f mosquitoes. I'm but too conscious of how, on the
other hand, I'm desolately outlined to all eyes, in an air as pure and
empty as that of a fine Polar sunset.

It was Lorraine, dear quaint thing, who some time ago made the remark
(on our leaving one of those weekly banquets at which we figure
positively as a pair of social skeletons) that Tom's facetae multiply,
evidently, in direct proportion to his wealth of business ideas; so that
whenever he's enormously funny we may take it that he's "on" something
tremendous. He's sprightly in proportion as he's in earnest, and
innocent in proportion as he's going to be dangerous; dangerous, I mean,
to the competitor and the victim. Indeed when I reflect that his jokes
are probably each going to cost certain people, wretched helpless people
like myself, hundreds and thousands of dollars, their abundant flow
affects me as one of the most lurid of exhibitions. I've sometimes
rather wondered that Father can stand so much of him. Father who has
after all a sharp nerve or two in him, like a razor gone astray in a
valise of thick Jager underclothing; though of course Maria, pulling
with Tom shoulder to shoulder, would like to see any one NOT stand her
husband.

The explanation has struck me as, mostly, that business genial and
cheerful and even obstreperous, without detriment to its BEING business,
has been poor Father's ideal for his own terrible kind. This ideal is,
further, that his home-life shall attest that prosperity. I think it
has even been his conception that our family tone shall by its sweet
innocence fairly register the pace at which the Works keep ahead: so
that he has the pleasure of feeling us as funny and slangy here as
people can only be who have had the best of the bargains other people
are having occasion to rue. We of course don't know--that is Mother and
Grandmamma don't, in any definite way (any more than I do, thanks to
my careful stupidity) how exceeding small some of the material is
consciously ground in the great grim, thrifty mill of industrial
success; and indeed we grow about as many cheap illusions and easy
comforts in the faintly fenced garden of our little life as could very
well be crammed into the space.

Poor Grandmamma--since I've mentioned her--appears to me always the aged
wan Flora of our paradise; the presiding divinity, seated in the centre,
under whose pious traditions, REALLY quite dim and outlived, our fond
sacrifices are offered. Queer e