supposed. Donald, the genius, had just arrived, after a dozen years or
so, at the stage where he was mentioned now and then in the literary
journals. But Jim stuck to shoes and kept the family on a fair tide of
modest prosperity.

Once, in the years of Jim's apprenticeship to life, there came over him a
fit of soul-sickness that nearly proved his ruin.

"I can't stand this," he wrote Aleck Van Camp; "It's too hard and dry and
sordid for any man that's got a soul. It isn't the grind I mind, though
that is bad enough; it is the 'Commercial Idea' that eats into a man's
innards. He forgets there are things that money can't buy, and in his
heart he grows contemptuous of anything to be had 'without money and
without price.' He can't help it. If he is thinking of trade
nine-tenths of the time, his mind gets set that way. I'm ready any
minute to jump the fence, like father's old colt up on the farm. I'm not
a snob, but I recognize now that there was some reason for all our old
Hambleton ancestors being so finicky about trade.

"Do you remember how we used to talk, when we were kiddies, about keeping
our ideals? Well, I believe I'm bankrupt, Aleck, in my account with
ideals. I don't want to howl, and these remarks don't go with anybody
else, but I can say, to you, I want them back again."

Aleck did as a kiddie should do, writing much advice on long sheets of
paper, and illustrating his points richly, like a good Scotchman, with
scientific instances. A month or two later he contrived to have work to
do in Boston, so that he could go out to Lynn and look up Jimmy's case.
He even devised a cure by creating, in his mind, an office in the
biological world which was to be offered to James on the ground that