gacies or by well-to-do relatives. We were as much alike as
peas in a pod. We were living on the future and bluffing out the
present. You'd have thought it would have cast a gloom over the
neighborhood--you'd have thought it would have done away with some of
the parties and dances. But it didn't. In the first place this was, to
most of us, just life. In the second place there didn't seem to be any
alternative. There was no other way of living. The conditions seemed
to be fixed; we had to eat, we had to wear a certain type of dress;
and unless we wished to exist as exiles we had to meet on a certain
plane of social intercourse. The conventions were as iron clad here as
among the nobility of England. No one thought of violating them; no
one thought it was possible. You had to live as the others did or die
and be done with it. If anyone of us had thought we might have seen
the foolishness of this but it was all so manifest that no one did
think. The only method of escape was a raise and that meant moving
into another sphere which would cover that.

A new complication came when the boy grew old enough to have social
functions of his own. He had made many new friends and he wanted to
join a tennis club, a dancing class and contribute towards the support
of the athletic teams of the school. Moreover he was invited to
parties and had to give parties himself. Once again I tried to see
some way out of this social business. It seemed such a pitiful waste
of ammunition under the circumstances. I wanted to save the money if
it was possible in any way to eke it out, for his education. But what
could I do? The boy had to live as his friends lived or give them up.
He wasn't asked to do any more than the other boys of the neighborhood
but he was rightly asked to do as much. If he couldn't it would be at
the sacrifice of his pride that he associated with them at all. And a
just pride in a boy is something you can't safely tamper with. He had
to have the money and we managed it somehow. But it brought home the
old grim fact that I hadn't as yet saved a dollar.

I clung more than ever now to the one ray of hope--the job ahead. It
was the only comfort Ruth and I had and whenever I felt especially
downhearted she'd start in and plan how we'd spend it. It took the
edge off the immediate thought of danger. In the meanwhile I resigned
even from the Neighborhood Club and let the boy join the tennis club.
I noticed at once a change in the attit