of his right to live. The word "illegitimate" is not in
the vocabulary of God. If you do not know that, you have not read His
instructive and amusing works.

The critics variously declared the mother of Erasmus was a royal lady, a
physician's only daughter, a kitchen-wench, a Mother Superior--all
according to the prejudices preconceived. In one sense she was surely a
Mother Superior--let the lies neutralize one another.

The fact is, we do not know who the mother of Erasmus was. All we know
is that she was the mother of Erasmus. Here history halts. Her son once
told Sir Thomas More that she was married to a luckless nobody a few
months after the birth of her first baby, and amid the cares of raising
a goodly brood of nobodies on a scant allowance of love and rye-bread,
she was glad to forget her early indiscretions. Not so the father. The
debated question of whether a man really has any parental love is
answered here.

The father of Erasmus was Gerhard von Praet, and the child was called
Gerhard Gerhards--or the son of Gerhard. The father was a man of
property and held office under the State. At the time of the birth of
the illustrious baby, Gerhard von Praet was not married, and it is
reasonable to suppose that the reason he did not wed the mother of his
child was because she belonged to a different social station. In any
event the baby was given the father's name, and every care and attention
was paid the tiny voyager. This father was as foolish as most fond
mothers, for he dreamed out a great career for the motherless one, and
made sundry prophecies.

At six years of age the child was studying Latin, when he should have
been digging in a sand-pile. At eight he spoke Dutch and French, and
argued with his nurse in Greek as to the value of buttermilk.

In the meantime the father had married and settled down in honorable
obscurity as a respectable squire. Another account has it that he became
a priest. Anyway, the little maverick was now making head alone in a
private school.

When the lad was thirteen the father died, leaving a will in which he
provided well for the child. The amount of property which by this will
would have belonged to our hero when he became of age would have
approximated forty thousand dollars.

Happily, the trustees of the fund were law-wolves. They managed to break
the will, and then they showed the court that the child was a waif, and
absolutely devoid of legal rights of any and every kind