a chemist. Here was a character to mould upon. If my ambition\ncould but have been bounded by Breck and Company, I, too, might have come\nto stand in that doorway content with a tribute that was greater than\nCaesar's.\n\nI had been dreading the Christmas holidays, which were indeed to be no\nholidays for me. And when at length they arrived they brought with them\nfrom the East certain heroes fashionably clad, citizens now of a larger\nworld than mine. These former companions had become superior beings, they\ncould not help showing it, and their presence destroyed the Balance of\nThings. For alas, I had not wholly abjured the feminine sex after all!\nAnd from being a somewhat important factor in the lives of Ruth Hollister\nand other young women I suddenly became of no account. New interests, new\nrivalries and loyalties had arisen in which I had no share; I must\nperforce busy myself with invoices of flour and coffee and canned fruits\nwhile sleigh rides and coasting and skating expeditions to Blackstone\nLake followed one another day after day,--for the irony of circumstances\nhad decreed a winter uncommonly cold. There were evening parties, too,\nwhere I felt like an alien, though my friends were guilty of no conscious\nneglect; and had I been able to accept the situation simply, I should not\nhave suffered.\n\nThe principal event of those holidays was a play given in the old\nHambleton house (which later became the Boyne Club), under the direction\nof the lively and talented Mrs. Watling. I was invited, indeed, to\nparticipate; but even if I had had the desire I could not have done so,\nsince the rehearsals were carried on in the daytime. Nancy was the\nleading lady. I have neglected to mention that she too had been away\nalmost continuously since our misunderstanding, for the summer in the\nmountains,--a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in the\nautumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at\nFarmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously\nacquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certain\nfrivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane.\nShe was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she\nplayed. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcely\nrecognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above me, suggesting a\nsphere of power and luxury hitherto unimagined and beyond the scope of\nthe world to which I belonged.\n\nHer triumph was genuine. When the play was over she was immediately\nsurrounded by enthusiastic admirers eager to congratulate her, to dance\nwith her. I too would have gone forward, but a sense of inadequacy, of\nunimportance, of an inability to cope with her, held me back, and from a\ncorner I watched her sweeping around the room, holding up her train, and\nleaning on the arm of Bob Lansing, a classmate whom Ralph had brought\nhome from Harvard. Then it was Ralph's turn: that affair seemed still to\nbe going on. My feelings were a strange medley of despondency and\nstimulation....\n\nOur eyes met. Her partner now was Ham Durrett. Capriciously releasing\nhim, she stood before me,\n\n\"Hugh, you haven't asked me to dance, or even told me what you thought of\nthe play.\"\n\n\"I thought it was splendid,\" I said lamely.\n\nBecause she refrained from replying I was farther than ever from\nunderstanding her. How was I to divine what she felt? or whether any\nlonger she felt at all? Here, in this costume of a woman of the world,\nwith the string of pearls at her neck to give her the final touch of\nbrilliancy, was a strange, new creature who baffled and silenced me....\nWe had not gone halfway across the room when she halted abruptly.\n\n\"I'm tired,\" she exclaimed. \"I don't feel like dancing just now,\" and led\nthe way to the big, rose punch-bowl, one of the Durretts' most cherished\npossessions. Glancing up at me over the glass of lemonade I had given her\nshe went on: \"Why haven't you been to see me since I came home? I've\nwanted to talk to you, to hear how you are getting along.\"\n\nWas she trying to make amends, or reminding me in this subtle way of the\ncause of our quarrel? What I was aware of as I looked at her was an\nattitude, a vantage point apparently gained by contact with that\nmysterious outer world which thus vicariously had laid its spell on me; I\nwas tremendously struck by the thought that to achieve this attitude\nmeant emancipation, invulnerability against the aches and pains which\notherwise our fellow-beings had the power to give us; mastery over\nlife,--the ability to choose calmly, as from a height, what were best for\none's self, untroubled by loves and hates. Untroubled by loves and hates!\nAt that very moment, paradoxically, I loved her madly, but with a love\nnot of the old quality, a love that demanded a vantage point of its own.\nEven though she had made an advance--and some elusiveness in her manner\nled me to doubt it I could not go to her now. I must go as a\nconqueror,--a conqueror in the lists she herself had chosen, where the\nprize is power.\n\n\"Oh, I'm getting along pretty well,\" I said. \"At any rate, they don't\ncomplain of me.\"\n\n\"Somehow,\" she ventured, \"somehow it's hard to think of you as a business\nman.\"\n\nI took this for a reference to the boast I had made that I would go to\ncollege.\n\n\"Business isn't so bad as it might be,\" I assured her.\n\n\"I think a man ought to go away to college,\" she declared, in what seemed\nanother tone. \"He makes friends, learns certain things,--it gives him\nfinish. We are very provincial here.\"\n\nProvincial! I did not stop to reflect how recently she must have acquired\nthe word; it summed up precisely the self-estimate at which I had\narrived. The sting went deep. Before I could think of an effective reply\nNancy was being carried off by the young man from the East, who was\nclearly infatuated. He was not provincial. She smiled back at me brightly\nover his shoulder.... In that instant were fused in one resolution all\nthe discordant elements within me of aspiration and discontent. It was\nnot so much that I would show Nancy what I intended to do--I would show\nmyself; and I felt a sudden elation, and accession of power that enabled\nme momentarily to despise the puppets with whom she danced.... From this\nmood I was awakened with a start to feel a hand on my shoulder, and I\nturned to confront her father, McAlery Willett; a gregarious, easygoing,\npleasure-loving gentleman who made only a pretence of business, having\ninherited an ample fortune from his father, unique among his generation\nin our city in that he paid some attention to fashion in his dress; good\nliving was already beginning to affect his figure. His mellow voice had a\nway of breaking an octave.\n\n\"Don't worry, my boy,\" he said. \"You stick to business. These college\nfellows are cocks of the walk just now, but some day you'll be able to\nsnap your fingers at all of 'em.\"\n\nThe next day was dark, overcast, smoky, damp-the soft, unwholesome\ndampness that follows a spell of hard frost. I spent the morning and\nafternoon on the gloomy third floor of Breck and Company, making a list\nof the stock. I remember the place as though I had just stepped out of\nit, the freight elevator at the back, the dusty, iron columns, the\ncontinuous piles of cases and bags and barrels with narrow aisles between\nthem; the dirty windows, spotted and soot-streaked, that looked down on\nSecond Street. I was determined now to escape from all this, and I had my\nplan in mind.\n\nNo sooner had I swallowed my supper that evening than I set out at a\nswift pace for a modest residence district ten blocks away, coming to a\nlittle frame house set back in a yard,--one of those houses in which the\nringing of the front door-bell produces the greatest commotion;\nchildren's voices were excitedly raised and then hushed. After a brief\nsilence the door was opened by a pleasant-faced, brown-bearded man, who\nstood staring at me in surprise. His hair was rumpled, he wore an old\nhouse coat with a hole in the elbow, and with one finger he kept his\nplace in the book which he held in his hand.\n\n\"Hugh Paret!\" he exclaimed.\n\nHe ushered me into a little parlour lighted by two lamps, that bore every\nevidence of having been recently vacated. Its features somehow bespoke a\nstruggle for existence; as though its occupants had worried much and\nloved much. It was a room best described by the word \"home\"--home made\nmore precious by a certain precariousness. Toys and school-books strewed\nthe floor, a sewing-bag and apron lay across the sofa, and in one corner\nwas a roll-topped desk of varnished oak. The seats of the chairs were\ncomfortably depressed.\n\nSo this was where Mr. Wood lived! Mr. Wood, instructor in Latin and Greek\nat Densmore Academy. It was now borne in on me for the first time that he\ndid live and have his ties like any other human being, instead of just\nappearing magically from nowhere on a platform in a chalky room at nine\nevery morning, to vanish again in the afternoon. I had formerly stood in\nawe of his presence. But now I was suddenly possessed by an\nembarrassment, and (shall I say it?) by a commiseration bordering on\ncontempt for a man who would consent to live thus for the sake of being a\nschoolteacher. How strange that civilization should set such a high value\non education and treat its functionaries with such neglect!\n\nMr. Wood's surprise at seeing me was genuine. For I had never shown a\nparticular interest in him, nor in the knowledge which he strove to\nimpart.\n\n\"I thought you had forgotten me, Hugh,\" he said, and added whimsically:\n\"most boys do, when they graduate.\"\n\nI felt the reproach, which made it the more difficult for me to state my\nerrand.\n\n\"I knew you sometimes took pupils in the evening, Mr. Wood.\"\n\n\"Pupils,--yes,\" he replied, still eyeing me. Suddenly his eyes twinkled.\nHe had indeed no reason to suspect me of thirsting for learning. \"But I\nwas under the impression that you had gone into business, Hugh.\"\n\n\"The fact is, sir,\" I explained somewhat painfully, \"that I am not\nsatisfied with business. I feel--as if I ought to know more. And I came\nto see if you would give me lessons about three nights a week, because I\nwant to take the Harvard examinations next summer.\"\n\nThus I made it appear, and so persuaded myself, that my ambition had been\nprompted by a craving for knowledge. As soon as he could recover himself\nhe reminded me that he had on many occasions declared I had a brain.\n\n\"Your father must be very happy over this decision of yours,\" he said.\n\nThat was the point, I told him. It was to be a surprise for my father; I\nwas to take the examinations first, and inform him afterwards.\n\nTo my intense relief, Mr. Wood found the scheme wholly laudable, and\nentered into it with zest. He produced examinations of preceding years\nfrom a pigeonhole in his desk, and inside of half an hour the arrangement\nwas made, the price of the lessons settled. They were well within my\nsalary, which recently had been raised....\n\nWhen I went down town, or collecting bills for Breck and Company, I took\na text-book along with me in the street-cars. Now at last I had behind my\nstudies a driving force. Algebra, Latin, Greek and history became worth\nwhile, means to an end. I astonished Mr. Wood; and sometimes he would\ntilt back his chair, take off his spectacles and pull his beard.\n\n\"Why in the name of all the sages,\" he would demand, \"couldn't you have\ndone this well at school? You might have led your class, instead of Ralph\nHambleton.\"\n\nI grew very fond of Mr. Wood, and even of his thin little wife, who\noccasionally flitted into the room after we had finished. I fully\nintended to keep up with them in after life, but I never did. I forgot\nthem completely....\n\nMy parents were not wholly easy in their minds concerning me; they were\nbewildered by the new aspect I presented. For my lately acquired motive\nwas strong enough to compel me to restrict myself socially, and the\nevenings I spent at home were given to study, usually in my own room.\nOnce I was caught with a Latin grammar: I was just \"looking over it,\" I\nsaid. My mother sighed. I knew what was in her mind; she had always been\nsecretly disappointed that I had not been sent to college. And presently,\nwhen my father went out to attend a trustee's meeting, the impulse to\nconfide in her almost overcame me; I loved her with that affection which\ngoes out to those whom we feel understand us, but I was learning to\nrestrain my feelings. She looked at me wistfully.... I knew that she\nwould insist on telling my father, and thus possibly frustrate my plans.\nThat I was not discovered was due to a certain quixotic twist in my\nfather's character. I was working now, and though not actually earning my\nown living, he no longer felt justified in prying into my affairs.\n\nWhen June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that his\nconscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum.\nThe joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he found\npraiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father were\ninformed of them; he was determined to call at my father's office.\n\nThe next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, with\nthe presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become utterly\ndistasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make out\ninvoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, my\nmind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety. The result of an\ninterview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no I\nshould be immediately released from a slavery I detested. Would Mr. Wood\npersuade my father? If not, I was prepared to take more desperate\nmeasures; remain in the grocery business I would not. In the evening, as\nI hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had dropped\nme, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing the scene\nwhere my childhood had been spent: each of these spreading maples was an\nold friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed. An unaccountable\nsadness passed over me as I walked on toward our gate; I entered it,\ngained the doorway of the house and went upstairs, glancing into the\nsitting room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. She looked up at me\nwith an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of tears.\n\n\"Hugh!\" she exclaimed.\n\nI felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her.\n\n\"Why didn't you tell us, my son?\" In her voice was in truth reproach; yet\nmingled with that was another note, which I think was pride.\n\n\"What has father said?\" I asked.\n\n\"Oh, my dear, he will tell you himself. I--I don't know--he will talk to\nyou.\"\n\nSuddenly she seized my hands and drew me down to her, and then held me\naway, gazing into my face with a passionate questioning, her lips\nsmiling, her eyes wet. What did she see? Was there a subtler relationship\nbetween our natures than I guessed? Did she understand by some\ninstinctive power the riddle within me? divine through love the force\nthat was driving me on she knew not whither, nor I? At the sound of my\nfather's step in the hall she released me. He came in as though nothing\nhad happened.\n\n\"Well, Hugh, are you home?\" he said....\n\nNever had I been more impressed, more bewildered by his self-command than\nat that time. Save for the fact that my mother talked less than usual,\nsupper passed as though nothing had happened. Whether I had shaken him,\ndisappointed him, or gained his reluctant approval I could not tell.\nGradually his outward calmness turned my suspense to irritation....\n\nBut when at length we were alone together, I gained a certain\nreassurance. His manner was not severe. He hesitated a little before\nbeginning.\n\n\"I must confess, Hugh; that I scarcely know what to say about this\nproceeding of yours. The thing that strikes me most forcibly is that you\nmight have confided in your mother and myself.\"\n\nHope flashed up within me, like an explosion.\n\n\"I--I wanted to surprise you, father. And then, you see, I thought it\nwould be wiser to find out first how well I was likely to do at the\nexaminations.\"\n\nMy father looked at me. Unfortunately he possessed neither a sense of\nhumour nor a sense of tragedy sufficient to meet such a situation. For\nthe first time in my life I beheld him at a disadvantage; for I had,\nsomehow, managed at length to force him out of position, and he was\npuzzled. I was quick to play my trump card.\n\n\"I have been thinking it over carefully,\" I told him, \"and I have made up\nmy mind that I want to go into the law.\"\n\n\"The law!\" he exclaimed sharply.\n\n\"Why, yes, sir. I know that you were disappointed because I did not do\nsufficiently well at school to go to college and study for the bar.\"\n\nI felt indeed a momentary pang, but I remembered that I was fighting for\nmy freedom.\n\n\"You seemed satisfied where you were,\" he said in a puzzled voice, \"and\nyour Cousin Robert gives a good account of you.\"\n\n\"I've tried to do the work as well as I could, sir,\" I replied. \"But I\ndon't like the grocery business, or any other business. I have a feeling\nthat I'm not made for it.\"\n\n\"And you think, now, that you are made for the law?\" he asked, with the\nfaint hint of a smile.\n\n\"Yes, sir, I believe I could succeed at it. I'd like to try,\" I replied\nmodestly.\n\n\"You've given up the idiotic notion of wishing to be an author?\"\n\nI implied that he himself had convinced me of the futility of such a\nwish. I listened to his next words as in a dream.\n\n\"I must confess to you, Hugh, that there are times when I fail to\nunderstand you. I hope it is as you say, that you have arrived at a\nsettled conviction as to your future, and that this is not another of\nthose caprices to which you have been subject, nor a desire to shirk\nhonest work. Mr. Wood has made out a strong case for you, and I have\ntherefore determined to give you a trial. If you pass the examinations\nwith credit, you may go to college, but if at any time you fail to make\ngood progress, you come home, and go into business again. Is that\nthoroughly understood?\"\n\nI said it was, and thanked him effusively.... I had escaped,--the prison\ndoors had flown open. But it is written that every happiness has its\nsting; and my joy, intense though it was, had in it a core of remorse....\n\nI went downstairs to my mother, who was sitting in the hall by the open\ndoor.\n\n\"Father says I may go!\" I said.\n\nShe got up and took me in her arms.\n\n\"My dear, I am so glad, although we shall miss you dreadfully.... Hugh?\"\n\n\"Yes, mother.\"\n\n\"Oh, Hugh, I so want you to be a good man!\"\n\nHer cry was a little incoherent, but fraught with a meaning that came\nhome to me, in spite of myself....\n\nA while later I ran over to announce to the amazed Tom Peters that I was\nactually going to Harvard with him. He stood in the half-lighted hallway,\nhis hands in his pockets, blinking at me.\n\n\"Hugh, you're a wonder!\" he cried. \"How in Jehoshaphat did you work\nit?\"...\n\nI lay long awake that night thinking over the momentous change so soon to\ncome into my life, wondering exultantly what Nancy Willett would say now.\nI was not one, at any rate, to be despised or neglected.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nThe following September Tom Peters and I went East together. In the early\nmorning Boston broke on us like a Mecca as we rolled out of the old\nAlbany station, joint lords of a \"herdic.\" How sharply the smell of the\nsalt-laden east wind and its penetrating coolness come back to me! I seek\nin vain for words to express the exhilarating effect of that briny\ncoolness on my imagination, and of the visions it summoned up of the\nnewer, larger life into which I had marvellously been transported. We\nalighted at the Parker House, full-fledged men of the world, and tried to\nact as though the breakfast of which we partook were merely an incident,\nnot an Event; as though we were Seniors, and not freshmen, assuming an\nindifference to the beings by whom we were surrounded and who were\nbreakfasting, too,--although the nice-looking ones with fresh faces and\ntrim clothes were all undoubtedly Olympians. The better to proclaim our\nnonchalance, we seated ourselves on a lounge of the marble-paved lobby\nand smoked cigarettes. This was liberty indeed! At length we departed for\nCambridge, in another herdic.