t kept in his pay, to the exclusion of most
other clients, and he was a very good fellow, so far as I knew, with
the modern conception of his profession which, in our smaller towns and
cities, has resulted in corporation lawyers and criminal lawyers, and
has left to a few aging attorneys the faded traditions and the scanty
affairs of the profession. My wife does not mind his standing somewhat
in awe of his father-in-law, but she thinks poorly of his spirit in
relation to that managing girl he has married. Talbert's son is in the
business with him, and will probably succeed him in it; but it is well
known in the place that he will never be the man his father is, not
merely on account of his college education, but also on account of the
easy temperament, which if he had indulged it to the full would have
left him no better than some kind of artist. As it is, he seems to leave
all the push to his father; he still does some sketching outside, and
putters over the aesthetic details in the business, the new designs
for the plated ware, and the illustrated catalogues which the house
publishes every year; I am in hopes that we shall get the printing,
after we have got the facilities. It would be all right with the young
man in the opinion of his censors if he had married a different kind of
woman, but young Mrs. Talbert is popularly held just such another as her
husband, and easy-going to the last degree. She was two or three years
at the Art Students' League, and it was there that her husband met her
before they both decided to give up painting and get married.

The two youngest children, or the fall chickens as they are called in
recognition of the wide interval between their ages and those of the
other children, are probably of the indeterminate character proper to
their years. We think the girl rather inclines to a hauteur based upon
the general neglect of that quality in the family, where even the
eldest sister is too much engaged in ruling to have much force left for
snubbing. The child carries herself with a vague loftiness, which has
apparently not awaited the moment of long skirts for keeping pretenders
to her favor at a distance. In the default of other impertinents to
keep in abeyance we fancy that she exercises her gift upon her younger
brother, who, so far as we have been able to note, is of a disposition
which would be entirely sweet if it were not for the exasperations he
suffers from her. I like to put myself in