welled up within me an intense sympathy and
pity. By an instinctive process somehow linked with other experiences,
I seemed to be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts,
to understand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that
had led them to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which
I myself was at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by
mankind. Was there something within me that might eventually draw me
to do likewise? The desire in me to which my father had referred, which
would brook no opposition, which twisted and squirmed until it found its
way to its object? I recalled the words of Jarvis, the carpenter, that
if I ever set my heart on another man's wife, God help him. God help me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

It turned out that he did not.

"Aren't we darned idiot