\n\nBoston! Could it be possible? Everything was so different here as to give\nthe place the aspect of a dream: the Bulfinch State House, the decorous\nshops, the still more decorous dwellings with the purple-paned windows\nfacing the Common; Back Bay, still boarded up, ivy-spread, suggestive of\na mysterious and delectable existence. We crossed the Charles River,\nblue-grey and still that morning; traversed a nondescript district, and\nat last found ourselves gazing out of the windows at the mellowed,\nplum-coloured bricks of the University buildings.... All at once our\nexhilaration evaporated as the herdic rumbled into a side street and\nbacked up before the door of a not-too-inviting, three-storied house with\na queer extension on top. Its steps and vestibule were, however,\nimmaculate. The bell was answered by a plainly overworked servant girl,\nof whom we inquired for Mrs. Bolton, our landlady. There followed a\nperiod of waiting in a parlour from which the light had been almost\nwholly banished, with slippery horsehair furniture and a marble-topped\ntable; and Mrs. Bolton, when she appeared, dressed in rusty black,\nharmonized perfectly with the funereal gloom. She was a tall, rawboned,\nsevere lady with a peculiar red-mottled complexion that somehow reminded\none of the outcropping rocks of her native New England soil.\n\n\"You want to see your rooms, I suppose,\" she remarked impassively when we\nhad introduced ourselves, and as we mounted the stairs behind her Tom, in\na whisper, nicknamed her \"Granite Face.\" Presently she left us.\n\n\"Hospitable soul!\" said Tom, who, with his hands in his pockets, was\ngazing at the bare walls of our sitting-room. \"We'll have to go into the\nhouse-furnishing business, Hughie. I vote we don't linger here\nto-day--we'll get melancholia.\"\n\nOutside, however, the sun was shining brightly, and we departed\nimmediately to explore Cambridge and announce our important presences to\nthe proper authorities.... We went into Boston to dine.... It was not\nuntil nine o'clock in the evening that we returned and the bottom\nsuddenly dropped out of things. He who has tasted that first, acute\nhomesickness of college will know what I mean. It usually comes at the\nopening of one's trunk. The sight of the top tray gave me a pang I shall\nnever forget. I would not have believed that I loved my mother so much!\nThese articles had been packed by her hands; and in one corner, among the\nunderclothes on which she had neatly sewed my initials, lay the new Bible\nshe had bought. \"Hugh Moreton Paret, from his Mother. September, 1881.\" I\ntook it up (Tom was not looking) and tried to read a passage, but my eyes\nwere blurred. What was it within me that pressed and pressed until I\nthought I could bear the pain of it no longer? I pictured the\nsitting-room at home, and my father and mother there, thinking of me.\nYes, I must acknowledge it; in the bitterness of that moment I longed to\nbe back once more in the railed-off space on the floor of Breck and\nCompany, writing invoices....\n\nPresently, as we went on silently with our unpacking, we became aware of\nsomeone in the doorway.\n\n\"Hello, you fellows!\" he cried. \"We're classmates, I guess.\"\n\nWe turned to behold an ungainly young man in an ill-fitting blue suit.\nHis face was pimply, his eyes a Teutonic blue, his yellow hair rumpled,\nhis naturally large mouth was made larger by a friendly grin.\n\n\"I'm Hermann Krebs,\" he announced simply. \"Who are you?\"\n\nWe replied, I regret to say, with a distinct coolness that did not seem\nto bother him in the least. He advanced into the room, holding out a\nlarge, red, and serviceable hand, evidently it had never dawned on him\nthat there was such a thing in the world as snobbery. But Tom and I had\nbeen \"coached\" by Ralph Hambleton and Perry Blackwood, warned to be\ncareful of our friendships. There was a Reason! In any case Mr. Krebs\nwould not have appealed to us. In answer to a second question he was\ninformed what city we hailed from, and he proclaimed himself likewise a\nnative of our state.\n\n\"Why, I'm from Elkington!\" he exclaimed, as though the fact sealed our\nfuture relationships. He seated himself on Tom's trunk and added:\n\"Welcome to old Harvard!\"\n\nWe felt that he was scarcely qualified to speak for \"old Harvard,\" but we\ndid not say so.\n\n\"You look as if you'd been pall-bearers for somebody,\" was his next\nobservation.\n\nTo this there seemed no possible reply.\n\n\"You fellows are pretty well fixed here,\" he went on, undismayed, gazing\nabout a room which had seemed to us the abomination of desolation. \"Your\nfolks must be rich. I'm up under the skylight.\"\n\nEven this failed to touch us. His father--he told us with undiminished\ncandour--had been a German emigrant who had come over in '49, after the\ncause of liberty had been lost in the old country, and made eye-glasses\nand opera glasses. There hadn't been a fortune in it. He, Hermann, had\nworked at various occupations in the summer time, from peddling to\nfarming, until he had saved enough to start him at Harvard. Tom, who had\nbeen bending over his bureau drawer, straightened up.\n\n\"What did you want to come here for?\" he demanded.\n\n\"Say, what did you?\" Mr. Krebs retorted genially. \"To get an education,\nof course.\"\n\n\"An education!\" echoed Tom.\n\n\"Isn't Harvard the oldest and best seat of learning in America?\" There\nwas an exaltation in Krebs's voice that arrested my attention, and made\nme look at him again. A troubled chord had been struck within me.\n\n\"Sure,\" said Tom.\n\n\"What did you come for?\" Mr. Krebs persisted.\n\n\"To sow my wild oats,\" said Tom. \"I expect to have something of a crop,\ntoo.\"\n\nFor some reason I could not fathom, it suddenly seemed to dawn on Mr.\nKrebs, as a result of this statement, that he wasn't wanted.\n\n\"Well, so long,\" he said, with a new dignity that curiously belied the\ninformality of his farewell.\n\nAn interval of silence followed his departure.\n\n\"Well, he's got a crust!\" said Tom, at last.\n\nMy own feeling about Mr. Krebs had become more complicated; but I took my\ncue from Tom, who dealt with situations simply.\n\n\"He'll come in for a few knockouts,\" he declared. \"Here's to old Harvard,\nthe greatest institution of learning in America! Oh, gee!\"\n\nOur visitor, at least, made us temporarily forget our homesickness, but\nit returned with redoubled intensity when we had put out the lights and\ngone to bed.\n\nBefore we had left home it had been mildly hinted to us by Ralph and\nPerry Blackwood that scholarly eminence was not absolutely necessary to\none's welfare and happiness at Cambridge. The hint had been somewhat\nsuperfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view\nof getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next\nevening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed\nwith a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some\nthings that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at a\nmodern university--which is a reflection of life in the greater world--is\none of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did most of the talking, while\nRalph, characteristically, lay at full length on the window-seat,\ninterrupting with an occasional terse and cynical remark very much to the\npoint. As a sophomore, he in particular seemed lifted immeasurably above\nus, for he was--as might have been expected already a marked man in his\nclass. The rooms which he shared with his cousin made a tremendous\nimpression on Tom and me, and seemed palatial in comparison to our\nquarters at Mrs. Bolton's, eloquent of the freedom and luxury of\nundergraduate existence; their note, perhaps, was struck by the profusion\nof gay sofa pillows, then something of an innovation. The heavy,\nexpensive furniture was of a pattern new to me; and on the mantel were\nthree or four photographs of ladies in the alluring costume of the\nmusical stage, in which Tom evinced a particular interest.\n\n\"Did grandfather send 'em?\" he inquired.\n\n\"They're Ham's,\" said Ralph, and he contrived somehow to get into those\ntwo words an epitome of his cousin's character. Ham was stouter, and his\nclothes were more striking, more obviously expensive than ever.... On our\nway homeward, after we had walked a block or two in silence, Tom\nexclaimed:--\"Don't make friends with the friendless!--eh, Hughie? We knew\nenough to begin all right, didn't we?\"...\n\nHave I made us out a pair of deliberate, calculating snobs? Well, after\nall it must be remembered that our bringing up had not been of sufficient\nliberality to include the Krebses of this world. We did not, indeed,\nspend much time in choosing and weighing those whom we should know and\nthose whom we should avoid; and before the first term of that Freshman\nyear was over Tom had become a favourite. He had the gift of making men\nfeel that he delighted in their society, that he wished for nothing\nbetter than to sit for hours in their company, content to listen to the\narguments that raged about him. Once in a while he would make a droll\nobservation that was greeted with fits of laughter. He was always\nreferred to as \"old Tom,\" or \"good old Tom\"; presently, when he began to\npick out chords on the banjo, it was discovered that he had a good tenor\nvoice, though he could not always be induced to sing.... Somewhat to the\njeopardy of the academic standard that my father expected me to sustain,\nour rooms became a rendezvous for many clubable souls whose maudlin,\nmidnight attempts at harmony often set the cocks crowing.\n\n       \"Free from care and despair,\n        What care we?\n       'Tis wine, 'tis wine\n        That makes the jollity.\"\n\nAs a matter of truth, on these occasions it was more often beer; beer\ntransported thither in Tom's new valise,--given him by his mother,--and\nstuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face,\nadorned in a sky-blue wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway to\ndeclare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the university\nauthorities should be informed, etc., etc. Poor woman, we were\noutrageously inconsiderate of her.... One evening as we came through the\nhall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young man\nholding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton's\ndaughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seen\nthere, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I paused\nat the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm.\n\n\"Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!\" he whispered.\n\nWhile I was by no means so popular as Tom, I got along fairly well. I had\nescaped from provincialism, from the obscure purgatory of the wholesale\ngrocery business; new vistas, exciting and stimulating, had been opened\nup; nor did I offend the sensibilities and prejudices of the new friends\nI made, but gave a hearty consent to a code I found congenial. I\nrecognized in the social system of undergraduate life at Harvard a\nreflection of that of a greater world where I hoped some day to shine;\nyet my ambition did not prey upon me. Mere conformity, however, would not\nhave taken me very far in a sphere from which I, in common with many\nothers, desired not to be excluded.... One day, in an idle but inspired\nmoment, I paraphrased a song from \"Pinafore,\" applying it to a college\nembroglio, and the brief and lively vogue it enjoyed was sufficient to\nindicate a future usefulness. I had \"found myself.\" This was in the last\npart of the freshman year, and later on I became a sort of amateur, class\npoet-laureate. Many were the skits I composed, and Tom sang them....\n\nDuring that freshman year we often encountered Hermann Krebs, whistling\nmerrily, on the stairs.\n\n\"Got your themes done?\" he would inquire cheerfully.\n\nAnd Tom would always mutter, when he was out of earshot: \"He has got a\ncrust!\"\n\nWhen I thought about Krebs at all,--and this was seldom indeed,--his\nmanifest happiness puzzled me. Our cool politeness did not seem to bother\nhim in the least; on the contrary, I got the impression that it amused\nhim. He seemed to have made no friends. And after that first evening,\nmemorable for its homesickness, he never ventured to repeat his visit to\nus.\n\nOne windy November day I spied his somewhat ludicrous figure striding\nahead of me, his trousers above his ankles. I was bundled up in a new\nulster,--of which I was secretly quite proud,--but he wore no overcoat at\nall.\n\n\"Well, how are you getting along?\" I asked, as I overtook him.\n\nHe made clear, as he turned, his surprise that I should have addressed\nhim at all, but immediately recovered himself.\n\n\"Oh, fine,\" he responded. \"I've had better luck than I expected. I'm\ncorrespondent for two or three newspapers. I began by washing windows,\nand doing odd jobs for the professors' wives.\" He laughed. \"I guess that\ndoesn't strike you as good luck.\"\n\nHe showed no resentment at my patronage, but a self-sufficiency that made\nmy sympathy seem superfluous, giving the impression of an inner harmony\nand content that surprised me.\n\n\"I needn't ask how you're getting along,\" he said....\n\nAt the end of the freshman year we abandoned Mrs. Bolton's for more\ndesirable quarters.\n\nI shall not go deeply into my college career, recalling only such\nincidents as, seen in the retrospect, appear to have had significance. I\nhave mentioned my knack for song-writing; but it was not, I think, until\nmy junior year there was startlingly renewed in me my youthful desire to\nwrite, to create something worth while, that had so long been dormant.\n\nThe inspiration came from Alonzo Cheyne, instructor in English; a\nremarkable teacher, in spite of the finicky mannerisms which Tom\nimitated. And when, in reading aloud certain magnificent passages, he\nforgot his affectations, he managed to arouse cravings I thought to have\ndeserted me forever. Was it possible, after all, that I had been right\nand my father wrong? that I might yet be great in literature?\n\nA mere hint from Alonzo Cheyne was more highly prized by the grinds than\nfulsome praise from another teacher. And to his credit it should be\nrecorded that the grinds were the only ones he treated with any\nseriousness; he took pains to answer their questions; but towards the\nrest of us, the Chosen, he showed a thinly veiled contempt. None so quick\nas he to detect a simulated interest, or a wily effort to make him\nridiculous; and few tried this a second time, for he had a rapier-like\ngift of repartee that transfixed the offender like a moth on a pin. He\nhad a way of eyeing me at times, his glasses in his hand, a queer smile\non his lips, as much as to imply that there was one at least among the\nlost who was made for better things. Not that my work was poor, but I\nknew that it might have been better. Out of his classes, however, beyond\nthe immediate, disturbing influence of his personality I would relapse\ninto indifference....\n\nReturning one evening to our quarters, which were now in the \"Yard,\" I\nfound Tom seated with a blank sheet before him, thrusting his hand\nthrough his hair and biting the end of his penholder to a pulp. In his\nmuttering, which was mixed with the curious, stingless profanity of which\nhe was master, I caught the name of Cheyne, and I knew that he was facing\nthe crisis of a fortnightly theme. The subject assigned was a narrative\nof some personal experience, and it was to be handed in on the morrow. My\nown theme was already, written.\n\n\"I've been holding down this chair for an hour, and I can't seem to think\nof a thing.\" He rose to fling himself down on the lounge. \"I wish I was\nin Canada.\"\n\n\"Why Canada?\"\n\n\"Trout fishing with Uncle Jake at that club of his where he took me last\nsummer.\" Tom gazed dreamily at the ceiling. \"Whenever I have some darned\nfoolish theme like this to write I want to go fishing, and I want to go\nlike the devil. I'll get Uncle Jake to take you, too, next summer.\"\n\n\"I wish you would.\"\n\n\"Say, that's living all right, Hughie, up there among the tamaracks and\nbalsams!\" And he began, for something like the thirtieth time, to relate\nthe adventures of the trip.\n\nAs he talked, the idea presented itself to me with sudden fascination to\nuse this incident as the subject of Tom's theme; to write it for him,\nfrom his point of view, imitating the droll style he would have had if he\nhad been able to write; for, when he was interested in any matter, his\noral narrative did not lack vividness. I began to ask him questions: what\nwere the trees like, for instance? How did the French-Canadian guides\ntalk? He had the gift of mimicry: aided by a partial knowledge of French\nI wrote down a few sentences as they sounded. The canoe had upset and he\nhad come near drowning. I made him describe his sensations.\n\n\"I'll write your theme for you,\" I exclaimed, when he had finished.\n\n\"Gee, not about that!\"\n\n\"Why not? It's a personal experience.\"\n\nHis gratitude was pathetic.... By this time I was so full of the subject\nthat it fairly clamoured for expression, and as I wrote the hours flew.\nOnce in a while I paused to ask him a question as he sat with his chair\ntilted back and his feet on the table, reading a detective story. I\nsketched in the scene with bold strokes; the desolate bois brule on the\nmountain side, the polished crystal surface of the pool broken here and\nthere with the circles left by rising fish; I pictured Armand, the guide,\nhis pipe between his teeth, holding the canoe against the current; and I\nseemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear the roar of the\nrapids below. Then came the sudden hooking of the big trout, habitant\noaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness, confusion; a\nhalf-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and sunlight, and\nthen strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation, the sense of\nbeing picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a blinding\nwhiteness, in which it was impossible to breathe, one sharp, almost\nunbearable pain, then another, then oblivion.... Finally, awakening, to\nbe confronted by a much worried Uncle Jake.\n\nBy this time the detective story had fallen to the floor, and Tom was\nhuddled up in his chair, asleep. He arose obediently and wrapped a wet\ntowel around his head, and began to write. Once he paused long enough to\nmutter:--\"Yes, that's about it,--that's the way I felt!\" and set to work\nagain, mechanically,--all the praise I got for what I deemed a literary\nachievement of the highest order! At three o'clock, a.m., he finished,\npulled off his clothes automatically and tumbled into bed. I had no\ndesire for sleep. My brain was racing madly, like an engine without a\ngovernor. I could write! I could write! I repeated the words over and\nover to myself. All the complexities of my present life were blotted out,\nand I beheld only the long, sweet vista of the career for which I was now\nconvinced that nature had intended me. My immediate fortunes became\nunimportant, immaterial. No juice of the grape I had ever tasted made me\nhalf so drunk.... With the morning, of course, came the reaction, and I\nsuffered the after sensations of an orgie, awaking to a world of\nnecessity, cold and grey and slushy, and necessity alone made me rise\nfrom my bed. My experience of the night before might have taught me that\nhappiness lies in the trick of transforming necessity, but it did not.\nThe vision had faded,--temporarily, at least; and such was the\ndistraction of the succeeding days that the subject of the theme passed\nfrom my mind....\n\nOne morning Tom was later than usual in getting home. I was writing a\nletter when he came in, and did not notice him, yet I was vaguely aware\nof his standing over me. When at last I looked up I gathered from his\nexpression that something serious had happened, so mournful was his face,\nand yet so utterly ludicrous.\n\n\"Say, Hugh, I'm in the deuce of a mess,\" he announced.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I inquired.\n\nHe sank down on the table with a groan.\n\n\"It's Alonzo,\" he said.\n\nThen I remembered the theme.\n\n\"What--what's he done?\" I demanded.\n\n\"He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm a\nyoung Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel!