such houses, and the talk was of nothing but children; and anybody who
possessed any children, or any reliable knowledge of the ways of
children, was sure of a respectable hearing and warm interest. If one
said, "By the way, I think I may have a photograph of the kid in my
pocket," every eye would reply immediately: "Out with it, man--or
woman!--and don't pretend you don't always carry the photograph with you
on purpose to show it off!" In such a house it is proved that children
are unmatched as an exhaustless subject of conversation. And the
conversation is rendered more thrilling by the sense of partially tamed
children-children fully aware of their supremacy--prowling to and fro
unseen in muddy boots and torn pinafores, and speculating in their
realistic way upon the mysteriousness of adults.

"We are keen on children here," says the youngish father, frankly. He is
altered now from the man he was when he inhabited a diminutive flat in
the full swirl of New York. His face is calmer, milder, more benevolent,
and more resignedly worried. And assuredly no one would recognize in him
the youth who howled murderously at university football matches and
cried with monstrous ferocity at sight of danger from the opposing
colors: "Kill him! Kill him for me! I can't stand his red stockings
coming up the field!" Yet it is the same man. And this father, too, is
the fruit of university education; and further, one feels that his
passion for his progeny is one of the chief causes of American interest
in education. He and his like are at the root of the modern
university--not the millionaires. In Chicago I was charmed to hear it
stoutly and even challengingly maintained that the root of Chicago
University was not Mr. Rockefeller, but the parents of Chicago.

Assuming that the couple have no children, there is a good chance of
catching them later, splendidly miserable, in a high-class