son.

The advent of his boy had been a tremendous event in the reverend
gentleman's life. It is not improbable that his disposition to
monopolize the pride of this event contributed to the ultimate
disruption of his family. It left so few initiatives within the
home to his wife. He had been an early victim to that wave of
philoprogenitive and educational enthusiasm which distinguished the
closing decade of the nineteenth century. He was full of plans in
those days for the education of his boy, and the thought of the
youngster played a large part in the series of complicated emotional
crises with which he celebrated the departure of his wife, crises in
which a number of old school and college friends very generously
assisted--spending weekends at Seagate for this purpose, and
mingling tobacco, impassioned handclasps and suchlike consolation
with much patient sympathetic listening to his carefully balanced
analysis of his feelings. He declared that his son was now his one
living purpose in life, and he sketched out a scheme of moral and
intellectual training that he subsequently embodied in five very
stimulating and intimate articles for the SCHOOL WORLD, but never
put into more than partial operation.

"I have read my father's articles upon this subject," wrote Benham,
"and I am still perplexed to measure just what I owe to him. Did he
ever attempt this moral training he contemplated so freely? I don't
think he did. I know now, I knew then, that he had something in his
mind. . . . There were one or two special walks we had together, he
invited me to accompany him with a certain portentousness, and we
would go out pregnantly making superficial remarks about the school
cricket and return, discussing botany, with nothing said.