\nHe says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality,\nhe'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh,\nhell!\"\n\nIn spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive laughter.\nTom stood staring at me moodily.\n\n\"You think it's funny,--don't you? I guess it is, but what's going to\nbecome of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before,\nbut never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!\"\n\nHere was gratitude!\n\n\"You've got to go on writing 'em, now.\" His voice became desperately\npleading. \"Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down--temper 'em down\ngradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about normal\nagain.\"\n\nHe seemed actually shivering.\n\n\"The end of the year!\" I cried, the predicament striking me for the first\ntime in its fulness. \"Say, you've got a crust!\"\n\n\"You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you,\" he announced grimly.\n\nMingled with my anxiety, which was real, was an exultation that would not\ndown. Nevertheless, the idea of developing Tom into a Shakespeare,--Tom,\nwho had not the slightest desire to be one I was appalling, besides\nhaving in it an element of useless self-sacrifice from which I recoiled.\nOn the other hand, if Alonzo should discover that I had written his\ntheme, there were penalties I did not care to dwell upon .... With such a\ncloud hanging over me I passed a restless night.\n\nAs luck would have it the very next evening in the level light under the\nelms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which I\nrecognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me an\namused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulating\nmyself that he had passed me he stopped.\n\n\"Fine weather for March, Paret,\" he observed.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" I agreed in a strange voice.\n\n\"By the way,\" he remarked, contemplating the bare branches above our\nheads, \"that was an excellent theme your roommate handed in. I had no\nidea that he possessed such--such genius. Did you, by any chance, happen\nto read it?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir,--I read it.\"\n\n\"Weren't you surprised?\" inquired Mr. Cheyne.\n\n\"Well, yes, sir--that is--I mean to say he talks just like that,\nsometimes--that is, when it's anything he cares about.\"\n\n\"Indeed!\" said Mr. Cheyne. \"That's interesting, most interesting. In all\nmy experience, I do not remember a case in which a gift has been\ndeveloped so rapidly. I don't want to give the impression--ah that there\nis no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for an\nundergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in Peters,\nand it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness in\nconversation.\" He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost in\nreflection. \"I may be wrong,\" he went on presently, \"I have an idea it is\nyou--\" I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a moment,\nwithout apparently noticing my panic, \"that it is you who have influenced\nPeters.\"\n\n\"Sir?\"\n\n\"I am wrong, then. Or is this merely commendable modesty on your part?\"\n\n\"Oh, no, sir.\"\n\n\"Then my hypothesis falls to the ground. I had greatly hoped,\" he added\nmeaningly, \"that you might be able to throw some light on this mystery.\"\n\nI was dumb.\n\n\"Paret,\" he asked, \"have you time to come over to my rooms for a few\nminutes this evening?\"\n\n\"Certainly, sir.\"\n\nHe gave me his number in Brattle Street....\n\nLike one running in a nightmare and making no progress I made my way\nhome, only to learn from Hallam,--who lived on the same floor,--that Tom\nhad inconsiderately gone to Boston for the evening, with four other weary\nspirits in search of relaxation! Avoiding our club table, I took what\nlittle nourishment I could at a modest restaurant, and restlessly paced\nthe moonlit streets until eight o'clock, when I found myself in front of\none of those low-gabled colonial houses which, on less soul-shaking\noccasions, had exercised a great charm on my imagination. My hand hung\nfor an instant over the bell.... I must have rung it violently, for there\nappeared almost immediately an old lady in a lace cap, who greeted me\nwith gentle courtesy, and knocked at a little door with glistening\npanels. The latch was lifted by Mr. Cheyne himself.\n\n\"Come in, Paret,\" he said, in a tone that was unexpectedly hospitable.\n\nI have rarely seen a more inviting room. A wood fire burned brightly on\nthe brass andirons, flinging its glare on the big, white beam that\ncrossed the ceiling, and reddening the square panes of the windows in\ntheir panelled recesses. Between these were rows of books,--attractive\nbooks in chased bindings, red and blue; books that appealed to be taken\ndown and read. There was a table covered with reviews and magazines in\nneat piles, and a lamp so shaded as to throw its light only on the white\nblotter of the pad. Two easy chairs, covered with flowered chintz, were\nranged before the fire, in one of which I sank, much bewildered, upon\nbeing urged to do so.\n\nI utterly failed to recognize \"Alonzo\" in this new atmosphere. And he\nhad, moreover, dropped the subtly sarcastic manner I was wont to\nassociate with him.\n\n\"Jolly old house, isn't it?\" he observed, as though I had casually\ndropped in on him for a chat; and he stood, with his hands behind him\nstretched to the blaze, looking down at me. \"It was built by a certain\nColonel Draper, who fought at Louisburg, and afterwards fled to England\nat the time of the Revolution. He couldn't stand the patriots, I'm not so\nsure that I blame him, either. Are you interested in colonial things, Mr.\nParet?\"\n\nI said I was. If the question had concerned Aztec relics my answer would\nundoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he took\ndown a silver porringer from the shallow mantel shelf.\n\n\"It's not a Revere,\" he said, in a slightly apologetic tone as though to\nforestall a comment, \"but it's rather good, I think. I picked it up at a\nsale in Dorchester. But I have never been able to identify the coat of\narms.\"\n\nHe showed me a ladle, with the names of \"Patience and William Simpson\"\nengraved quaintly thereon, and took down other articles in which I\nmanaged to feign an interest. Finally he seated himself in the chair\nopposite, crossed his feet, putting the tips of his fingers together and\ngazing into the fire.\n\n\"So you thought you could fool me,\" he said, at length.\n\nI became aware of the ticking of a great clock in the corner. My mouth\nwas dry.\n\n\"I am going to forgive you,\" he went on, more gravely, \"for several\nreasons. I don't flatter, as you know. It's because you carried out the\nthing so perfectly that I am led to think you have a gift that may be\ncultivated, Paret. You wrote that theme in the way Peters would have\nwritten it if he had not been--what shall I say?--scripturally\ninarticulate. And I trust it may do you some good if I say it was\nsomething of a literary achievement, if not a moral one.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir,\" I faltered.\n\n\"Have you ever,\" he inquired, lapsing a little into his lecture-room\nmanner, \"seriously thought of literature as a career? Have you ever\nthought of any career seriously?\"\n\n\"I once wished to be a writer, sir,\" I replied tremulously, but refrained\nfrom telling him of my father's opinion of the profession. Ambition--a\npurer ambition than I had known for years--leaped within me at his words.\nHe, Alonzo Cheyne, had detected in me the Promethean fire!\n\nI sat there until ten o'clock talking to the real Mr. Cheyne, a human Mr.\nCheyne unknown in the lecture-room. Nor had I suspected one in whom\ncynicism and distrust of undergraduates (of my sort) seemed so ingrained,\nof such idealism. He did not pour it out in preaching; delicately,\nunobtrusively and on the whole rather humorously he managed to present to\nme in a most disillusionizing light that conception of the university\nheld by me and my intimate associates. After I had left him I walked the\nquiet streets to behold as through dissolving mists another Harvard, and\nthere trembled in my soul like the birth-struggle of a flame something of\nthe vision later to be immortalized by St. Gaudens, the spirit of Harvard\nresponding to the spirit of the Republic--to the call of Lincoln, who\nvoiced it. The place of that bronze at the corner of Boston Common was as\nyet empty, but I have since stood before it to gaze in wonder at the\nlight shining in darkness on mute, uplifted faces, black faces! at\nHarvard's son leading them on that the light might live and prevail.\n\nI, too, longed for a Cause into which I might fling myself, in which I\nmight lose myself... I halted on the sidewalk to find myself staring from\nthe opposite side of the street at a familiar house, my old landlady's,\nMrs. Bolton's, and summoned up before me was the tired, smiling face of\nHermann Krebs. Was it because when he had once spoken so crudely of the\nUniversity I had seen the reflection of her spirit in his eyes? A light\nstill burned in the extension roof--Krebs's light; another shone dimly\nthrough the ground glass of the front door. Obeying a sudden impulse, I\ncrossed the street.\n\nMrs. Bolton, in the sky-blue wrapper, and looking more forbidding than\never, answered the bell. Life had taught her to be indifferent to\nsurprises, and it was I who became abruptly embarrassed.\n\n\"Oh, it's you, Mr. Paret,\" she said, as though I had been a frequent\ncaller. I had never once darkened her threshold since I had left her\nhouse.\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, and hesitated.... \"Is Mr. Krebs in?\"\n\n\"Well,\" she replied in a lifeless tone, which nevertheless had in it a\ntouch of bitterness, \"I guess there's no reason why you and your friends\nshould have known he was sick.\"\n\n\"Sick!\" I repeated. \"Is he very sick?\"\n\n\"I calculate he'll pull through,\" she said. \"Sunday the doctor gave him\nup. And no wonder! He hasn't had any proper food since he's be'n here!\"\nShe paused, eyeing me. \"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I was just going\nup to him when you rang.\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" I replied awkwardly. \"Would you be so kind as to tell\nhim--when he's well enough--that I came to see him, and that I'm sorry?\"\n\nThere was another pause, and she stood with a hand defensively clutching\nthe knob.\n\n\"Yes, I'll tell him,\" she said.\n\nWith a sense of having been baffled, I turned away.\n\nWalking back toward the Yard my attention was attracted by a slowly\napproaching cab whose occupants were disturbing the quiet of the night\nwith song.\n\n\"Shollity--'tis wine, 'tis wine, that makesh--shollity.\"\n\nThe vehicle drew up in front of a new and commodious building,--I believe\nthe first of those designed to house undergraduates who were willing to\npay for private bathrooms and other modern luxuries; out of one window of\nthe cab protruded a pair of shoeless feet, out of the other a hatless\nhead I recognized as belonging to Tom Peters; hence I surmised that the\nfeet were his also. The driver got down from the box, and a lively\nargument was begun inside--for there were other occupants--as to how Mr.\nPeters was to be disembarked; and I gathered from his frequent references\nto the \"Shgyptian obelisk\" that the engineering problem presented struck\nhim as similar to the unloading of Cleopatra's Needle.\n\n\"Careful, careful!\" he cautioned, as certain expelling movements began\nfrom within, \"Easy, Ham, you jam-fool, keep the door shut, y'll break\nme.\"\n\n\"Now, Jerry, all heave sh'gether!\" exclaimed a voice from the blackness\nof the interior.\n\n\"Will ye wait a minute, Mr. Durrett, sir?\" implored the cabdriver.\n\"You'll be after ruining me cab entirely.\" (Loud roars and vigorous\nresistance from the obelisk, the cab rocking violently.) \"This gintleman\"\n(meaning me) \"will have him by the head, and I'll get hold of his feet,\nsir.\" Which he did, after a severe kick in the stomach.\n\n\"Head'sh all right, Martin.\"\n\n\"To be sure it is, Mr. Peters. Now will ye rest aisy awhile, sir?\"\n\n\"I'm axphyxiated,\" cried another voice from the darkness, the mined voice\nof Jerome Kyme, our classmate.\n\n\"Get the tackles under him!\" came forth in commanding tones from\nConybear.\n\nIn the meantime many windows had been raised and much gratuitous advice\nwas being given. The three occupants of the cab's seat who had previously\nclamoured for Mr. Peters' removal, now inconsistently resisted it;\nsuddenly he came out with a jerk, and we had him fairly upright on the\npavement minus a collar and tie and the buttons of his evening waistcoat.\nThose who remained in the cab engaged in a riotous game of hunt the\nslipper, while Tom peered into the dark interior, observing gravely the\nprogress of the sport. First flew out an overcoat and a much-battered\nhat, finally the pumps, all of which in due time were adjusted to his\nperson, and I started home with him, with much parting counsel from the\nother three.\n\n\"Whereinell were you, Hughie?\" he inquired. \"Hunted all over for you. Had\na sousin' good time. Went to Babcock's--had champagne--then to see Babesh\nin--th'--Woods. Ham knows one of the Babesh had supper with four of 'em.\nNice Babesh!\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake don't step on me again!\" I cried.\n\n\"Sh'poloshize, old man. But y'know I'm William Shakespheare. C'n do\nwhat I damplease.\" He halted in the middle of the street and recited\ndramatically:--\n\n    \"'Not marble, nor th' gilded monuments\n     Of prinches sh'll outlive m' powerful rhyme.'\"\n\n\"How's that, Alonzho, b'gosh?\"\n\n\"Where did you learn it?\" I demanded, momentarily forgetting his\ncondition.\n\n\"Fr'm Ralph,\" he replied, \"says I wrote it. Can't remember....\"\n\nAfter I had got him to bed,--a service I had learned to perform with more\nor less proficiency,--I sat down to consider the events of the evening,\nto attempt to get a proportional view. The intensity of my disgust was\nnot hypocritical as I gazed through the open door into the bedroom and\nrecalled the times when I, too, had been in that condition. Tom Peters\ndrunk, and sleeping it off, was deplorable, without doubt; but Hugh Paret\ndrunk was detestable, and had no excuse whatever. Nor did I mean by this\nto set myself on a higher ethical plane, for I felt nothing but despair\nand humility. In my state of clairvoyance I perceived that he was a\nbetter man, than I, and that his lapses proceeded from a love of liquor\nand the transcendent sense of good-fellowship that liquor brings.\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nThe crisis through which I passed at Cambridge, inaugurated by the events\nI have just related, I find very difficult to portray. It was a religious\ncrisis, of course, and my most pathetic memory concerning it is of the\nvain attempts to connect my yearnings and discontents with the theology I\nhad been taught; I began in secret to read my Bible, yet nothing I hit\nupon seemed to point a way out of my present predicament, to give any\ndefinite clew to the solution of my life. I was not mature enough to\nreflect that orthodoxy was a Sunday religion unrelated to a world whose\nwheels were turned by the motives of self-interest; that it consisted of\nideals not deemed practical, since no attempt was made to put them into\npractice in the only logical manner,--by reorganizing civilization to\nconform with them. The implication was that the Christ who had preached\nthese ideals was not practical.... There were undoubtedly men in the\nfaculty of the University who might have helped me had I known of them;\nwho might have given me, even at that time, a clew to the modern, logical\nexplanation of the Bible as an immortal record of the thoughts and acts\nof men who had sought to do just what I was seeking to do,--connect the\nreligious impulse to life and make it fruitful in life: an explanation,\nby the way, a thousand-fold more spiritual than the old. But I was\nhopelessly entangled in the meshes of the mystic, the miraculous and\nsupernatural. If I had analyzed my yearnings, I might have realized that\nI wanted to renounce the life I had been leading, not because it was\nsinful, but because it was aimless. I had not learned that the Greek word\nfor sin is \"a missing of the mark.\" Just aimlessness! I had been stirred\nwith the desire to perform some service for which the world would be\ngrateful: to write great literature, perchance. But it had never been\nsuggested to me that such swellings of the soul are religious, that\nreligion is that kind of feeling, of motive power that drives the writer\nand the scientist, the statesman and the sculptor as well as the priest\nand the Prophet to serve mankind for the joy of serving: that religion is\ncreative, or it is nothing: not mechanical, not a force imposed from\nwithout, but a driving power within. The \"religion\" I had learned was\nsalvation from sin by miracle: sin a deliberate rebellion, not a pathetic\nmissing of the mark of life; useful service of man, not the wandering of\nuntutored souls who had not been shown the way. I felt religious. I\nwanted to go to church, I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, that\nexaltation I dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, and\nwhich also was identical with my desire to write, to create....\n\nI bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley and\nShakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and my\nfriends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses for\nnot joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's and\ninquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed that\nhe had gone out.... There were lapses, of course, when I went off on the\nold excursions,--for the most part the usual undergraduate follies,\nthough some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care to\ndwell. Sex was still a mystery.... Always I awoke afterwards to bitter\nself-hatred and despair.... But my work in English improved, and I earned\nthe commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom for which I\nwas grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it in classes, but\nthe fact that he was \"getting soft on me\" was evident enough to be\nregarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had fallen became\na matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried every means\nfrom ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake me out of it.\nThe theory most accepted was that I was in love.\n\n\"Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away,\" Tom\nwould beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the\nsisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties\nTom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called\n\"social life,\" never could be induced to go.\n\nIt was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as no\nother man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves,\nthe code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world and\ndefied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of\ntreason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to him\nas the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a\nremarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise\nof his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if\nthey \"swore off,\" Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again, and\nhaving accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new oath\nand see that it was kept. Alcohol seemed to have no effect whatever on\nhim. Though he was in the class above me, I met him frequently at a club\nto which I had the honour to belong, then a suite of rooms over a shop\nfurnished with a pool and a billiard table, easy-chairs and a bar. It has\nsince achieved the dignity of a house of its own.