of weeping in Euphrasia's arms, when the house was no place for
Hilary. He possessed by matrimony and intricate mechanism of which his
really admirable brain could not grasp the first principles; he felt for
her a real if uncomfortable affection, but when she died he heaved a sigh
of relief, at which he was immediately horrified.

Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him. Neither knew what they were
doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and (to
Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline. The boy loved the
streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were a
series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked the
bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old slipper
that broke under the process. Euphrasia kept the slipper, and once showed
it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was grown up and gone
and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away, choking, and left
the room. Such was his cross.

To make it worse, the boy had love his father. Nay, still loved him. As a
little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
near he came to unmanning him. As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.

Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice on
Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. Then he went to Camden
Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and attend
Camden Wentworth Academy. His letters, such as they were, were inimitable
if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane knew. Camden
Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life; and the lad
could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only to begin
quarreling with him again.

I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
and convulsed the other half. Austen went to the college which his father
had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and his career
there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance an