ter, with a pathetic ending, whose poignancy is due to its
fidelity to truth._

A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
BY HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
[Footnote: By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1876,
by James R. Osgood & Co.]

I

Ralph Grim was born a gentleman. He had the misfortune of coming into
the world some ten years later than might reasonably have been
expected. Colonel Grim and his lady had celebrated twelve anniversaries
of their wedding-day, and had given up all hopes of ever having a son
and heir, when this late comer startled them by his unexpected
appearance. The only previous addition to the family had been a
daughter, and she was then ten summers old.

Ralph was a very feeble child, and could only with great difficulty be
persuaded to retain his hold of the slender thread which bound him to
existence. He was rubbed with whiskey, and wrapped in cotton, and given
mare's milk to drink, and God knows what not, and the Colonel swore a
round oath of paternal delight when at last the infant stopped gasping
in that distressing way and began to breathe like other human beings.
The mother, who, in spite of her anxiety for the child's life, had
found time to plot for him a career of future magnificence, now
suddenly set him apart for literature, because that was the easiest
road to fame, and disposed of him in marriage to one of the most
distinguished families of the land. She cautiously suggested this to
her husband when he came to take his seat at her bedside; but to her
utter astonishment she found that he had been indulging a similar train
of thought, and had already destined the infant prodigy for the army.
She, however, could not give up her predilection for literature, and
the Colonel, who could not bear to be contradicted in his own house, as
he used to say, was getting every minute louder and more flushed, when,
happily, the doctor's arrival interrupted the dispute.

As Ralph grew up from infancy to childhood, he began to give decided
promise of future distinction. He was fond of sitting down in a corner
and sucking his thumb, which his mother interpreted as the sign of that
brooding disposition peculiar to poets and men of lofty genius. At the
age of five, he had become sole master in the house. He slapped his
sister Hilda in the face, or pulled her hair, when she hesitated to
obey him, tyrannized over his nurse, and sternly refused to go to bed
in spite of his mother's entreaties. On such occasions