\n\nWe were having, one evening, a \"religious\" argument, Cinibar, Laurens and\nmyself and some others. I can't recall how it began; I think Cinibar had\nattacked the institution of compulsory chapel, which nobody defended;\nthere was something inherently wrong, he maintained, with a religion to\nwhich men had to be driven against their wills. Somewhat to my surprise I\nfound myself defending a Christianity out of which I had been able to\nextract but little comfort and solace. Neither Laurens nor Conybear,\nhowever, were for annihilating it: although they took the other side of\nthe discussion of a subject of which none of us knew anything, their\nattacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still under the spell\nexerted by a youthful training.\n\nWe were all of us aware of Ralph, who sat at some distance looking over\nthe pages of an English sporting weekly. Presently he flung it down.\n\n\"Haven't you found out yet that man created God, Hughie?\" he inquired.\n\"And even if there were a personal God, what reason have you to think\nthat man would be his especial concern, or any concern of his whatever?\nThe discovery of evolution has knocked your Christianity into a cocked\nhat.\"\n\nI don't remember how I answered him. In spite of the superficiality of\nhis own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I was\ningloriously routed. Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was all\nthere was to it.... After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurens\nadmitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring that Ralph had gone too\nfar. I spent a miserable night, recalling the naturalistic assertions he\nhad made so glibly, asking myself again and again how it was that the\nreligion to which I so vainly clung had no greater effect on my actions\nand on my will, had not prevented me from lapses into degradation. And I\nhated myself for having argued upon a subject that was still sacred. I\nbelieved in Christ, which is to say that I believed that in some\ninscrutable manner he existed, continued to dominate the world and had\nsuffered on my account.\n\nTo whom should I go now for a confirmation of my wavering beliefs? One of\nthe results--it will be remembered of religion as I was taught it was a\npernicious shyness, and even though I had found a mentor and confessor, I\nmight have hesitated to unburden myself. This would be different from\narguing with Ralph Hambleton. In my predicament, as I was wandering\nthrough the yard, I came across a notice of an evening talk to students\nin Holder Chapel, by a clergyman named Phillips Brooks. This was before\nthe time, let me say in passing, when his sermons at Harvard were\nattended by crowds of undergraduates. Well, I stood staring at the\nnotice, debating whether I should go, trying to screw up my courage; for\nI recognized clearly that such a step, if it were to be of any value,\nmust mean a distinct departure from my present mode of life; and I recall\nthinking with a certain revulsion that I should have to \"turn good.\" My\npresence at the meeting would be known the next day to all my friends,\nfor the idea of attending a religious gathering when one was not forced\nto do so by the authorities was unheard of in our set. I should be\nclassed with the despised \"pious ones\" who did such things regularly. I\nshrank from the ridicule. I had, however, heard of Mr. Brooks from Ned\nSymonds, who was by no means of the pious type, and whose parents\nattended Mr. Brooks's church in Boston.... I left my decision in\nabeyance. But when evening came I stole away from the club table, on the\nplea of an engagement, and made my way rapidly toward Holder Chapel. I\nhad almost reached it--when I caught a glimpse of Symonds and of some\nothers approaching,--and I went on, to turn again. By this time the\nmeeting, which was in a room on the second floor, had already begun.\nPalpitating, I climbed the steps; the door of the room was slightly ajar;\nI looked in; I recall a distinct sensation of surprise,--the atmosphere\nof that meeting was so different from what I had expected. Not a \"pious\"\natmosphere at all! I saw a very tall and heavy gentleman, dressed in\nblack, who sat, wholly at ease, on the table! One hand was in his pocket,\none foot swung clear of the ground; and he was not preaching, but talking\nin an easy, conversational tone to some forty young men who sat intent on\nhis words. I was too excited to listen to what he was saying, I was\nmaking a vain attempt to classify him. But I remember the thought, for it\nstruck me with force,--that if Christianity were so thoroughly\ndiscredited by evolution, as Ralph Hambleton and other agnostics would\nhave one believe, why should this remarkably sane and able-looking person\nbe standing up for it as though it were still an established and\nincontrovertible fact?\n\nHe had not, certainly, the air of a dupe or a sentimentalist, but\ninspired confidence by his very personality. Youthlike, I watched him\nnarrowly for flaws, for oratorical tricks, for all kinds of histrionic\nsymptoms. Again I was near the secret; again it escaped me. The argument\nfor Christianity lay not in assertions about it, but in being it. This\nman was Christianity.... I must have felt something of this, even though\nI failed to formulate it. And unconsciously I contrasted his strength,\nwhich reinforced the atmosphere of the room, with that of Ralph\nHambleton, who was, a greater influence over me than I have recorded, and\nhad come to sway me more and more, as he had swayed others. The strength\nof each was impressive, yet this Mr. Brooks seemed to me the bodily\npresentment of a set of values which I would have kept constantly before\nmy eyes.... I felt him drawing me, overcoming my hesitation, belittling\nmy fear of ridicule. I began gently to open the door--when something\nhappened,--one of those little things that may change the course of a\nlife. The door made little noise, yet one of the men sitting in the back\nof the room chanced to look around, and I recognized Hermann Krebs. His\nface was still sunken from his recent illness. Into his eyes seemed to\nleap a sudden appeal, an appeal to which my soul responded yet I hurried\ndown the stairs and into the street. Instantly I regretted my retreat, I\nwould have gone back, but lacked the courage; and I strayed unhappily for\nhours, now haunted by that look of Krebs, now wondering what the\nremarkably sane-looking and informal clergyman whose presence dominated\nthe little room had been talking about. I never learned, but I did live\nto read his biography, to discover what he might have talked about,--for\nhe if any man believed that life and religion are one, and preached\nconsecration to life's task.\n\nOf little use to speculate whether the message, had I learned it then,\nwould have fortified and transformed me!\n\nIn spite of the fact that I was unable to relate to a satisfying\nconception of religion my new-born determination, I made up my mind, at\nleast, to renounce my tortuous ways. I had promised my father to be a\nlawyer; I would keep my promise, I would give the law a fair trial; later\non, perhaps, I might demonstrate an ability to write. All very\npraiseworthy! The season was Lent, a fitting time for renunciations and\nresolves. Although I had more than once fallen from grace, I believed\nmyself at last to have settled down on my true course--when something\nhappened. The devil interfered subtly, as usual--now in the person of\nJerry Kyme. It should be said in justice to Jerry that he did not look\nthe part. He had sunny-red, curly hair, mischievous blue eyes with long\nlashes, and he harboured no respect whatever for any individual or\ninstitution, sacred or profane; he possessed, however, a shrewd sense of\nhis own value, as many innocent and unsuspecting souls discovered as\nearly as our freshman year, and his method of putting down the\npresumptuous was both effective and unique. If he liked you, there could\nbe no mistake about it.\n\nOne evening when I was engaged in composing a theme for Mr. Cheyne on no\nless a subject than the interpretation of the work of William Wordsworth,\nI found myself unexpectedly sprawling on the floor, in my descent kicking\nthe table so vigorously as to send the ink-well a foot or two toward the\nceiling. This, be it known, was a typical proof of Jerry's esteem. For he\nhad entered noiselessly, jerking the back of my chair, which chanced to\nbe tilted, and stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying the ruin he\nhad wrought, watching the ink as it trickled on the carpet. Then he\npicked up the book.\n\n\"Poetry, you darned old grind!\" he exclaimed disgustedly. \"Say, Parry, I\ndon't know what's got into you, but I want you to come home with me for\nthe Easter holidays. It'll do you good. We'll be on the Hudson, you know,\nand we'll manage to make life bearable somehow.\"\n\nI forgot my irritation, in sheer surprise.\n\n\"Why, that's mighty good of you, Jerry--\" I began, struggling to my feet.\n\n\"Oh, rot!\" he exclaimed. \"I shouldn't ask you if I didn't want you.\"\n\nThere was no denying the truth of this, and after he had gone I sat for a\nlong time with my pen in my mouth, reflecting as to whether or not I\nshould go. For I had the instinct that here was another cross-roads, that\nmore depended on my decision than I cared to admit. But even then I knew\nwhat I should do. Ridiculous not to--I told myself. How could a week or\nten days with Jerry possibly affect my newborn, resolve?\n\nYet the prospect, now, of a visit to the Kymes' was by no means so\nglowing as it once would have been. For I had seen visions, I had dreamed\ndreams, beheld a delectable country of my very own. A year ago--nay, even\na month ago--how such an invitation would have glittered!... I returned\nat length to my theme, over which, before Jerry's arrival, I had been\nworking feverishly. But now the glamour had gone from it.\n\nPresently Tom came in.\n\n\"Anyone been here?\" he demanded.\n\n\"Jerry,\" I told him.\n\n\"What did he want?\"\n\n\"He wanted me to go home with him at Easter.\"\n\n\"You're going, of course.\"\n\n\"I don't know. I haven't decided.\"\n\n\"You'd be a fool not to,\" was Tom's comment. It voiced, succinctly, a\nprevailing opinion.\n\nIt was the conclusion I arrived at in my own mind. But just why I had\nbeen chosen for the honour, especially at such a time, was a riddle.\nJerry's invitations were charily given, and valued accordingly; and more\nthan once, at our table, I had felt a twinge of envy when Conybear or\nsomeone else had remarked, with the proper nonchalance, in answer to a\nquestion, that they were going to Weathersfield. Such was the name of the\nKyme place....\n\nI shall never forget the impression made on me by the decorous luxury of\nthat big house, standing amidst its old trees, halfway up the gentle\nslope that rose steadily from the historic highway where poor Andre was\ncaptured. I can see now the heavy stone pillars of its portico vignetted\nin a flush of tenderest green, the tulips just beginning to flame forth\ntheir Easter colours in the well-kept beds, the stately, well-groomed\nevergreens, the vivid lawns, the clipped hedges. And like an overwhelming\nwave of emotion that swept all before it, the impressiveness of wealth\ntook possession of me. For here was a kind of wealth I had never known,\nthat did not exist in the West, nor even in the still Puritan environs of\nBoston where I had visited. It took itself for granted, proclaimed itself\ncomplacently to have solved all problems. By ignoring them, perhaps. But\nI was too young to guess this. It was order personified, gaining effect\nat every turn by a multitude of details too trivial to mention were it\nnot for the fact that they entered deeply into my consciousness, until\nthey came to represent, collectively, the very flower of achievement. It\nwas a wealth that accepted tribute calmly, as of inherent right. Law and\ntradition defended its sanctity more effectively than troops. Literature\ndescended from her high altar to lend it dignity; and the long, silent\nlibrary displayed row upon row of the masters, appropriately clad in\nmorocco or calf,--Smollett, Macaulay, Gibbon, Richardson, Fielding,\nScott, Dickens, Irving and Thackeray, as though each had striven for a\ntablet here. Art had denied herself that her canvases might be hung on\nthese walls; and even the Church, on that first Sunday of my visit,\nforgot the blood of her martyrs that she might adorn an appropriate niche\nin the setting. The clergyman, at one of the dinner parties, gravely\nasked a blessing as upon an Institution that included and absorbed all\nother institutions in its being....\n\nThe note of that house was a tempered gaiety. Guests arrived from New\nYork, spent the night and departed again without disturbing the even\ntenor of its ways. Unobtrusive servants ministered to their wants,--and\nto mine....\n\nConybear was there, and two classmates from Boston, and we were treated\nwith the amiable tolerance accorded to college youths and intimates of\nthe son of the house. One night there was a dance in our honour. Nor have\nI forgotten Jerry's sister, Nathalie, whom I had met at Class Days, a\nslim and willowy, exotic young lady of the Botticelli type, with a crown\nof burnished hair, yet more suggestive of a hothouse than of spring. She\nspoke English with a French accent. Capricious, impulsive, she captured\nmy interest because she put a high value on her favour; she drove me over\nthe hills, informing me at length that I was sympathique--different from\nthe rest; in short, she emphasized and intensified what I may call the\nWeathersfield environment, stirred up in me new and vague aspirations\nthat troubled yet excited me.\n\nThen there was Mrs. Kyme, a pretty, light-hearted lady, still young, who\nseemed to have no intention of growing older, who romped and played songs\nfor us on the piano. The daughter of an old but now impecunious\nWestchester family, she had been born to adorn the position she held, she\nwas adapted by nature to wring from it the utmost of the joys it offered.\nFrom her, rather than from her husband, both of the children seemed to\nhave inherited. I used to watch Mr. Grosvenor Kyme as he sat at the end\nof the dinner-table, dark, preoccupied, taciturn, symbolical of a wealth\nnew to my experience, and which had about it a certain fabulous quality.\nIt toiled not, neither did it spin, but grew as if by magic, day and\nnight, until the very conception of it was overpowering. What must it be\nto have had ancestors who had been clever enough to sit still until a\ncongested and discontented Europe had begun to pour its thousands and\nhundreds of thousands into the gateway of the western world, until that\ngateway had become a metropolis? ancestors, of course, possessing what\nnow suddenly appeared to me as the most desirable of gifts--since it\nreaped so dazzling a harvest-business foresight. From time to time these\nancestors had continued to buy desirable corners, which no amount of\npersuasion had availed to make them relinquish. Lease them, yes; sell\nthem, never! By virtue of such a system wealth was as inevitable as human\nnecessity; and the thought of human necessity did not greatly bother me.\nMr. Kyme's problem of life was not one of making money, but of investing\nit. One became automatically a personage....\n\nIt was due to one of those singular coincidences--so interesting a\nsubject for speculation--that the man who revealed to me this golden\nromance of the Kyme family was none other than a resident of my own city,\nMr. Theodore Watling, now become one of our most important and\ninfluential citizens; a corporation lawyer, new and stimulating\nqualification, suggesting as it did, a deus ex machina of great affairs.\nThat he, of all men, should come to Weathersfield astonished me, since I\nwas as yet to make the connection between that finished, decorous,\nsecluded existence and the source of its being. The evening before my\ndeparture he arrived in company with two other gentlemen, a Mr. Talbot\nand a Mr. Saxes, whose names were spoken with respect in a sphere of\nwhich I had hitherto taken but little cognizance-Wall Street. Conybear\ninformed me that they were \"magnates,\"... We were sitting in the\ndrawing-room at tea, when they entered with Mr. Watling, and no sooner\nhad he spoken to Mrs. Kyme than his quick eye singled me out of the\ngroup.\n\n\"Why, Hugh!\" he exclaimed, taking my hand. \"I had no idea I should meet\nyou here--I saw your father only last week, the day I left home.\" And he\nadded, turning to Mrs. Kyme, \"Hugh is the son of Mr. Matthew Paret, who\nhas been the leader of our bar for many years.\"\n\nThe recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously given\nthat I warmed with gratitude and pride, while Mr. Kyme smiled a little,\nremarking that I was a friend of Jerry's. Theodore Watling, for being\nhere, had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence, though\nthe note he struck in that house was a strange one. It was, however, his\nown note, and had a certain distinction, a ring of independence, of the\nknowledge of self-worth. Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters had\nusually found rather an oppressive ceremony, with its shaded lights and\nprecise ritual over which Mr. Kyme presided like a high priest;\nconversation had been restrained. That night, as Johnnie Laurens\nafterwards expressed it, \"things loosened up,\" and Mr. Watling was\nresponsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table\nappeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did,\nwithout being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in\nre. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had\npaused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would\nformerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short of\nmy notion of a gentleman; it had been my father's opinion; but Mr.\nWatling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing with\nus at home. He possessed virility, vitality in a remarkable degree, yet\nsome elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy--though related\nto these differentiated him from the commonplace, self-made man of\nability. He was just off the type. To liken him to a clothing store model\nof a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a firm neck, a handsome,\nrather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional, drooping\nmoustache would be slanderous; yet he did suggest it. Suggesting it, he\nredeemed it: and the middle western burr in his voice was rather\nattractive than otherwise. He had not so much the air of belonging there,\nas of belonging anywhere--one of those anomalistic American citizens of\nthe world who go abroad and make intimates of princes. Before the meal\nwas over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride, enlisted the\nadmiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens; we followed him\ninto the smoking-room, sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behind\nour elders.\n\nHere, now that the gentlemen were alone, there was an inspiring largeness\nin their talk that fired the imagination. The subject was investments, at\nfirst those of coal and iron in my own state, for Mr. Watling, it\nappeared, was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works.\n\n\"It will pay you to keep an eye on that company, Mr. Kyme,\" he said,\nknocking the ashes from his cigar. \"Now that old Mr. Durrett's gone--\"\n\n\"You don't mean to say Nathaniel Durrett's dead!\" said Mr. Kyme.\n\nThe lawyer nodded.\n\n\"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may\ntake my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of\nmen, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to\nbe a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his\nshoulders....\"\n\nLittle by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged\nover a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built or\nprojected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in\nwresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away\namong the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands\nwhich a complacent government would relinquish provided certain\ntechnicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly,--upon\nsenators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learned\nthat not the least of the functions of these representatives of the\npeople was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to\nfacilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in a\nposition to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development, or rather\non the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the justification,\nand it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new to me; this cult\nof prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff\nenthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship of the\nRepublican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For the\nAmerican, politics and ethics were strangers.