the case of
Wallabout Smith. "Although my boys are fond of me," he once told a
reporter, "they usually regard my presence as a bore. When I find time
to go out walking with them, they do their best to lose me, and whenever
we divide off into teams for a game of ball, each side insists on my
going with the other side. I have made up my mind that there is a time
for being with one's children and a time for letting them alone, and
that the proper time for being with them is when they are in trouble
and want you, and the proper time for letting them alone is when they
are happy and wish to be let alone. This I admit is the reverse of the
common practice, and probably there is something to be said for parents
who grow fond of their children's society when they, the parents, have
nothing else to do. As a rule, I have never obtruded myself on my boys,
being confident that natural affection and the recurrent need of
pocket-money would constitute a sufficient bond between us."

There was, in conclusion, one factor in his success upon which Wallabout
Smith would never fail to lay the most emphatic stress, and to which
Herr Grundschnitt attached equal importance. "Such fame," he would say,
"as has fallen to my share must be attributed in the very largest
measure to my wife. Many is the time she gave up her meetings at the
Browning Club to watch with me beside the sick-bed of one of our little
ones. And she would do this so uncomplainingly, so cheerfully, that it
almost made one oblivious to the extent of her sacrifice. There must
have been occasions, I feel sure, when it cost her a pang to find her
photograph omitted from the local paper's account of a club meeting or a
church bazaar; but if she ever suffered on that score, she never let it
be known. I can truly say that, without her, my life work would have
spelt failure."

XXIII

BEHIND THE TIMES

I had scarcely exchanged a half-dozen sentences with Howard King before
we knew ourselves for kindred spirits. I was in a roomful of people who
were talking about new books I had not read, new plays I had not seen,
and new singers I had not heard, and I was exceedingly lonesome. There
was one youngish middle-aged lady in pink, who asked me what was the
best novel I had read of late, and when I said "Robert Elsmere," she
looked at me rather grimly and asked whether I lived in New York. When I
said yes, she turned away and began chatting with a young man on her
right, who l