ven
cheeky; but most of them, employing the social assimilability of
youth,--especially that of youth in the Middle West,--laid little stress
upon it. Johnny made his place, in due time and on his own merits. Or
shall I say, rather, by his own powers?

V

You are not to suppose that while I was free to visit Johnny in the
stable, I was not free to visit Raymond in the house. Though my people
lived rather modestly on a side street, the interior of the Prince
residence was not unknown to me. On one occasion Raymond took me up to
his room so that I might hear some of his writings. He had been to
Milwaukee or to Indianapolis, and had found himself moved to set down an
account of his three days away from home. He led me through several big
rooms downstairs before we got to his own particular quarters above. The
furnishing of these rooms impressed me at the time; but I know, now,
that they were heavy and clumsy when they were meant to be rich and
massive, and were meretricious when they were meant to be elegant. It
was all of the Second Empire, qualified by an erratic, exaggerated touch
that was natively American. I am afraid I found it rather superb and was
made uncomfortable--was even intimidated by it; all the more so that
Raymond took it completely for granted. One room contained a big
orchestrion with many pipes in tiers, like an organ's. On one occasion I
heard it play the overture to "William Tell," and it managed the
"Storm" very handily. There was a large, three-cornered piano in the
same room--one of the sort I never could feel at home with; and this
instrument, more than the other, I suppose, gave Raymond his futile and
disadvantageous start toward music. Travel; art; anything but the bank.

I have no idea at what time of day he introduced me into the house, but
it was an hour at which the men, as well as the women, were at home. In
one part or another of the hall I met his mother. She was dark and lean;
without being tall, she looked gaunt. She seemed occupied with herself,
as she moved out of one shadow into another, and she gave scant
attention to a casual boy. Raymond was really no more hospitable than
any young and growing organism must be; but perhaps she was thankful
that it was only one boy, instead of three or four.

In another room, somewhere on the first floor, I had a glimpse of his
father. I remember him as a sedate man who did not insist. If he set a
boy right, it was done but verbally; the boy