\n\nThus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening\nclothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed\nlargely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored\nnumber of persons. I had a feeling of being among the initiated. Where,\nit may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be supposed that I believed\nmyself to have lost them. If so, the impression I have given of myself\nhas been wholly inadequate. No, they had been transmuted, that is all,\ntransmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality of\nTheodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes rarely left his face; I\nhung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though he\ndid not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, as\nthough his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested. I noted the\nrespect in which his opinions were held, and my imagination was fired by\nan impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of his\nprofession, by the evidence of their indispensability to capital\nitself.... At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room, Mr.\nWatling lingered, with his hand on my arm.\n\n\"Of course you're going through the Law School, Hugh,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes, sir,\" I replied.\n\n\"Good!\" he exclaimed emphatically. \"The law, to-day, is more of a career\nthan ever, especially for a young man with your antecedents and\nadvantages, and I know of no city in the United States where I would\nrather start practice, if I were a young man, than ours. In the next\ntwenty years we shall see a tremendous growth. Of course you'll be going\ninto your father's office. You couldn't do better. But I'll keep an eye\non you, and perhaps I'll be able to help you a little, too.\"\n\nI thanked him gratefully.\n\nA famous artist, who started out in youth to embrace a military career\nand who failed to pass an examination at West Point, is said to have\nremarked that if silicon had been a gas he would have been a soldier. I\nam afraid I may have given the impression that if I had not gone to\nWeathersfield and encountered Mr. Watling I might not have been a lawyer.\nThis impression would be misleading. And while it is certain that I have\nnot exaggerated the intensity of the spiritual experience I went through\nat Cambridge, a somewhat belated consideration for the truth compels me\nto register my belief that the mood would in any case have been\nephemeral. The poison generated by the struggle of my nature with its\nenvironment had sunk too deep, and the very education that was supposed\nto make a practical man of me had turned me into a sentimentalist. I\nbecame, as will be seen, anything but a practical man in the true sense,\nthough the world in which I had been brought up and continued to live\ndeemed me such. My father was greatly pleased when I wrote him that I was\nnow more than ever convinced of the wisdom of choosing the law as my\nprofession, and was satisfied that I had come to my senses at last. He\nhad still been prepared to see me \"go off at a tangent,\" as he expressed\nit. On the other hand, the powerful effect of the appeal made by\nWeathersfield and Mr. Watling must not be underestimated. Here in one\nobject lesson was emphasized a host of suggestions each of which had made\nits impression. And when I returned to Cambridge Alonzo Cheyne knew that\nhe had lost me....\n\nI pass over the rest of my college course, and the years I spent at the\nHarvard Law School, where were instilled into me without difficulty the\ndictums that the law was the most important of all professions, that\nthose who entered it were a priestly class set aside to guard from\nprofanation that Ark of the Covenant, the Constitution of the United\nStates. In short, I was taught law precisely as I had been taught\nreligion,--scriptural infallibility over again,--a static law and a\nstatic theology,--a set of concepts that were supposed to be equal to any\nproblems civilization would have to meet until the millennium. What we\nare wont to call wisdom is often naively innocent of impending change. It\nhas no barometric properties.\n\nI shall content myself with relating one incident only of this period. In\nthe January of my last year I went with a party of young men and girls to\nstay over Sunday at Beverly Farms, where Mrs. Fremantle--a young Boston\nmatron had opened her cottage for the occasion. This \"cottage,\" a roomy,\ngabled structure, stood on a cliff, at the foot of which roared the\nwintry Atlantic, while we danced and popped corn before the open fires.\nDuring the daylight hours we drove about the country in sleighs, or made\nridiculous attempts to walk on snow-shoes.\n\nOn Sunday afternoon, left temporarily to my own devices, I wandered along\nthe cliff, crossing into the adjoining property. The wind had fallen; the\nwaves, much subdued, broke rhythmically against the rocks; during the\nnight a new mantle of snow had been spread, and the clouds were still low\nand menacing. As I strolled I became aware of a motionless figure ahead\nof me,--one that seemed oddly familiar; the set of the shabby overcoat on\nthe stooping shoulders, the unconscious pose contributed to a certain\nsharpness of individuality; in the act of challenging my memory, I\nhalted. The man was gazing at the seascape, and his very absorption gave\nme a sudden and unfamiliar thrill. The word absorption precisely\nexpresses my meaning, for he seemed indeed to have become a part of his\nsurroundings,--an harmonious part. Presently he swung about and looked at\nme as though he had expected to find me there--and greeted me by name.\n\n\"Krebs!\" I exclaimed.\n\nHe smiled, and flung out his arm, indicating the scene. His eyes at that\nmoment seemed to reflect the sea,--they made the gaunt face suddenly\nbeautiful.\n\n\"This reminds me of a Japanese print,\" he said.\n\nThe words, or the tone in which he spoke, curiously transformed the\npicture. It was as if I now beheld it, anew, through his vision: the grey\nwater stretching eastward to melt into the grey sky, the massed, black\ntrees on the hillside, powdered with white, the snow in rounded,\nfantastic patches on the huge boulders at the foot of the cliff. Krebs\ndid not seem like a stranger, but like one whom I had known always,--one\nwho stood in a peculiar relationship between me and something greater I\ncould not define. The impression was fleeting, but real.... I remember\nwondering how he could have known anything about Japanese prints.\n\n\"I didn't think you were still in this part of the country,\" I remarked\nawkwardly.\n\n\"I'm a reporter on a Boston newspaper, and I've been sent up here to\ninterview old Mr. Dome, who lives in that house,\" and he pointed to a\nroof above the trees. \"There is a rumour, which I hope to verify, that he\nhas just given a hundred thousand dollars to the University.\"\n\n\"And--won't he see you?\"\n\n\"At present he's taking a nap,\" said Krebs. \"He comes here occasionally\nfor a rest.\"\n\n\"Do you like interviewing?\" I asked.\n\nHe smiled again.\n\n\"Well, I see a good many different kinds of people, and that's\ninteresting.\"\n\n\"But--being a reporter?\" I persisted.\n\nThis continued patronage was not a conscious expression of superiority on\nmy part, but he did not seem to resent it. He had aroused my curiosity.\n\n\"I'm going into the law,\" he said.\n\nThe quiet confidence with which he spoke aroused, suddenly, a twinge of\nantagonism. He had every right to go into the law, of course, and yet!...\nmy query would have made it evident to me, had I been introspective in\nthose days, that the germ of the ideal of the profession, implanted by\nMr. Watling, was expanding. Were not influential friends necessary for\nthe proper kind of career? and where were Krebs's? In spite of the\nhistory of Daniel Webster and a long line of American tradition, I felt\nan incongruity in my classmate's aspiration. And as he stood there, gaunt\nand undoubtedly hungry, his eyes kindling, I must vaguely have classed\nhim with the revolutionaries of all the ages; must have felt in him,\ninstinctively, a menace to the stability of that Order with which I had\nthrown my fortunes. And yet there were comparatively poor men in the Law\nSchool itself who had not made me feel this way! He had impressed me\nagainst my will, taken me by surprise, commiseration had been mingled\nwith other feelings that sprang out of the memory of the night I had\ncalled on him, when he had been sick. Now I resented something in him\nwhich Tom Peters had called \"crust.\"\n\n\"The law!\" I repeated. \"Why?\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used to\nthink if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch of\nhuman dignity.\"\n\nOnce more his smile disarmed me.\n\n\"And now\" I asked curiously.\n\n\"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsible\nfor that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to this\ncountry, he expected to find Utopia.\" The smile emerged again, like the\nsun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism again\nstruggled within me. \"And then came frightful troubles. For years he\ncould get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he never\nlost his faith in America. 'It is man,' he would say, 'man has to grow up\nto it--to liberty.' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth nothing.\nAnd he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had come\nhere, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made that\nmistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help to\nmake them better.\n\n\"That helped me,\" he continued, after a moment's pause. \"For I've seen a\ngood many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper.\nI've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against those\nwhom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great deal\nmore about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute their\nprofession to profit making,--profit making for themselves and others.\nAnd they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high standing,\nwhom you would not think would do such things. They are on the side of\nthe powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich men and\ncorporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I think,\nthat can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the courts.\nHe is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men won't see\nit.\"\n\nIt was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance. I\ncould indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;\nquotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me from\ndoing this,--something in his manner, which was neither argumentative nor\ncombative.\n\n\"That's why I am going into the law,\" he added. \"And I intend to stay in\nit if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us. Aren't\nyou at the Law School?\"\n\nI nodded. Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came that\nsuggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I could\nreply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded,\nwas seen coming down the path.\n\n\"Are you the reporter?\" he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs. \"If\nyou want to see Mr. Dome, you'd better come right away. He's going out\nfor a drive.\"\n\nFor a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in the\nsnow, looking after him....\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nOn the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father's sudden and\nserious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived at\nhome it was too late to see him again alive. It was my first experience\nwith death, and what perplexed me continually during the following days\nwas an inability to feel the loss more deeply. When a child, I had been\neasily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow. Had I, during recent years, as\na result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationships\nlead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell,\nuntil now I was incapable of natural feelings? Of late I had seemed\ncloser to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidence\nof his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that he\nlooked forward to the time when I was to practise with him. Why was it\nthen, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced no\nintensity of sorrow? What was it in me that would not break down? He\nseemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, never\nattributed to him any yearning. And now he was released.\n\nI wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his private\nopinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real\nknowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive\neducation which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that\nlife was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate\nof all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the\nmaking. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with no\npowers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, where\nevery article evoked some childhood scene. Here was the dent in the\nwalnut foot-board of the bed made, one wintry day, by the impact of my\nbox of blocks; the big arm-chair, covered with I know not what stiff\nembroidery, which had served on countless occasions as a chariot driven\nto victory. I even remembered how every Wednesday morning I had been\nbanished from the room, which had been so large a part of my childhood\nuniverse, when Ella, the housemaid, had flung open all its windows and\ncrowded its furniture into the hall.\n\nThe thought of my wanderings since then became poignant, almost\nterrifying. The room, with all its memories, was unchanged. How safe I\nhad been within its walls! Why could I not have been, content with what\nit represented? of tradition, of custom,--of religion? And what was it\nwithin me that had lured me away from these?\n\nI was miserable, indeed, but my misery was not of the kind I thought it\nought to be. At moments, when my mother relapsed into weeping, I glanced\nat her almost in wonder. Such sorrow as hers was incomprehensible. Once\nshe surprised and discomfited me by lifting her head and gazing fixedly\nat me through her tears.\n\nI recall certain impressions of the funeral. There, among the\npall-bearers, was my Cousin Robert Breck, tears in the furrows of his\ncheeks. Had he loved my father more than I? The sight of his grief moved\nme suddenly and strongly.... It seemed an age since I had worked in his\nstore, and yet here he was still, coming to town every morning and\nreturning every evening to Claremore, loving his friends, and mourning\nthem one by one. Was this, the spectacle presented by my Cousin Robert,\nthe reward of earthly existence? Were there no other prizes save those\nknown as greatness of character and depth of human affections? Cousin\nRobert looked worn and old. The other pall-bearers, men of weight, of\nlong standing in the community, were aged, too; Mr. Blackwood, and Mr.\nJules Hollister; and out of place, somehow, in this new church building.\nIt came to me abruptly that the old order was gone,--had slipped away\nduring my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn down\nto make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice in\nwhich I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seemingly\ntransitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and red\norgan-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript,\nlikewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuously\nin front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely resented his\nlaudatory references to my father.\n\nThe old church, with its severity, had actually stood for something. It\nwas the Westminster Catechism in wood and stone, and Dr. Pound had been\nthe human incarnation of that catechism, the fit representative of a\nwrathful God, a militant shepherd who had guarded with vigilance his\nrespectable flock, who had protested vehemently against the sins of the\nworld by which they were surrounded, against the \"dogs, and sorcerers,\nand whoremongers, and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and\nmaketh a lie.\" How Dr. Pound would have put the emphasis of the\nEverlasting into those words!\n\nAgainst what was Mr. Randlett protesting?\n\nMy glance wandered to the pews which held the committees from various\norganizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Bar Association,\nwhich had come to do honour to my father. And there, differentiated from\nthe others, I saw the spruce, alert figure of Theodore Watling. He, too,\nrepresented a new type and a new note,--this time a forceful note, a\nsecular note that had not belonged to the old church, and seemed likewise\nanomalistic in the new....\n\nDuring the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my mother\ndid not raise her veil. It was not until she reached out and seized my\nhand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my existence.\n\nIn the days that followed I became aware that my father's death had\nremoved a restrictive element, that I was free now to take without\ncriticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire. It may be\nthat I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would not\nhave coincided with my own. Mingled with this sense of emancipation was a\ncurious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never valued,\nsomething fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock and a\nrefuge of which I had never availed myself!... When his will was opened\nit was found that the property had been left to my mother during her\nlifetime. It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousand\ndollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate. My\nfather had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had no\ninterest in them.\n\nThree or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten letter\nsigned by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, and\nasking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city.\nIn contrast to the somewhat dingy offices where my father had practised\nin the Blackwood Block, the quarters of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon on the\neighth floor of the new Durrett Building were modern to a degree,\nfinished in oak and floored with marble, with a railed-off space where\nyoung women with nimble fingers played ceaselessly on typewriters. One of\nthem informed me that Mr. Watling was busy, but on reading my card added\nthat she would take it in. Meanwhile, in company with two others who may\nhave been clients, I waited. This, then, was what it meant to be a lawyer\nof importance, to have, like a Chesterfield, an ante-room where clients\ncooled their heels and awaited one's pleasure...\n\nThe young woman returned, and led me through a corridor to a door on\nwhich was painted Mr. Wailing.\n\nI recall him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside his\npolished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to him\nwas a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave the\nimpression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights. Mr.\nWatling rose briskly.\n\n\"How are you, Hugh?\" he said, the warmth of his greeting tempered by just\nthe note of condolence suitable to my black clothes. \"I'm glad you came.\nI wanted to see you before you went back to Cambridge. I must introduce\nyou to Judge Bering, of our State Supreme Court. Judge, this is Mr.\nParet's boy.\"\n\nThe judge looked me over with a certain slow impressiveness, and gave me\na soft and fleshy hand.\n\n\"Glad to know you, Mr. Paret. Your father was a great loss to our bar,\"\nhe declared.\n\nI detected in his tone and manner a slight reservation that could not be\ncalled precisely judicial dignity; it was as though, in these few words,\nhe had gone to the limit of self-commitment with a stranger--a striking\ncontrast to the confidential attitude towards Mr. Watling in which I had\nsurprised him.