ude of the men towards me. But
I was reaching a point now where I didn't care.

In this way, then, we lived until I was thirty-eight and Ruth was
thirty, and the boy was eleven. For the last few months I had been
doing night work without extra pay and so was practically exiled from
the boy except on Sundays. He was not developing the way I wanted. The
local grammar school was almost a private school for the neighborhood.
I should have preferred to have it more cosmopolitan. The boy was
rubbing up against only his own kind and this was making him soft,
both physically and mentally. He was also getting querulous and
autocratic. Ruth saw it, but with only one.... Well, on Sundays I took
the boy with me on long cross-country jaunts and did a good deal of
talking to him. But all I said rolled off like water off a duck. He
lacked energy and initiative. He was becoming distinctly more
middle-class than either of us, with some of the faults of the
so-called upper class thrown in. He chattered about Harvard, not as an
opportunity, but as a class privilege. I didn't like it. But before I
had time to worry much about this the crash came that I had not been
wise enough to foresee.

CHAPTER III

THE MIDDLE CLASS HELL

One Saturday afternoon, after we had been paid off, Morse, the head of
the department, whose job I had been eyeing enviously for five years
now, called me into his office. For three minutes I saw all my hopes
realized; for three minutes I walked dizzily with my whole life
justified. I could hardly catch my breath as I followed him. I didn't
realize until then how big a load I had been carrying. As a drowning
man is said to see visions of his whole past life, I saw visions of my
whole future. I saw Ruth's eager face lifted to mine as I told her the
good news; I saw the boy taken from his commonplace surroundings and
doing himself proud in some big preparatory school where he brushed up
against a variety of other boys; I saw--God pity me for the fool I
was--other children at home to take his place. I can say that for
three minutes I have lived.

Morse seated himself in the chair before his desk and, bending over
his papers, talked without looking at me. He was a small fellow. I
don't suppose a beefy man ever quite gets over a certain feeling of
superiority before a small man. I could have picked up Morse in one
hand.

"Carleton," he began, "I've got to cut down your salary five hundred
dollars."

It ca