g-past days--before Susan taught
me that there are just two kinds of persons, big and little; those you
can do nothing for, because they can do nothing for themselves, and
those you can do nothing for, because they can do everything for
themselves--in those days, I admit that I had my own finicky fears.
Public schools were all very well for the children of men who could
afford nothing better. They had, for example, given Bob Blake's daughter
a pretty fair preliminary training; but they would never do for Ambrose
Hunt's ward. _Noblesse_--or, at any rate, _largesse_--_oblige_.

Yet here was a quandary: Public schools, in my estimation, being too
vulgar for Susan; and Susan, in the estimation of Hillhouse Avenue,
being too vulgar for private ones; yea, and though I still took
cognizance, no subtly modernized Hypatia coming to me highly recommended
for a job--how in the name of useless prosperity was I to get poor
little Susan properly educated at all!

It was Susan who solved this difficulty for me, as she was destined to
solve most of my future difficulties, and all of her own.

She soon turned the public world about her into an extra-select,
super-private school. She impressed all who came into contact with her,
and made of them her devoted--if often unconscious--instructors. And she
began by impressing Miss Goucher and Nora and Sonia, and Philip Farmer,
assistant professor of philosophy in Yale University; and Maltby Phar,
anarchist editor of _The Garden Exquisite_; and--first and chiefly--me.

The case of Phil Farmer was typical. Phil and I had been classmates in
the dark backward and abysm, and we were still, in a manner of speaking,
friends. I mean that, though we had few tastes in common, we kept on
liking each other a good deal. Phil was a gentle-hearted, stiff-headed
sort of man, with a conscience--formed for him and handed on by a long
line of Unitarian ministers--a conscience which drove him to incredible
labor at altitudes few of us attain, and where even Phil, it seemed to
me, found breathing difficult. Not having been thrown with much feminine
society on his chosen heights, he had remained a bachelor. The
Metaphysical Mountains are said to be infested with women, but they
cluster, I am told, below the snow line. Phil did not even meet them by
climbing through them; he always ballooned straight up for the
Unmelting; and when he occasionally dropped down, his psychic chill
seldom wore entirely off before he