e split us apart; but it only put the rivets into our friendship.
For both of us in that affair--yes, all three of us, thank God--played a
straight game. There was a time of loss and sorrow for me when he proved
himself more true and helpful than any brother that I ever knew. I was
best man at his wedding; and because he married a girl that understood,
his house became more like a home to me than any other place that my
wandering life has found.

I saw its amazing architectural proportions erupt into the pride of
Eastridge. I saw Cyrus himself, with all his scroll-saw tastes and
mansard-roof opinions, by virtue of sheer honesty and thorough-going
human decency, develop into the unassuming "first citizen" of the
town, trusted even by those who laughed at him, and honored most by his
opponents. I saw his aggravating family of charming children grow around
him--masterful Maria, aesthetic Charles Edward, pretty Peggy, fairy-tale
Alice, and boisterous Billy--each at heart lovable and fairly good; but,
taken in combination, bewildering and perplexing to the last degree.

Cyrus had a late-Victorian theory in regard to the education of
children, that individuality should not be crushed--give them what they
want--follow the line of juvenile insistence--all the opportunities and
no fetters. This late-Victorian theory had resulted in the production
of a collection of early-Rooseveltian personalities around him, whose
simultaneous interaction sometimes made his good old head swim. As
a matter of fact, the whole family, including Talbert's preposterous
old-maid sister Elizabeth (the biggest child of the lot), absolutely
depended on the good sense of Cyrus and his wife, and would have been
helpless without them. But, as a matter of education, each child had a
secret illusion of superiority to the parental standard, and not only
made wild dashes at originality and independent action, but at the
same time cherished a perfect mania for regulating and running all the
others. Independence was a sacred tradition in the Talbert family; but
interference was a fixed nervous habit, and complication was a chronic
social state. The blessed mother understood them all, because she
loved them all. Cyrus loved them all, but the only one he thought he
understood was Peggy, and her he usually misunderstood, because she was
so much like him. But he was fair to them all--dangerously fair--except
when his subcutaneous conscience reproached him with not d