\n\n\"Judge,\" said Mr. Watling, sitting down again, \"do you recall that time\nwe all went up to Mr. Paret's house and tried to induce him to run for\nmayor? That was before you went on the lower bench.\"\n\nThe judge nodded gloomily, caressing his watch chain, and suddenly rose\nto go.\n\n\"That will be all right, then?\" Mr. Watling inquired cryptically, with a\nsmile. The other made a barely perceptible inclination of the head and\ndeparted. Mr. Watling looked at me. \"He's one of the best men we have on\nthe bench to-day,\" he added. There was a trace of apology in his tone.\n\nHe talked a while of my father, to whom, so he said, he had looked up\never since he had been admitted to the bar.\n\n\"It would be a pleasure to me, Hugh, as well as a matter of pride,\" he\nsaid cordially, but with dignity, \"to have Matthew Paret's son in my\noffice. I suppose you will be wishing to take your mother somewhere this\nsummer, but if you care to come here in the autumn, you will be welcome.\nYou will begin, of course, as other young men begin,--as I began. But I\nam a believer in blood, and I'll be glad to have you. Mr. Fowndes and Mr.\nRipon feel the same way.\" He escorted me to the door himself.\n\nEverywhere I went during that brief visit home I was struck by change, by\nthe crumbling and decay of institutions that once had held me in thrall,\nby the superimposition of a new order that as yet had assumed no definite\ncharacter. Some of the old landmarks had disappeared; there were new and\naggressive office buildings, new and aggressive residences, new and\naggressive citizens who lived in them, and of whom my mother spoke with\ngentle deprecation. Even Claremore, that paradise of my childhood, had\ngrown shrivelled and shabby, even tawdry, I thought, when we went out\nthere one Sunday afternoon; all that once represented the magic word\n\"country\" had vanished. The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia ages\nago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescript\nfurniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city's\nstores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their\ncoiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and \"ornamental\" electric\nfixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps. Cousin Jenny had grown\nwhite, Willie was a staid bachelor, Helen an old maid, while Mary had\nmarried a tall, anaemic young man with glasses, Walter Kinley, whom\nCousin Robert had taken into the store. As I contemplated the Brecks odd\nquestions suggested themselves: did honesty and warm-heartedness\nnecessarily accompany a lack of artistic taste? and was virtue its own\nreward, after all? They drew my mother into the house, took off her\nwraps, set her down in the most comfortable rocker, and insisted on\nmaking her a cup of tea.\n\nI was touched. I loved them still, and yet I was conscious of\nreservations concerning them. They, too, seemed a little on the defensive\nwith me, and once in a while Mary was caustic in her remarks.\n\n\"I guess nothing but New York will be good enough for Hugh now. He'll be\ntaking Cousin Sarah away from us.\"\n\n\"Not at all, my dear,\" said my mother, gently, \"he's going into Mr.\nWatling's office next autumn.\"\n\n\"Theodore Watling?\" demanded Cousin Robert, pausing in his carving.\n\n\"Yes, Robert. Mr. Watling has been good enough to say that he would like\nto have Hugh. Is there anything--?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm out of date, Sarah,\" Cousin Robert replied, vigorously severing\nthe leg of the turkey. \"These modern lawyers are too smart for me.\nWatling's no worse than the others, I suppose,--only he's got more\nability.\"\n\n\"I've never heard anything against him,\" said my mother in a pained\nvoice. \"Only the other day McAlery Willett congratulated me that Hugh was\ngoing to be with him.\"\n\n\"You mustn't mind Robert, Sarah,\" put in Cousin Jenny,--a remark\nreminiscent of other days.\n\n\"Dad has a notion that his generation is the only honest one,\" said\nHelen, laughingly, as she passed a plate.\n\nI had gained a sense of superiority, and I was quite indifferent to\nCousin Robert's opinion of Mr. Watling, of modern lawyers in general.\nMore than once a wave of self-congratulation surged through me that I had\npossessed the foresight and initiative to get out of the wholesale\ngrocery business while there was yet time. I looked at Willie, still\nfreckled, still literal, still a plodder, at Walter Kinley, and I thought\nof the drabness of their lives; at Cousin Robert himself as he sat\nsmoking his cigar in the bay-window on that dark February day, and\nsuddenly I pitied him. The suspicion struck me that he had not prospered\nof late, and this deepened to a conviction as he talked.\n\n\"The Republican Party is going to the dogs,\" he asserted.\n\n\"It used to be an honourable party, but now it is no better than the\nother. Politics are only conducted, now, for the purpose of making\nunscrupulous men rich, sir. For years I furnished this city with good\ngroceries, if I do say it myself. I took a pride in the fact that the\ninmates of the hospitals, yes, and the dependent poor in the city's\ninstitutions, should have honest food. You can get anything out of the\ncity if you are willing to pay the politicians for it. I lost my city\ncontracts. Why? Because I refused to deal with scoundrels. Weill and\nCompany and other unscrupulous upstarts are willing to do so, and poison\nthe poor and the sick with adulterated groceries! The first thing I knew\nwas that the city auditor was holding back my bills for supplies, and\npaying Weill's. That's what politics and business, yes, sir, and the law,\nhave come to in these days. If a man wants to succeed, he must turn into\na rascal.\"\n\nI was not shocked, but I was silent, uncomfortable, wishing that it were\ntime to take the train back to the city. Cousin Robert's face was more\nworn than I had thought, and I contrasted him inevitably with the\nforceful person who used to stand, in his worn alpaca coat, on the\npavement in front of his store, greeting with clear-eyed content his\nfellow merchants of the city. Willie Breck, too, was silent, and Walter\nKinley took off his glasses and wiped them. In the meanwhile Helen had\nleft the group in which my mother sat, and, approaching us, laid her\nhands on her father's shoulders.\n\n\"Now, dad,\" she said, in affectionate remonstrance, \"you're excited about\npolitics again, and you know it isn't good for you. And besides, they're\nnot worth it.\"\n\n\"You're right, Helen,\" he replied. Under the pressure of her hands he\nmade a strong effort to control himself, and turned to address my mother\nacross the room.\n\n\"I'm getting to be a crotchety old man,\" he said. \"It's a good thing I\nhave a daughter to remind me of it.\"\n\n\"It is a good thing, Robert,\" said my mother.\n\nDuring the rest of our visit he seemed to have recovered something of his\nformer spirits and poise, taking refuge in the past. They talked of their\nown youth, of families whose houses had been landmarks on the Second\nBank.\n\n\"I'm worried about your Cousin Robert, Hugh,\" my mother confided to me,\nwhen we were at length seated in the train. \"I've heard rumours that\nthings are not so well at the store as they might be.\" We looked out at\nthe winter landscape, so different from that one which had thrilled every\nfibre of my being in the days when the railroad on which we travelled had\nbeen a winding narrow gauge. The orchards--those that remained--were\nbare; stubble pricked the frozen ground where tassels had once waved in\nthe hot, summer wind. We flew by row after row of ginger-bread, suburban\nhouses built on \"villa plots,\" and I read in large letters on a hideous\nsign-board, \"Woodbine Park.\"\n\n\"Hugh, have you ever heard anything against--Mr. Watling?\"\n\n\"No, mother,\" I said. \"So far as I knew, he is very much looked up to by\nlawyers and business men. He is counsel, I believe, for Mr. Blackwood's\nstreet car line on Boyne Street. And I told you, I believe, that I met\nhim once at Mr. Kyme's.\"\n\n\"Poor Robert!\" she sighed. \"I suppose business trouble does make one\nbitter,--I've seen it so often. But I never imagined that it would\novertake Robert, and at his time of life! It is an old and respected\nfirm, and we have always had a pride in it.\" ...\n\nThat night, when I was going to bed, it was evident that the subject was\nstill in her mind. She clung to my hand a moment.\n\n\"I, too, am afraid of the new, Hugh,\" she said, a little tremulously. \"We\nall grow so, as age comes on.\"\n\n\"But you are not old, mother,\" I protested.\n\n\"I have a feeling, since your father has gone, that I have lived my life,\nmy dear, though I'd like to stay long enough to see you happily\nmarried--to have grandchildren. I was not young when you were born.\" And\nshe added, after a little while, \"I know nothing about business affairs,\nand now--now that your father is no longer here, sometimes I'm afraid--\"\n\n\"Afraid of what, mother?\"\n\nShe tried to smile at me through her tears. We were in the old\nsitting-room, surrounded by the books.\n\n\"I know it's foolish, and it isn't that I don't trust you. I know that\nthe son of your father couldn't do anything that was not honourable. And\nyet I am afraid of what the world is becoming. The city is growing so\nfast, and so many new people are coming in. Things are not the same.\nRobert is right, there. And I have heard your father say the same thing.\nHugh, promise me that you will try to remember always what he was, and\nwhat he would wish you to be!\"\n\n\"I will, mother,\" I answered. \"But I think you would find that Cousin\nRobert exaggerates a little, makes things seem worse than they really\nare. Customs change, you know. And politics were never well--Sunday\nschools.\" I, too, smiled a little. \"Father knew that. And he would never\ntake an active part in them.\"\n\n\"He was too fine!\" she exclaimed.\n\n\"And now,\" I continued, \"Cousin Robert has happened to come in contact\nwith them through business. That is what has made the difference in him.\nBefore, he always knew they were corrupt, but he rarely thought about\nthem.\"\n\n\"Hugh,\" she said suddenly, after a pause, \"you must remember one\nthing,--that you can afford to be independent. I thank God that your\nfather has provided for that!\"\n\nI was duly admitted, the next autumn, to the bar of my own state, and was\nassigned to a desk in the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Larry\nWeed was my immediate senior among the apprentices, and Larry was a\nhero-worshipper. I can see him now. He suggested a bullfrog as he sat in\nthe little room we shared in common, his arms akimbo over a law book, his\nlittle legs doubled under him, his round, eyes fixed expectantly on the\ndoorway. And even if I had not been aware of my good fortune in being\nconnected with such a firm as Theodore Watling's, Larry would shortly\nhave brought it home to me. During those weeks when I was making my first\ndesperate attempts at briefing up the law I was sometimes interrupted by\nhis exclamations when certain figures went by in the corridor.\n\n\"Say, Hugh, do you know who that was?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Miller Gorse.\"\n\n\"Who's he?\"\n\n\"Do you mean to say you never heard of Miller Gorse?\"\n\n\"I've been away a long time,\" I would answer apologetically. A person of\nsome importance among my contemporaries at Harvard, I had looked forward\nto a residence in my native city with the complacency of one who has seen\nsomething of the world,--only to find that I was the least in the new\nkingdom. And it was a kingdom. Larry opened up to me something of the\nsignificance and extent of it, something of the identity of the men who\ncontrolled it.\n\n\"Miller Gorse,\" he said impressively, \"is the counsel for the railroad.\"\n\n\"What railroad? You mean the--\" I was adding, when he interrupted me\npityingly.\n\n\"After you've been here a while you'll find out there's only one railroad\nin this state, so far as politics are concerned. The Ashuela and\nNorthern, the Lake Shore and the others don't count.\"\n\nI refrained from asking any more questions at that time, but afterwards I\nalways thought of the Railroad as spelled with a capital.\n\n\"Miller Gorse isn't forty yet,\" Larry told me on another occasion.\n\"That's doing pretty well for a man who comes near running this state.\"\n\nFor the sake of acquiring knowledge, I endured Mr. Weed's patronage. I\ninquired how Mr. Gorse ran the state.\n\n\"Oh, you'll find out soon enough,\" he assured me.\n\n\"But Mr. Barbour's president of the Railroad.\"\n\n\"Sure. Once in a while they take something up to him, but as a rule he\nleaves things to Gorse.\"\n\nWhereupon I resolved to have a good look at Mr. Gorse at the first\nopportunity. One day Mr. Watling sent out for some papers.\n\n\"He's in there now;\" said Larry. \"You take 'em.\"\n\n\"In there\" meant Mr. Watling's sanctum. And in there he was. I had only a\nglance at the great man, for, with a kindly but preoccupied \"Thank you,\nHugh,\" Mr. Watling took the papers and dismissed me. Heaviness, blackness\nand impassivity,--these were the impressions of Mr. Gorse which I carried\naway from that first meeting. The very solidity of his flesh seemed to\nsuggest the solidity of his position. Such, say the psychologists, is the\neffect of prestige.\n\nI remember well an old-fashioned picture puzzle in one of my boyhood\nbooks. The scene depicted was to all appearances a sylvan, peaceful one,\nwith two happy lovers seated on a log beside a brook; but presently, as\none gazed at the picture, the head of an animal stood forth among the\nbranches, and then the body; more animals began to appear, bit by bit; a\ntiger, a bear, a lion, a jackal, a fox, until at last, whenever I looked\nat the page, I did not see the sylvan scene at all, but only the\npredatory beasts of the forest. So, one by one, the figures of the real\nrulers of the city superimposed themselves for me upon the simple and\ndemocratic design of Mayor, Council, Board of Aldermen, Police Force,\netc., that filled the eye of a naive and trusting electorate which fondly\nimagined that it had something to say in government. Miller Gorse was one\nof these rulers behind the screen, and Adolf Scherer, of the Boyne Iron\nWorks, another; there was Leonard Dickinson of the Corn National Bank;\nFrederick Grierson, becoming wealthy in city real estate; Judah B.\nTallant, who, though outlawed socially, was deferred to as the owner of\nthe Morning Era; and even Ralph Hambleton, rapidly superseding the\nelderly and conservative Mr. Lord, who had hitherto managed the great\nHambleton estate. Ralph seemed to have become, in a somewhat gnostic\nmanner, a full-fledged financier. Not having studied law, he had been\nhome for four years when I became a legal fledgling, and during the early\ndays of my apprenticeship I was beholden to him for many \"eye openers\"\nconcerning the conduct of great affairs. I remember him sauntering into\nmy room one morning when Larry Weed had gone out on an errand.\n\n\"Hello, Hughie,\" he said, with his air of having nothing to do. \"Grinding\nit out? Where's Watling?\"\n\n\"Isn't he in his office?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Well, what can we do for you?\" I asked.\n\nRalph grinned.\n\n\"Perhaps I'll tell you when you're a little older. You're too young.\" And\nhe sank down into Larry Weed's chair, his long legs protruding on the\nother side of the table. \"It's a matter of taxes. Some time ago I found\nout that Dickinson and Tallant and others I could mention were paying a\ngood deal less on their city property than we are. We don't propose to do\nit any more--that's all.\"\n\n\"How can Mr. Watling help you?\" I inquired.\n\n\"Well, I don't mind giving you a few tips about your profession, Hughie.\nI'm going to get Watling to fix it up with the City Hall gang. Old Lord\ndoesn't like it, I'll admit, and when I told him we had been contributing\nto the city long enough, that I proposed swinging into line with other\nproperty holders, he began to blubber about disgrace and what my\ngrandfather would say if he were alive. Well, he isn't alive. A good deal\nof water has flowed under the bridges since his day. It's a mere matter\nof business, of getting your respectable firm to retain a City Hall\nattorney to fix it up with the assessor.\"\n\n\"How about the penitentiary?\" I ventured, not too seriously.\n\n\"I shan't go to the penitentiary, neither will Watling. What I do is to\npay a lawyer's fee. There isn't anything criminal in that, is there?\"\n\nFor some time after Ralph had departed I sat reflecting upon this new\nknowledge, and there came into my mind the bitterness of Cousin Robert\nBreck against this City Hall gang, and his remarks about lawyers. I\nrecalled the tone in which he had referred to Mr. Watling. But Ralph's\nphilosophy easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of a\nsituation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being\noverwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to\nMr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary\ntransactions did not interfere in any way with his personal\nrelationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr.\nRipon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the\ncommunity, conducting advanced Bible classes every week in the Church of\nthe Redemption?... The unfolding of mysteries kept me alert. And I\nunderstood that, if I was to succeed, certain esoteric knowledge must be\nacquired, as it were, unofficially. I kept my eyes and ears open, and\napplied myself, with all industry, to the routine tasks with which every\nyoung man in a large legal firm is familiar. I recall distinctly my pride\nwhen, the Board of Aldermen having passed an ordinance lowering the water\nrates, I was intrusted with the responsibility of going before the court\nin behalf of Mr. Ogilvy's water company, obtaining a temporary\nrestricting order preventing the ordinance from going at once into\neffect. Here was an affair in point. Were it not for lawyers of the\ncalibre of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon, hard-earned private property would\nsoon be confiscated by the rapacious horde. Once in a while I was made\naware that Mr. Watling had his eye on me.\n\n\"Well, Hugh,\" he would say, \"how are you getting along? That's right,\nstick to it, and after a while we'll hand the drudgery over to somebody\nelse.\"\n\nHe possessed the supreme quality of a leader of men in that he took pains\nto inform himself concerning the work of the least of his subordinates;\nand he had the gift of putting fire into a young man by a word or a touch\nof the hand on the shoulder. It was not difficult for me, therefore, to\ncomprehend Larry Weed's hero-worship, the loyalty of other members of the\nfirm or of those occupants of the office whom I have not mentioned. My\nfirst impression of him, which I had got at Jerry Kyme's, deepened as\ntime went on, and I readily shared the belief of those around me that his\nlegal talents easily surpassed those of any of his contemporaries. I can\nrecall, at this time, several noted cases in the city when I sat in court\nlistening to his arguments with thrills of pride. He made us all feel--no\nmatter how humble may have been our contributions to the\npreparation--that we had a share in his triumphs. We remembered his\nmanner with judges and juries, and strove to emulate it. He spoke as if\nthere could be no question as to his being right as to the law and the\nfacts, and yet, in some subtle way that bated analysis, managed not to\nantagonize the court. Victory was in the air in that office. I do not\nmean to say there were not defeats; but frequently these defeats, by\nresourcefulness, by a never-say-die spirit, by a consummate knowledge,\nnot only of the law, but of other things at which I have hinted, were\nturned into ultimate victories. We fought cases from one court to\nanother, until our opponents were worn out or the decision was reversed.