went to New York, where he found a job on a paper.

And so all through my senior year I was left undisturbed to "queer"
myself in my own sweet way, which was to slave for hours over Guy de
Maupassant and other foreign authors, write stories and sketches by the
score, and with two other "Ishmaelites" plan for a year's work in Paris.
The French prof was delighted and spurred us on with glowing accounts of
life in "the Quarter." One of us wanted to be a painter. No place for
that like Paris! Another an architect--Paris! Myself a writer--Paris!
For what could American writers to-day, with their sentimental little
yarns covering with a laugh or a tear all the big deep facts of life,
show to compare to the unflinching powerful work of the best writers
over in France? In Paris they were training men to write of life as it
really is! How that prof did drum it in. Better still, how he talked it
up to my mother--the last time she came to college.

I soon found she was on my side. If only she could bring father around.

I still remember vividly that exciting night in June when the three of
us, back there at home, sat on the terrace and fought it out. I remember
the beauty of the night, I mean of the night up there in the garden
under the stars, my mother's garden and her stars, and of the hideous
showing put up by my father's harbor below.

Of course he opposed my going abroad. His old indifference to me had
vanished, I saw he regarded me now as worth while, grown up, a business
asset worth fighting for. And my father fought. He spoke abruptly,
passionately of the great chance on the docks down there. I remember
being surprised at his talk, at the bigness and the intensity of this
hunger of his for ships. But of what he said I remembered nothing, I did
not hear, for I was eyeing my mother.

I saw she was watching him pityingly. Why? What argument had she still
to use? I waited in increasing suspense.

"So that's all there is to it," I heard him end. "You might as well get
it right out of your head. You're not going over to Europe to fool away
any more of your time. You're going to buckle down right here."

"Billy, leave us alone," said my mother.

What in the name of all the miracles did she do to him that night--my
mother so frail (she had grown so of late), my father so strong? The
next day she told me he had consented.

I saw little of him in the next two weeks. He left me alone with her
every evening. But when I watch