h, despite the slight difference between "taking" and
"shaping," has no slant and displays no animus. Colorless, yes; too
colorless, perhaps you will object. If so, I will reword the matter.
While Raymond, then, was in Europe cultivating his gentler faculties,
Johnny remained in America, strengthening certain specific powers. Or,
again: while Raymond was preparing, or so he thought, for a desirably
decorative place in the "world" (the world at large), Johnny was
qualifying himself, as he felt sure, for an important and remunerative
position in that particular section of the world to which he had decided
to confine his endeavors. And if you ask me, after I have colored a
colorless statement, to bias an unbiased one, I shall refuse. I am not
taking sides. Each of them was following his own likings--not the worst
of rules for a growing and avid organism.

Raymond wrote, of course,--it was impossible that he should not; and I
think I showed one or two of his early letters to Johnny. Johnny was not
exactly interested; vistas were opened for which he had no eyes and
which possessed no appositeness to his own aims.

"Still over there, eh?" he asked, on my producing a second letter.
"These are the years that count," he added. He was probably implying
that the final score would make a better showing for the man who spent
those years in his native and proper environment.

He disregarded the general drift of the letters, but hit upon one or two
novel expressions, and repeated them, half-quizzical, half-intrigue.

"Still over there," I echoed. A developing nature, I felt, must reach
out for whatever it needs; and, in simpler form, I said so.

"Well, I'm no misfit," he rejoined briefly. To "feel at home" at
home--that, I presume, was the advantage he was asserting.

Johnny, "at home," was not long in outgrowing the opportunities of
Dellwood Park. Though he did not make, quite yet, the central district,
a year or two later found him in an older and more important suburb--one
that had passed the first acuteness of speculation and had pretty well
settled down to a regulated life. It was not a suburb of the first rank,
nor even perhaps of the second; but it suited his tastes and his present
purposes. The new business combined banking and real-estate, and the
banking department even maintained a small safety-deposit vault. There
was also some insurance; and a little of mortgage-broking. Johnny was a
highly prized element in this bus