own to her that she was, for
several years, very much "in the discard" but she does not hold it
against me. She knows that it would be hard for me to make a choice
between my two jewels to-day--I allude to them as mine because I am
writing this book. My wife has a different angle of vision concerning
them.]

My father came down from West Salem to see this second granddaughter,
and on the whole, approved of her, although his tenderest interest, like
mine, remained with Mary Isabel, who was now old enough to walk and talk
with him. To watch her trotting along the street with that white-haired
warrior, her small hand linked with his, was to gain a deeply moving
sense of the continuity of life. How slender the link between the
generations appears in such a case!

Nothing, not even the birth of a new grandchild, could divert my father
from his accustomed round of city sight-seeing. As in other times, so
now he again demanded to be shown the Stockyards, the Wheat Pit, the
Masonic Temple and Lincoln Park. I groaned but I consented.

It happened that Ira Morris, one of the owners of the Stockyards, was an
acquaintance, and the courtesy and attentions which were shown us gave
the old farmer immense satisfaction--and when he found that Frank Logan,
of "Logan & Bryan," (a Commission firm to which he had been wont to send
his wheat) was also my friend, he began to find in my Chicago life
certain compensating particulars, especially as in his presence I
assumed a prosperity I did not possess.

On paper I sounded fairly well. I was one of the vice-presidents of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. I had a "Town house" as well as
a "country place," and under cover of the fact that very few of my
friends had ever inspected both properties, I was able in some degree to
camouflage my situation. In the city I alluded casually to "my Wisconsin
Homestead," and when in West Salem I referred with quiet affluence to
"my residence in Woodlawn." Explaining that it was a three story house I
passed lightly over the fact that it was only eighteen feet wide!
Similarly, in speaking of "our country home" I did not explain to all my
friends that it was merely an ugly old farmhouse on the edge of a
commonplace village. I stated the truth in each case but not the whole
truth.

If my city friend, Charles Hutchinson, imagined me spending my summers
in a noble mansion on the bank of a shining river it was not my duty to
shock him by declaring t