nd ravage
the community. He has a bacillus farm, where, according to his
account, the cholera germ, the germ of tuberculosis, the typhoid-fever
germ, and the diphtheria germ are growing side by side for his private
edification. As Josephine says, there are certain risks which a brave
man has to take; but I am not sure that this is one of them. Even my
darling is a little anxious on the score of contamination, in spite of
her scientific son's assurance that his pets are thoroughly harmless.

I do not really know whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David.
Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both,
notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do
not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and
self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he
avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly
fond of the social interests of the day and of the other sex. I
foresee that he bids fair to be a leading man of affairs, and to figure
prominently in society, and later on to become a member of Congress or
to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. But he is just like everybody
else, so to speak; or rather he accepts the world as he finds it and
accommodates himself to it. Now, David is cast in a different mould.
He is essentially unconventional. And yet, though his mother sighs now
and then over his repugnance to young ladies, and tries to badger him
into looking a little more spruce, I can perceive that she is
thoroughly proud of his originality and independence, and believes that
he is even more likely than his conventional brother to distinguish
himself and immortalize the family name. Josephine used to say, when
the boys were little, that she hoped one of them would be a clergyman,
and I know that she has more sympathy than I--and I have
considerable--with a scheme of life which entertains starving in a
garret for the sake of art or science as a meritorious contingency.
She has held up before her boys, since their earliest childhood, the
perils of idle and purely worldly living, and spurred them to make the
most of themselves.

Curiously enough, our two girls are just as dissimilar to each other as
Fred and David. Josie, the elder--who, as I have already specified,
is, according to the world at large, the image of her mother at the
same age--will not be troublesome in the least degree, so my wife tells
me.