He puzzled over this for a long time, smelling out a mystery beneath the
words, feeling the presence of something hidden, with the instinct of a
young brute. He could get no satisfaction from his father and by and by
began to be ashamed to ask him; why, he did not know. Although he could
not help hearing the abominable talk of the High School boys, he at
first refused to believe that part of it which he could understand. For
all that he was ashamed of his innocence and ignorance and affected to
appreciate their stories nevertheless.

At length one day he heard the terse and brutal truth. In an instant he
believed it, some lower, animal intuition in him reiterating and
confirming the fact. But even then he hated to think that people were so
low, so vile. One day, however, he was looking through the volumes of
the old Encyclopædia Britannica in his father's library, hoping that he
might find a dollar bill which the Old Gentleman told him had been at
one time misplaced between the leaves of some one of the great tomes.
All at once he came upon the long article "Obstetrics," profusely
illustrated with old-fashioned plates and steel engravings. He read it
from beginning to end.

It was the end of all his childish ideals, the destruction of all his
first illusions. The whole of his rude little standard of morality was
lowered immediately. Even his mother, whom he had always believed to be
some kind of an angel, fell at once in his estimation. She could never
be the same to him after this, never so sweet, so good and so pure as he
had hitherto imagined her.

It was very cruel, the whole thing was a grief to him, a blow, a great
shock; he hated to think of it. Then little by little the first taint