lities that should rightfully
have been our load. Your cup has run over with both joy and sorrow but
you have drunk of the cup, while we are still thirsty! Our hearts are
dry, while yours is green--nourished with the love that should belong to
us. Poor old Jane? Lucky old Jane! Anyhow God bless you!

CHAPTER IV

MY MIND

I come of a family that prides itself on its culture and
intellectuality. We have always been professional people, for my
grandfather was, as I have said, a clergyman; and among my uncles are a
lawyer, a physician and a professor. My sisters, also, have intermarried
with professional men. I received a fairly good primary and secondary
education, and graduated from my university with honors--whatever that
may have meant. I was distinctly of a literary turn of mind; and during
my four years of study I imbibed some slight information concerning the
English classics, music, modern history and metaphysics. I could talk
quite wisely about Chaucer, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Love Peacock
and Ann Radcliffe, or Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer.

I can see now that my smattering of culture was neither deep nor broad.
I acquired no definite knowledge of underlying principles, of general
history, of economics, of languages, of mathematics, of physics or of
chemistry. To biology and its allies I paid scarcely any attention at
all, except to take a few snap courses. I really secured only a surface
acquaintance with polite English literature, mostly very modern. The
main part of my time I spent reading Stevenson and Kipling. I did well
in English composition and I pronounced my words neatly and in a refined
manner. At the end of my course, when twenty-two years old, I was handed
an imitation-parchment degree and proclaimed by the president of the
college as belonging to the Brotherhood of Educated Men.

I did not. I was an imitation educated man; but, though spurious, I was
a sufficiently good counterfeit to pass current for what I had been
declared to be. Apart from a little Latin, a considerable training in
writing the English language, and a great deal of miscellaneous reading
of an extremely light variety, I really had no culture at all. I could
not speak an idiomatic sentence in French or German; I had the vaguest
ideas about applied mechanics and science; and no thorough knowledge
about anything; but I was supposed to be an educated man, and on this
stock in trade I have done business ever since--wi