name the baby, and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of
anything else she liked AT ALL!" She offered this explanation one
day when the sickly boy was nine and after a long fit of brooding had
demanded some reason for his name's being Bibbs. He requested then
with unwonted vehemence to be allowed to exchange names with his older
brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with the oldest, James Sheridan,
Junior, and upon being refused went down into the cellar and remained
there the rest of that day. And the cook, descending toward dusk,
reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he was in
the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing. Removed by
force and carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing
to utter a syllable of explanation, even under the lash. This obvious
thing was wholly a mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed,
failed to trace and connect; and the father regarded his son as a
stubborn and mysterious fool, an impression not effaced as the years
went by.

At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding
of a man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked,
long-faced, rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired
and dark-eyed, with a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at
first sight of Bibbs Sheridan a stranger might well be solicitous, for
he seemed upon the point of tears. But to a slightly longer gaze, not
grief, but mirth, was revealed as his emotion; while a more searching
scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he seemed about to burst
out crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other, inevitably, but
it was impossible to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any occasion
of his life, either laughed aloud or wept.

He was a "disappointment" to his father. At least that was the