pride and joy, but Stephen, the elder, was her comfort and support.
I remember him, later; he was an ugly, sturdy, practical lad, very
different from his brother, and in his way, I imagine, a very fine
fellow. When the war broke out he found that the New England blood ran
thicker in his veins than the Virginian, and immediately obtained
a commission. He fell in some Western battle and left his mother
inconsolable. Roderick, however, has given her plenty to think about,
and she has induced him, by some mysterious art, to abide, nominally at
least, in a profession that he abhors, and for which he is about as fit,
I should say, as I am to drive a locomotive. He grew up a la grace de
Dieu, and was horribly spoiled. Three or four years ago he graduated at
a small college in this neighborhood, where I am afraid he had given a
good deal more attention to novels and billiards than to mathematics and
Greek. Since then he has been reading law, at the rate of a page a day.
If he is ever admitted to practice I 'm afraid my friendship won't avail
to make me give him my business. Good, bad, or indifferent, the boy is
essentially an artist--an artist to his fingers' ends."

"Why, then," asked Rowland, "does n't he deliberately take up the
chisel?"

"For several reasons. In the first place, I don't think he more than
half suspects his talent. The flame is smouldering, but it is never
fanned by the breath of criticism. He sees nothing, hears nothing, to
help him to self-knowledge. He 's hopelessly discontented, but he
does n't know where to look for help. Then his mother, as she one
day confessed to me, has a holy horror of a profession which consists
exclusively, as she supposes, in making figures of people without their
clothes on. Sculpture, to her mind, is an insidious form of immorality,
and for a young man of a passionate disposition she considers the law a