periences, I seemed
to be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts, to
understand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that had led
them to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which I myself
was at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by mankind. Was
there something within me that might eventually draw me to do likewise?
The desire in me to which my father had referred, which would brook no
opposition, which twisted and squirmed until it found its way to its
object? I recalled the words of Jarvis, the carpenter, that if I ever set
my heart on another man's wife, God help him. God help me!

A wicked man! I had never beheld the handsome and fascinating Mr.
Jennings, but I visualised him now; dark, like all villains, with a black
moustache and snapping black eyes. He carried a cane. I always associated
canes with villains. Whereupon I arose, groped for the matches, lighted
the gas, and gazing at myself in the mirror was a little reassured to
find nothing sinister in my countenance....

Next to my father's faith in a Moral Governor of the Universe was his
belief in the Tariff and the Republican Party. And this belief, among
others, he handed on to me. On the cinder playground of the Academy we
Republicans used to wage, during campaigns, pitched battles for the
Tariff. It did not take a great deal of courage to be a Republican in our
city, and I was brought up to believe that Democrats were irrational,
inferior, and--with certain exceptions like the Hollisters--dirty beings.
There was only one degree lower, and that was to be a mugwump. It was no
wonder that the Hollisters were Democrats, for they had a queer streak in
them; owing, no doubt, to the fact that old Mr. Jules Hollister's mother
had been a Frenchwoman. He looked like a Frenchman, by the way, and
always wore a skullcap.

I remember one autumn afternoon having a violent quarrel with Gene
Hollister that bade fair to end in blows, when he suddenly
demanded:--"I'll bet you anything you don't know why you're a
Republican."

"It's because I'm for the Tariff," I replied triumphantly.

But his next question floored me. What, for example, was the Tariff? I
tried to bluster it out, but with no success.

"Do you know?" I cried finally, with sudden inspiration.

It turned out that he did not.

"Aren't we darned idiots," he asked, "to get fighting over something we
don't know anything about?"

That was Gene's French b