inimized my triumph by declaring that he would rather be his
grandfather, Nathaniel Durrett, than the mayor of the biggest city in
the country. Politicians, he said, were bloodsuckers and thieves, and
the only reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal the
taxpayers' money....

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

My father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library, with its
high ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo
cornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a
tombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow
bindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was one
of those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted
by a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind this table Mr. Durrett sat
reading a volume of sermons, a really handsome old man in his black tie
and pleated shirt; tall and spare, straight as a ramrod, with a finely
moulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberry
stain. He called my father by his first name,