\nWe won, and that spirit of winning got into the blood. What was most\nimpressed on me in those early years, I think, was the discovery that\nthere was always a path--if one were clever enough to find it--from one\nterrace to the next higher. Staying power was the most prized of all the\nvirtues. One could always, by adroitness, compel a legal opponent to\nfight the matter out all over again on new ground, or at least on ground\npartially new. If the Court of Appeals should fail one, there was the\nSupreme Court; there was the opportunity, also, to shift from the state\nto the federal courts; and likewise the much-prized device known as a\nchange of venue, when a judge was supposed to be \"prejudiced.\"\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nAs my apprenticeship advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants of\nour city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who\nwere separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the\nclassification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed.\nSometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair\ntook me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the city\npenned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who had\nspent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented\nto the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch\nthe eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazed\nforth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with\nscrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I\nbeheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly\nand inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all,\nmust be practical men. I came to know the justices of these police\ncourts, as well as other judges. And underlying my acquaintance with all\nof them was the knowledge--though not on the threshold of my\nconsciousness--that they depended for their living, every man of them,\nthose who were appointed and those who were elected, upon a political\norganization which derived its sustenance from the element whence came\nour clients. Thus by degrees the sense of belonging to a special\npriesthood had grown on me.\n\nI recall an experience with that same Mr. Nathan. Weill, the wholesale\ngrocer of whose commerce with the City Hall my Cousin Robert Breck had so\nbitterly complained. Late one afternoon Mr. Weill's carriage ran over a\nchild on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. The\nparents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This was\nlate in the afternoon, and I was alone in the office when the telephone\nrang. Hurrying to the police station, I found Mr. Weill in a state of\nexcitement and abject fear, for an ugly crowd had gathered outside.\n\n\"Could not Mr. Watling or Mr. Fowndes come?\" demanded the grocer.\n\nWith an inner contempt for the layman's state of mind on such occasions I\nassured him of my competency to handle the case. He was impressed, I\nthink, by the sergeant's deference, who knew what it meant to have such\nan office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecuting\nattorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a release\nfor the coachman on his own recognizance, one of many signed in blank and\nleft there by the justice for privileged cases. The coachman was hustled\nout by a back door, and the crowd dispersed.\n\nThe next morning, while a score or more of delinquents sat in the anxious\nseats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me precedence. And Mr. Weill,\nwith a sigh of relief, paid his fine.\n\n\"Mr. Paret, is it?\" he asked, as we stood together for a moment on the\nsidewalk outside the court. \"You have managed this well. I will\nremember.\"\n\nHe was sued, of course. When he came to the office he insisted on\ndiscussing the case with Mr. Watling, who sent for me.\n\n\"That is a bright young man,\" Mr. Weill declared, shaking my hand. \"He\nwill get on.\"\n\n\"Some day,\" said Mr. Watling, \"he may save you a lot of money, Weill.\"\n\n\"When my friend Mr. Watling is United States Senator,--eh?\"\n\nMr. Watling laughed. \"Before that, I hope. I advise you to compromise\nthis suit, Weill,\" he added. \"How would a thousand dollars strike you?\nI've had Paret look up the case, and he tells me the little girl has had\nto have an operation.\"\n\n\"A thousand dollars!\" cried the grocer. \"What right have these people to\nlet their children play on the streets? It's an outrage.\"\n\n\"Where else have the children to play?\" Mr. Watling touched his arm.\n\"Weill,\" he said gently, \"suppose it had been your little girl?\" The\ngrocer pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his bald forehead. But he\nrallied a little.\n\n\"You fight these damage cases for the street railroads all through the\ncourts.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Mr. Watling agreed, \"but there a principle is involved. If the\nrailroads once got into the way of paying damages for every careless\nemployee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here you\nhave a child whose father is a poor janitor and can't afford sickness.\nAnd your coachman, I imagine, will be more particular in the future.\"\n\nIn the end Mr. Weill made out a cheque and departed in a good humour,\nconvinced that he was well out of the matter. Here was one of many\ninstances I could cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt,\nmoreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who had\nrecommended the compromise. For I had been to the hospital and had seen\nthe child on the cot,--a dark little thing, lying still in her pain, with\nthe bewildered look of a wounded animal....\n\nNot long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a more\nor less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had\nsuddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a place\nin Denver, and paid his expenses west.\n\nThe first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes and\nRipon were of importance to my future career, but there is little to\nrelate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in acquiring\nthat esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be had from my\nseniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to a successful and\nlucrative practice. My former comparison of the organization of our city\nto a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible only\nafter long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be the\nhuman anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and\nindustrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall\npoliticians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law,\npolitics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous system\ntoo complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hard\nand often late, I still found time for convivialities, for social\ngaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losing\nzest for the companionship of my former intimates. My mind was becoming\npolarized by the contemplation of one object, success, and to it human\nties were unconsciously being sacrificed.\n\nTom Peters began to feel this, even at a time when I believed myself\nstill to be genuinely fond of him. Considering our respective\ntemperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the first\nto fall in love and marry. One day he astonished me by announcing his\nengagement to Susan Blackwood.\n\n\"That ends the liquor, Hughie,\" he told me, beamingly. \"I promised her\nI'd eliminate it.\"\n\nHe did eliminate it, save for mild relapses on festive occasions. A more\nseemingly incongruous marriage could scarcely be imagined, and yet it was\na success from the start. From a slim, silent, self-willed girl Susan had\ngrown up into a tall, rather rawboned and energetic young woman. She was\nwhat we called in those days \"intellectual,\" and had gone in for\nkindergartens, and after her marriage she turned out to be excessively\ndomestic; practising her theories, with entire success, upon a family\nthat showed a tendency to increase at an alarming rate. Tom, needless to\nsay, did not become intellectual. He settled down--prematurely, I\nthought--into what is known as a family man, curiously content with the\nincome he derived from the commission business and with life in general;\nand he developed a somewhat critical view of the tendencies of the\ncivilization by which he was surrounded. Susan held it also, but she said\nless about it. In the comfortable but unpretentious house they rented on\nCedar Street we had many discussions, after the babies had been put to\nbed and the door of the living-room closed, in order that our voices\nmight not reach the nursery. Perry Blackwood, now Tom's brother-in-law,\nwas often there. He, too, had lapsed into what I thought was an odd\nconservatism. Old Josiah, his father, being dead, he occupied himself\nmainly with looking after certain family interests, among which was the\nBoyne Street car line. Among \"business men\" he was already getting the\nreputation of being a little difficult to deal with. I was often the\nsubject of their banter, and presently I began to suspect that they\nregarded my career and beliefs with some concern. This gave me no\nuneasiness, though at limes I lost my temper. I realized their affection\nfor me; but privately I regarded them as lacking in ambition, in force,\nin the fighting qualities necessary for achievement in this modern age.\nPerhaps, unconsciously, I pitied them a little.\n\n\"How is Judah B. to-day, Hughie?\" Tom would inquire. \"I hear you've put\nhim up for the Boyne Club, now that Mr. Watling has got him out of that\nlibel suit.\"\n\n\"Carter Ives is dead,\" Perry would add, sarcastically, \"let bygones be\nbygones.\"\n\nIt was well known that Mr. Tallant, in the early days of his newspaper,\nhad blackmailed Mr. Ives out of some hundred thousand dollars. And that\nthis, more than any other act, stood in the way, with certain\nrecalcitrant gentlemen, of his highest ambition, membership in the Boyne.\n\n\"The trouble with you fellows is that you refuse to deal with conditions\nas you find them,\" I retorted. \"We didn't make them, and we can't change\nthem. Tallant's a factor in the business life of this city, and he has to\nbe counted with.\"\n\nTom would shake his head exasperatingly.\n\n\"Why don't you get after Ralph?\" I demanded. \"He doesn't antagonize\nTallant, either.\"\n\n\"Ralph's hopeless,\" said Tom. \"He was born a pirate, you weren't, Hughie.\nWe think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?\"\n\nI refused to accept the remark as flattering.\n\nAnother object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this time\nhad emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into a\nmanipulator of blocks and corners.\n\n\"I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical bill\nof health of every client,\" I said. \"I won't stand up for all of\nTallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take his\ncases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog a\nbad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because he has\nworked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you fellows\ndon't believe in democracy,--in giving every man a chance to show what's\nin him.\"\n\n\"Democracy is good!\" exclaimed Perry. \"If the kind of thing we're coming\nto is democracy, God save the state!\"...\n\nOn the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton,\nsometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood friends\nwho seemed to be able to \"deal with conditions as he found them.\" Indeed,\nhe gave one the impression that, if he had had the making of them, he\nwould not have changed them.\n\n\"What the deuce do you expect?\" I once heard him inquire with\ngood-natured contempt. \"Business isn't charity, it's war.\n\n\"There are certain things,\" maintained Perry, stoutly, \"that gentlemen\nwon't do.\"\n\n\"Gentlemen!\" exclaimed Ralph, stretching his slim six feet two: We were\nsitting in the Boyne Club. \"It's ungentlemanly to kill, or burn a town or\nsink a ship, but we keep armies and navies for the purpose. For a man\nwith a good mind, Perry, you show a surprising inability to think things,\nout to a logical conclusion. What the deuce is competition, when you come\ndown to it? Christianity? Not by a long shot! If our nations are\nslaughtering men and starving populations in other countries,--are\ncarried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filled\nwith business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can't\nexpect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian\nbasis,--if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not\nfor a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the\nfittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but we\nall know it's a sop to the 'common people.' Ask Hughie here if there ever\nwas a law put on the statute books that his friend Watling couldn't get\n'round'? Why, you've got competition even among the churches. Yours,\nwhere I believe you teach in the Sunday school, would go bankrupt if it\nproclaimed real Christianity. And you'll go bankrupt if you practise it,\nPerry, my boy. Some early, wide-awake, competitive, red-blooded bird will\nrelieve you of the Boyne Street car line.\"\n\nIt was one of this same new and \"fittest\" species who had already\nrelieved poor Mr. McAlery Willett of his fortune. Mr. Willett was a\ntrusting soul who had never known how to take care of himself or his\nmoney, people said, and now that he had lost it they blamed him. Some had\nbeen saved enough for him and Nancy to live on in the old house, with\ncareful economy. It was Nancy who managed the economy, who accomplished\nremarkable things with a sum they would have deemed poverty in former\ndays. Her mother had died while I was at Cambridge. Reverses did not\nsubdue Mr. Willett's spirits, and the fascination modern \"business\" had\nfor him seemed to grow in proportion to the misfortunes it had caused\nhim. He moved into a tiny office in the Durrett Building, where he\nappeared every morning about half-past ten to occupy himself with heaven\nknows what short cuts to wealth, with prospectuses of companies in Mexico\nor Central America or some other distant place: once, I remember, it was\na tea, company in which he tried to interest his friends, to raise in the\nSouth a product he maintained would surpass Orange Pekoe. In the\nafternoon between three and four he would turn up at the Boyne Club, as\nwell groomed, as spruce as ever, generally with a flower in his\nbuttonhole. He never forgot that he was a gentleman, and he had a\ngentleman's notions of the fitness of things, and it was against his\nprinciples to use, a gentleman's club for the furtherance of his various\nenterprises.\n\n\"Drop into my office some day, Dickinson,\" he would say. \"I think I've\ngot something there that might interest you!\"\n\nHe reminded me, when I met him, that he had always predicted I would get\nalong in life....\n\nThe portrait of Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline\nof the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as\nupon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of\nthat spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed in\nyouth she must have inherited from McAlery Willett, but these qualities\nhad disappeared in her long before the coming of financial reverses. She\nwas nearing thirty, and in spite of her beauty and the rarer distinction\nthat can best be described as breeding, she had never married. Men\nadmired her, but from a distance; she kept them at arm's length, they\nsaid: strangers who visited the city invariably picked her out of an\nassembly and asked who she was; one man from New York who came to visit\nRalph and who had been madly in love with her, she had amazed many people\nby refusing, spurning all he might have given her. This incident seemed a\nrefutation of the charge that she was calculating. As might have been\nforetold, she had the social gift in a remarkable degree, and in spite of\nthe limitations of her purse the knack of dressing better than other\nwomen, though at that time the organization of our social life still\nremained comparatively simple, the custom of luxurious and expensive\nentertainment not having yet set in.\n\nThe more I reflect upon those days, the more surprising does it seem that\nI was not in love with her. It may be that I was, unconsciously, for she\ntroubled my thoughts occasionally, and she represented all the qualities\nI admired in her sex. The situation that had existed at the time of our\nfirst and only quarrel had been reversed, I was on the highroad to the\nworldly success I had then resolved upon, Nancy was poor, and for that\nreason, perhaps, prouder than ever. If she was inaccessible to others,\nshe had the air of being peculiarly inaccessible to me--the more so\nbecause some of the superficial relics of our intimacy remained, or\nrather had been restored. Her very manner of camaraderie seemed\nparadoxically to increase the distance between us. It piqued me. Had she\ngiven me the least encouragement, I am sure I should have responded; and\nI remember that I used occasionally to speculate as to whether she still\ncared for me, and took this method of hiding her real feelings. Yet, on\nthe whole, I felt a certain complacency about it all; I knew that\nsuffering was disagreeable, I had learned how to avoid it, and I may have\nhad, deep within me, a feeling that I might marry her after all.\nMeanwhile my life was full, and gave promise of becoming even fuller,\nmore absorbing and exciting in the immediate future.\n\nOne of the most fascinating figures, to me, of that Order being woven,\nlike a cloth of gold, out of our hitherto drab civilization,--an Order\ninto which I was ready and eager to be initiated,--was that of Adolf\nScherer, the giant German immigrant at the head of the Boyne Iron Works.\nHis life would easily lend itself to riotous romance. In the old country,\nin a valley below the castle perched on the rack above, he had begun life\nby tending his father's geese. What a contrast to \"Steeltown\" with its\nsmells and sickening summer heat, to the shanty where Mrs. Scherer took\nboarders and bent over the wash-tub! She, too, was an immigrant, but\nlived to hear her native Wagner from her own box at Covent Garden; and he\nto explain, on the deck of an imperial yacht, to the man who might have\nbeen his sovereign certain processes in the manufacture of steel hitherto\nuntried on that side of the Atlantic. In comparison with Adolf Scherer,\ncitizen of a once despised democracy, the minor prince in whose dominions\nhe had once tended geese was of small account indeed!\n\nThe Adolf Scherer of that day--though it is not so long ago as time\nflies--was even more solid and impressive than the man he afterwards\nbecame, when he reached the dizzier heights from which he delivered to an\neager press opinions on politics and war, eugenics and woman's suffrage\nand other subjects that are the despair of specialists. Had he stuck to\nsteel, he would have remained invulnerable. But even then he was\nbeginning to abandon the field of production for that of exploitation:\nfiguratively speaking, he had taken to soap, which with the aid of water\nmay be blown into beautiful, iridescent bubbles to charm the eye. Much\ngood soap, apparently, has gone that way, never to be recovered.\nEverybody who was anybody began to blow bubbles about that time, and the\nbigger the bubble the greater its attraction for investors of hard-earned\nsavings. Outside of this love for financial iridescence, let it be\ncalled, Mr. Scherer seemed to care little then for glitter of any sort.\nShortly after his elevation to the presidency of the Boyne Iron Works he\nhad been elected a member of the Boyne Club,--an honour of which, some\nthought, he should have been more sensible; but generally, when in town,\nhe preferred to lunch at a little German restaurant annexed to a saloon,\nwhere I used often to find him literally towering above the cloth,--for\nhe was a giant with short legs,--his napkin tucked into his shirt front,\nengaged in lively conversation with the ministering Heinrich. The chef at\nthe club, Mr. Scherer insisted, could produce nothing equal to Heinrich's\nsauer-kraut and sausage. My earliest relationship with Mr. Scherer was\nthat of an errand boy, of bringing to him for his approval papers which\nmight not be intrusted to a common messenger. His gruffness and brevity\ndisturbed me more than I cared to confess. I was pretty sure that he eyed\nme with the disposition of the self-made to believe that college\neducations and good tailors were the heaviest handicaps with which a\nyoung man could be burdened: and I suspected him of an inimical attitude\ntoward the older families of the city. Certain men possessed his\nconfidence; and he had built, as it were, a stockade about them, sternly\nkeeping the rest of the world outside. In Theodore Watling he had a\nchildlike faith.