ter than I, old friend; for I am strong
in theory and very weak in practice; they are such dear little
things! And when they cry to be taken up--and a modern trained
nurse says 'No! let them cry!' good God! Remsen, I sometimes sneak
into their thoroughly modern and scientifically arranged nursery,
which resembles an operating room in a brand-new hospital, and I
take up my babies and rock them in my arms, terrified lest that
modern and highly trained nurse discover my infraction of sanitary
rule and precept.

"I don't know; babies were born, and survived cradles and mothers'
arms and kisses long before sterilised milk and bacilli were
invented.

"You see I _am_ weak in more ways than one. But I do mean to give
them every chance. It isn't that these old arms ache for them, that
this rather tired heart weakens when they cry for God knows what,
and modern science says let them _cry_!--it is that, deep in me,
Tappan, a heathenish idea persists that what they need more than
hygienics and scientific discipline is some of that old-fashioned
love--love which rocks them when it is not good for them--love which
overfeeds them sometimes so that they yell with old-fashioned
colic--love which ventures a bacilli-laden kiss. Friend, friend--I
am very unfit! It will be well for them when I move on. Only try to
love them, Tappan. And if you ever doubt, kill them with indulgence,
rather than with hygiene!"

He died of pneumonia a few weeks later. He had no chance. Remsen Tappan
picked up the torch from the fallen hand and, blowing it into a brisk
blaze, shuffled forward to light a path through life for the highly
sterilised twins.

So the Half Moon Trust became father and mother to the Seagrave
children; and Mr. Tappan as dry nurse prescribed the brand of
intellectual pap for them and decided in what manner it should be
administered.

Now home tuition and the "culture of the indiwidool" was a personal
hobby of Mr. Tappan, and promiscuous schools his abomination. Had not
his own son, Peter Stuyvesant Tappan, been reared upon unsteady legs to
magnificent physical and intellectual manhood under this theory?

So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from
the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older
they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds
and studies and teach