writers as court clowns, to be trusted only as far as you could
fling Taurus by the tail. All good bookkeepers have, even yet, this
pitying contempt for those whose chief assets are ideas--the legal
tender of the spirit. The Alameda smile is the smile of scorn worn by
the bookkeepers who prepare the balance-sheets for the great merchants
of San Francisco. Alameda is young, but the Alameda smile is classic.

When Heinrich Schopenhauer was forty he married a beautiful girl of
twenty. She had ideas about art and poetry, and was passing through her
Byronic stage, before Byron did, and taking it rather hard, when her
parents gave her in troth to Heinrich Schopenhauer, the rich merchant.
It was regarded as a great catch.

I wish that I could say that Heinrich and Johanna were happy ever after,
but in view of the well-known facts put forth by their firstborn child,
I can not do it.

Before marriage the woman has her way: let her make the most of her
power--she'll not keep it long! Shortly after their marriage Heinrich
saw symptoms of the art instinct creeping in, and players on sweet
zither-strings, who occasionally called, compelled him to take measures.
He bought a country seat, four miles from the city, on an inaccessible
road, and sent his bride thither. Here he visited her only on Saturdays
and Sundays, and her callers were the good folk he chose to bring with
him.

Marital peace is only possible where women are properly
suppressed--lumity dee!

It was under these conditions that Arthur Schopenhauer was born, on
February Twenty-second--in deference to our George Washington--Seventeen
Hundred Eighty-eight.

The chief quality that Schopenhauer inherited from his father was the
Alameda smile--and this smile of contempt was for all those who did not
think as he did. The mother never professed to have any love for her
husband, or the child either, and the child never professed to have any
love for his mother. He once wrote this: "I was an unwelcome child, born
of a mother in rebellion--she never wanted me, and I reciprocate the
sentiment."

* * * * *

In that troublous year of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-three, the Free City
of Danzig fell under the sway of Prussia.

Heinrich Schopenhauer, who loved freedom, jealous of his privileges,
fearful of his rights, immediately packed up his effects, sold out his
property--at great loss--and moved to the Free City of Hamburg.

That his fears fo