no doubt largely due to the absence of those
close family ties which call out in most of us our first sense of the
kinship of the race.

Flint had no recollection of either father or mother, and he was an
only child. On his mother's death, he was sent to the home of an uncle
and aunt in Syracuse. They received him without enthusiasm, and only
because it was inevitable that the child should be cared for, and
there was no one else to undertake the task. Flint sometimes recalled,
with a feeling of bitterness against Fate, those early years of
repression, when silence and self-obliteration were the only merits or
attractions asked for in the orphan boy.

Those formative years might have proved a much drearier period but for
the circumstance that his uncle's house was provided with a library,
made up of books of all grades and qualities. To these volumes young
Jonathan was at liberty to help himself without let or hindrance,
provided he handled them with care.

Mr. Mullett Flint was a collector of books, but not a reader. Elzevirs
and Aldines and first editions bound by Riviere pleased him as so much
pottery might have pleased him, and he took great pride in relating
how the value of his purchases had increased on his hands. His
guidance in the paths of literature would not have been of great
benefit to his nephew had he been disposed to offer it; but, in fact,
he wasted little thought either on the contents of books or on his
nephew's mental progress. His tastes, interests, and ambitions lay
wholly in the business world, in the making of money, and the handling
of mercantile affairs of magnitude. Had Jonathan, as he grew older,
shown more sharpness and sagacity, some bond of sympathy, if not
attachment, might have formed itself between the two. As it was, they
drifted farther and farther apart. The uncle looked with a shrug of
his shoulders at the boy curled up in one of the library arm-chairs on
a Saturday morning, poring over a volume of the Waverley Novels, when
he himself was briskly making ready to betake himself to business.

"I wish that boy had any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking
windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that,"
he said once to his wife.

"Yes," answered that worthy lady,--"and he wears out the furniture
so!"

Mrs. Mullett Flint was one of those heavy, apathetic women who seem to
have a special attraction for brisk, energetic men of Mr. Flint's
type. If he ever ma