before him. He is my little son.

He is teaching me a great many things and finding in me a willing pupil.
When I first walked out into the public ways after his entrance to the
stage whereon I hope he will be cast in a worthy part, I walked
differently. I walked with the pride of an emperor. Not the pride of
arrogance. I needed no car of ivory and bronze with captives marching
fettered at its wheel. I needed no slave to whisper in my ear,
"Remember, Caesar, thou art but a man." I was filled with a new
graciousness and wished to be generously courteous to all men, yet that
desire was born of a sense of vast superiority. I had found the meaning
of life; the secret of which the gulls shrieked in mating-time around
the rocks of the island--though then my ears were deaf to its
significance.

She has minted from the precious metal of her soul a life which, with
the other lives of his day, will form the mosaic of his times. I have
the prospect before me of new miracles as that new life unfolds. I feel
the exaltation of being undeservedly linked with something vastly
greater than myself. I made an awkward effort once to put some part of
this idea into words, but Frances only laughed. To her it is all quite
natural. Her only comment was that he is as much mine as hers, which was
a flattery that even my egotism could scarcely assimilate.

We have not named him yet, but an idea struck me a day or two ago while
I was sitting at my down-town desk, and I straightway called her up.

"I have just thought of a name," I said. "I want to call him Francis
Ra-Tuiki. Of course," I hastened to add, realizing that the silence at
the other end of the wire threatened protest, "of course we can dignify
it with highly unphonetic spelling, if you like."

"I don't know," she judiciously reflected. Then with a sudden
afterthought she added, "That might possibly do for a middle name. I
have already decided upon the first."

I wonder what name she has in mind--and she had just finished telling me
that I had a full half-interest in that kid!

A railroad now runs into Adamson County and the new order is replacing
the old. My wife and I and our brother went down on the first train run
over the new line. The people had gathered to see the spectacle, and
incredible as it may seem, there were among them some who looked for the
first time on a locomotive. Old Mrs. Marcus, a little more withered and
monkey-like, was there, and as she contemplated the