\n\nThus I studied him, with a deliberation which it is the purpose of these\nchapters to confess, though he little knew that he was being made the\nsubject of analysis. Nor did I ever venture to talk with him, but held\nstrictly to my role of errand boy,--even after the conviction came over\nme that he was no longer indifferent to my presence. The day arrived,\nafter some years, when he suddenly thrust toward me a big, hairy hand\nthat held the document he was examining.\n\n\"Who drew this, Mr. Paret!\" he demanded.\n\nMr. Ripon, I told him.\n\nThe Boyne Works were buying up coal-mines, and this was a contract\nlooking to the purchase of one in Putman County, provided, after a\ncertain period of working, the yield and quality should come up to\nspecifications. Mr. Scherer requested me to read one of the sections,\nwhich puzzled him. And in explaining it an idea flashed over me.\n\n\"Do you mind my making a suggestion, Mr. Scherer?\" I ventured.\n\n\"What is it?\" he asked brusquely.\n\nI showed him how, by the alteration of a few words, the difficulty to\nwhich he had referred could not only be eliminated, but that certain\npossible penalties might be evaded, while the apparent meaning of the\nsection remained unchanged. In other words, it gave the Boyne Iron Works\nan advantage that was not contemplated. He seized the paper, stared at\nwhat I had written in pencil on the margin, and then stared at me.\nAbruptly, he began to laugh.\n\n\"Ask Mr. Wading what he thinks of it?\"\n\n\"I intended to, provided it had your approval, sir,\" I replied.\n\n\"You have my approval, Mr. Paret,\" he declared, rather cryptically, and\nwith the slight German hardening of the v's into which he relapsed at\ntimes. \"Bring it to the Works this afternoon.\"\n\nMr. Wading agreed to the alteration. He looked at me amusedly.\n\n\"Yes, I think that's an improvement, Hugh,\" he said. I had a feeling that\nI had gained ground, and from this time on I thought I detected a change\nin his attitude toward me; there could be no doubt about the new attitude\nof Mr. Scherer, who would often greet me now with a smile and a joke, and\nsometimes went so far as to ask my opinions.... Then, about six months\nlater, came the famous Ribblevale case that aroused the moral indignation\nof so many persons, among whom was Perry Blackwood.\n\n\"You know as well as I do, Hugh, how this thing is being manipulated,\" he\ndeclared at Tom's one Sunday evening; \"there was nothing the matter with\nthe Ribblevale Steel Company--it was as right as rain before Leonard\nDickinson and Grierson and Scherer and that crowd you train with began to\ntalk it down at the Club. Oh, they're very compassionate. I've heard 'em.\nDickinson, privately, doesn't think much of Ribblevale paper, and Pugh\"\n(the president of the Ribblevale) \"seems worried and looks badly. It's\nall very clever, but I'd hate to tell you in plain words what I'd call\nit.\"\n\n\"Go ahead,\" I challenged him audaciously. \"You haven't any proof that the\nRibblevale wasn't in trouble.\"\n\n\"I heard Mr. Pugh tell my father the other day it was a d--d outrage. He\ncouldn't catch up with these rumours, and some of his stockholders were\nliquidating.\"\n\n\"You, don't suppose Pugh would want to admit his situation, do you?\" I\nasked.\n\n\"Pugh's a straight man,\" retorted Perry. \"That's more than I can say for\nany of the other gang, saving your presence. The unpleasant truth is that\nScherer and the Boyne people want the Ribblevale, and you ought to know\nit if you don't.\" He looked at me very hard through the glasses he had\nlately taken to wearing. Tom, who was lounging by the fire, shifted his\nposition uneasily. I smiled, and took another cigar.\n\n\"I believe Ralph is right, Perry, when he calls you a sentimentalist. For\nyou there's a tragedy behind every ordinary business transaction. The\nRibblevale people are having a hard time to keep their heads above water,\nand immediately you smell conspiracy. Dickinson and Scherer have been\ntalking it down. How about it, Tom?\"\n\nBut Tom, in these debates, was inclined to be noncommittal, although it\nwas clear they troubled him.\n\n\"Oh, don't ask me, Hughie,\" he said.\n\n\"I suppose I ought to cultivate the scientific point of view, and look\nwith impartial interest at this industrial cannibalism,\" returned Perry,\nsarcastically. \"Eat or be eaten that's what enlightened self-interest has\ncome to. After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world over\nagain, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and the\nlawyer--how shall I put it?--facilitating the processes of swallowing and\ndigesting....\"\n\nThere was no use arguing with Perry when he was in this vein....\n\nSince I am not writing a technical treatise, I need not go into the\ndetails of the Ribblevale suit. Since it to say that the affair, after a\nwhile, came apparently to a deadlock, owing to the impossibility of\ngetting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which had\nbeen taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own,\nremained out of the state also; the ordinary course of summoning him\nbefore a magistrate in another state had naturally been resorted to, but\nthe desired evidence was not forthcoming.\n\n\"The trouble is,\" Mr. Wading explained to Mr. Scherer, \"that there is no\nlaw in the various states with a sufficient penalty attached that will\ncompel the witness to divulge facts he wishes to conceal.\"\n\nIt was the middle of a February afternoon, and they were seated in deep,\nleather chairs in one corner of the reading room of the Boyne Club. They\nhad the place to themselves. Fowndes was there also, one leg twisted\naround the other in familiar fashion, a bored look on his long and sallow\nface. Mr. Wading had telephoned to the office for me to bring them some\npapers bearing on the case.\n\n\"Sit down, Hugh,\" he said kindly.\n\n\"Now we have present a genuine legal mind,\" said Mr. Scherer, in the\nplayful manner he had adopted of late, while I grinned appreciatively and\ntook a chair. Mr. Watling presently suggested kidnapping the Ribblevale\ntreasurer until he should promise to produce the books as the only way\nout of what seemed an impasse. But Mr. Scherer brought down a huge fist\non his knee.\n\n\"I tell you it is no joke, Watling, we've got to win that suit,\" he\nasserted.\n\n\"That's all very well,\" replied Mr. Watling. \"But we're a respectable\nfirm, you know. We haven't had to resort to safe-blowing, as yet.\"\n\nMr. Scherer shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say it were a matter of\nindifference to him what methods were resorted to. Mr. Watling's eyes met\nmine; his glance was amused, yet I thought I read in it a query as to the\nadvisability, in my presence, of going too deeply into the question of\nways and means. I may have been wrong. At any rate, its sudden effect was\nto embolden me to give voice to an idea that had begun to simmer in my\nmind, that excited me, and yet I had feared to utter it. This look of my\nchief's, and the lighter tone the conversation had taken decided me.\n\n\"Why wouldn't it be possible to draw up a bill to fit the situation?\" I\ninquired.\n\nMr. Wading started.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" he asked quickly.\n\nAll three looked at me. I felt the blood come into my face, but it was\ntoo late to draw back.\n\n\"Well--the legislature is in session. And since, as Mr. Watling says,\nthere is no sufficient penalty in other states to compel the witness to\nproduce the information desired, why not draw up a bill and--and have it\npassed--\" I paused for breath--\"imposing a sufficient penalty on home\ncorporations in the event of such evasions. The Ribblevale Steel Company\nis a home corporation.\"\n\nI had shot my bolt.... There followed what was for me an anxious silence,\nwhile the three of them continued to stare at me. Mr. Watling put the\ntips of his fingers together, and I became aware that he was not\noffended, that he was thinking rapidly.\n\n\"By George, why not, Fowndes?\" he demanded.\n\n\"Well,\" said Fowndes, \"there's an element of risk in such a proceeding I\nneed not dwell upon.\"\n\n\"Risk!\" cried the senior partner vigorously. \"There's risk in everything.\nThey'll howl, of course. But they howl anyway, and nobody ever listens to\nthem. They'll say it's special legislation, and the Pilot will print\nsensational editorials for a few days. But what of it? All of that has\nhappened before. I tell you, if we can't see those books, we'll lose the\nsuit. That's in black and white. And, as a matter of justice, we're\nentitled to know what we want to know.\"\n\n\"There might be two opinions as to that,\" observed Fowndes, with his\nsardonic smile.\n\nMr. Watling paid no attention to this remark. He was already deep in\nthought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize a\nsuggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turn\nit into an accomplished Fact. \"I believe you've hit it, Hugh,\" he said.\n\"We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll\nput into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the clerk to\ncompel the witness to come before the court and testify, and we'll\nprovide for a special commissioner to take depositions in the state where\nthe witness is. If the officers of a home corporation who are outside of\nthe state refuse to testify, the penalty will be that the ration goes\ninto the hands of a receiver.\"\n\nFowndes whistled.\n\n\"That's going some!\" he said.\n\n\"Well, we've got to go some. How about it, Scherer?\"\n\nEven Mr. Scherer's brown eyes were snapping.\n\n\"We have got to win that suit, Watling.\"\n\nWe were all excited, even Fowndes, I think, though he remained\nexpressionless. Ours was the tense excitement of primitive man in chase:\nthe quarry which had threatened to elude us was again in view, and not\nunlikely to fall into our hands. Add to this feeling, on my part, the\nthrill that it was I who had put them on the scent. I had all the\nsensations of an aspiring young brave who for the first time is admitted\nto the councils of the tribe!\n\n\"It ought to be a popular bill, too,\" Mr. Schemer was saying, with a\nsmile of ironic appreciation at the thought of demagogues advocating it.\n\"We should have one of Lawler's friends introduce it.\"\n\n\"Oh, we shall have it properly introduced,\" replied Mr. Wading.\n\n\"It may come back at us,\" suggested Fowndes pessimistically. \"The Boyne\nIron Works is a home corporation too, if I am not mistaken.\"\n\n\"The Boyne Iron Works has the firm of Wading, Fowndes and Ripon behind\nit,\" asserted Mr. Scherer, with what struck me as a magnificent faith.\n\n\"You mustn't forget Paret,\" Mr. Watling reminded him, with a wink at me.\n\nWe had risen. Mr. Scherer laid a hand on my arm.\n\n\"No, no, I do not forget him. He will not permit me to forget him.\"\n\nA remark, I thought, that betrayed some insight into my character... Mr.\nWatling called for pen and paper and made then and there a draft of the\nproposed bill, for no time was to be lost. It was dark when we left the\nClub, and I recall the elation I felt and strove to conceal as I\naccompanied my chief back to the office. The stenographers and clerks\nwere gone; alone in the library we got down the statutes and set to work.\nto perfect the bill from the rough draft, on which Mr. Fowndes had\nwritten his suggestions. I felt that a complete yet subtle change had\ncome over my relationship with Mr. Watling.\n\nIn the midst of our labours he asked me to call up the attorney for the\nRailroad. Mr. Gorse was still at his office.\n\n\"Hello! Is that you, Miller?\" Mr. Watling said. \"This is Wading. When can\nI see you for a few minutes this evening? Yes, I am leaving for\nWashington at nine thirty. Eight o'clock. All right, I'll be there.\"\n\nIt was almost eight before he got the draft finished to his satisfaction,\nand I had picked it out on the typewriter. As I handed it to him, my\nchief held it a moment, gazing at me with an odd smile.\n\n\"You seem to have acquired a good deal of useful knowledge, here and\nthere, Hugh,\" he observed.\n\n\"I've tried to keep my eyes open, Mr. Watling,\" I said.\n\n\"Well,\" he said, \"there are a great many things a young man practising\nlaw in these days has to learn for himself. And if I hadn't given you\ncredit for some cleverness, I shouldn't have wanted you here. There's\nonly one way to look at--at these matters we have been discussing, my\nboy, that's the common-sense way, and if a man doesn't get that point of\nview by himself, nobody can teach it to him. I needn't enlarge upon it\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" I said.\n\nHe smiled again, but immediately became serious.\n\n\"If Mr. Gorse should approve of this bill, I'm going to send you down to\nthe capital--to-night. Can you go?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"I want you to look out for the bill in the legislature. Of course there\nwon't be much to do, except to stand by, but you will get a better idea\nof what goes on down there.\"\n\nI thanked him, and told him I would do my best.\n\n\"I'm sure of that,\" he replied. \"Now it's time to go to see Gorse.\"\n\nThe legal department of the Railroad occupied an entire floor of the Corn\nBank building. I had often been there on various errands, having on\noccasions delivered sealed envelopes to Mr. Gorse himself, approaching\nhim in the ordinary way through a series of offices. But now, following\nMr. Watling through the dimly lighted corridor, we came to a door on\nwhich no name was painted, and which was presently opened by a\nstenographer. There was in the proceeding a touch of mystery that revived\nkeenly my boyish love for romance; brought back the days when I had been,\nin turn, Captain Kidd and Ali Baba.\n\nI have never realized more strongly than in that moment the psychological\nforce of prestige. Little by little, for five years, an estimate of the\nextent of Miller Gorse's power had been coming home to me, and his\nfeatures stood in my mind for his particular kind of power. He was a\ntremendous worker, and often remained in his office until ten and eleven\nat night. He dismissed the stenographer by the wave of a hand which\nseemed to thrust her bodily out of the room.\n\n\"Hello, Miller,\" said Mr. Watling.\n\n\"Hello, Theodore,\" replied Mr. Gorse.\n\n\"This is Paret, of my office.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Mr. Gorse, and nodded toward me. I was impressed by the\nfelicity with which a cartoonist of the Pilot had once caricatured him by\nthe use of curved lines. The circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at the\nwide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy\nshoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned\nabout him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his\nforehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on some\ncurvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr.\nGorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quite\nsure that one's words reached the mark.\n\nIn spite of the intimacy which I knew existed between them, in my\npresence at least Mr. Gorse's manner was little different with Mr.\nWatling than it was with other men. Mr. Wading did not seem to mind. He\npulled up a chair close to the desk and began, without any preliminaries,\nto explain his errand.\n\n\"It's about the Ribblevale affair,\" he said. \"You know we have a suit.\"\n\nGorse nodded.\n\n\"We've got to get at the books, Miller,--that's all there is to it. I\ntold you so the other day. Well, we've found out a way, I think.\"\n\nHe thrust his hand in his pocket, while the railroad attorney remained\nimpassive, and drew out the draft of the bill. Mr. Gorse read it, then\nread it over again, and laid it down in front of him.\n\n\"Well,\" he said.\n\n\"I want to put that through both houses and have the governor's signature\nto it by the end of the week.\"\n\n\"It seems a little raw, at first sight, Theodore,\" said Mr. Gorse, with\nthe suspicion of a smile.\n\nMy chief laughed a little.\n\n\"It's not half so raw as some things I might mention, that went through\nlike greased lightning,\" he replied. \"What can they do? I believe it will\nhold water. Tallant's, and most of the other newspapers in the state,\nwon't print a line about it, and only Socialists and Populists read the\nPilot. They're disgruntled anyway. The point is, there's no other way out\nfor us. Just think a moment, bearing in mind what I've told you about the\ncase, and you'll see it.\"\n\nMr. Gorse took up the paper again, and read the draft over.\n\n\"You know as well as I do, Miller, how dangerous it is to leave this\nRibblevale business at loose ends. The Carlisle steel people and the Lake\nShore road are after the Ribblevale Company, and we can't afford to run\nany risk of their getting it. It's logically a part of the Boyne\ninterests, as Scherer says, and Dickinson is ready with the money for the\nreorganization. If the Carlisle people and the Lake Shore get it, the\nproduct will be shipped out by the L and G, and the Railroad will lose.\nWhat would Barbour say?\"\n\nMr. Barbour, as I have perhaps mentioned, was the president of the\nRailroad, and had his residence in the other great city of the state. He\nwas then, I knew, in the West.\n\n\"We've got to act now,\" insisted Mr. Watling. \"That's open and shut. If\nyou have any other plan, I wish you'd trot it out. If not, I want a\nletter to Paul Varney and the governor. I'm going to send Paret down with\nthem on the night train.\"\n\nIt was clear to me then, in the discussion following, that Mr. Watling's\ngift of persuasion, though great, was not the determining factor in Mr.\nGorse's decision. He, too, possessed boldness, though he preferred\ncaution. Nor did the friendship between the two enter into the\ntransaction. I was impressed more strongly than ever with the fact that a\nlawsuit was seldom a mere private affair between two persons or\ncorporations, but involved a chain of relationships and nine times out of\nten that chain led up to the Railroad, which nearly always was vitally\ninterested in these legal contests. Half an hour of masterly presentation\nof the situation was necessary before Mr. Gorse became convinced that the\nintroduction of the bill was the only way out for all concerned.\n\n\"Well, I guess you're right, Theodore,\" he said at length. Whereupon he\nseized his pen and wrote off two notes with great rapidity. These he\nshowed to Mr. Watling, who nodded and returned them. They were folded and\nsealed, and handed to me. One was addressed to Colonel Paul Varney, and\nthe other to the Hon. W. W. Trulease, governor of the state.\n\n\"You can trust this young man?\" demanded Mr. Gorse.\n\n\"I think so,\" replied Mr. Watling, smiling at me. \"The bill was his own\nidea.\"\n\nThe railroad attorney wheeled about in his chair and looked at me; looked\naround me, would better express it, with his indefinite, encompassing yet\ninclusive glance. I had riveted his attention. And from henceforth, I\nknew, I should enter into his calculations. He had made for me a\ncompartment in his mind.\n\n\"His own idea!\" he repeated.\n\n\"I merely suggested it,\" I was putting in, when he cut me short.\n\n\"Aren't you the son of Matthew Paret?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\nHe gave me a queer glance, the significance of which I left untranslated.\nMy excitement was too great to analyze what he meant by this mention of\nmy father....\n\nWhen we reached the sidewalk my chief gave me a few parting instructions.\n\n\"I need scarcely say, Hugh,\" he added, \"that your presence in the capital\nshould not be advertised as connected with this--legislation. They will\nprobably attribute it to us in the end, but if you're reasonably careful,\nthey'll never be able to prove it. And there's no use in putting our\ncards on the table at the beginning.\"\n\n\"No indeed, sir!\" I agreed.\n\nHe took my hand and pressed it.\n\n\"Good luck,\" he said. \"I know you'll get along all right.\"","title":"A Far Country \u2014 Volume 1","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":51191}