umph by declaring that he would rather be his
grandfather, Nathaniel Durrett, than the mayor of the biggest city in the
country. Politicians, he said, were bloodsuckers and thieves, and the
only reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal the
taxpayers' money....

As I have intimated, my vision of a future literary career waxed and
waned, but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me.
If not a literary lion, what was that Somebody to be? Such an environment
as mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romantic
soul. In view of the experience I have just related, it is not surprising
that the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me; nor is it
to be wondered at, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe in
which Ralph's grandfather was held by my father and other influential
persons, that I failed to be stirred by the elements of greatness in the
grim personality of our first citizen, the iron-master. For he possessed
such elements. He lived alone in Ingrain Street in an uncompromising
mansion I always associated with the Sabbath, not only because I used to
be taken there on decorous Sunday visits by my father, but because it was
the very quintessence of Presbyterianism. The moment I entered its
"portals"--as Mr. Hawthorne appropriately would have called them--my
spirit was overwhelmed and suffocated by its formality and orderliness.
Within its stern walls Nathaniel Durrett had made a model universe of his
own, such as the Deity of the Westminster Confession had no doubt meant
his greater one to be if man had not rebelled and foiled him.... It was a
world from which I was determined to escape at any cost.

My father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library, with its
high ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo
cornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a
tombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow
bindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was one
of those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted
by a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind this table Mr. Durrett sat
reading a volume of sermons, a really handsome old man in his black tie
and pleated shirt; tall and spare, straight as a ramrod, with a finely
moulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberry
stain. He called my father by his first name, an immense compl