future usefulness and distinction; but one year of demoralizing
association with dissipated and reckless youths undermined the
fair moral and intellectual structure I had so laboriously
raised, and in an unlucky hour he fell a victim to alluring
vices. Intemperance gradually gained such supremacy that he was
threatened with expulsion, and to crown all other errors he was,
while intoxicated, inveigled into a so-called marriage with a
young but notorious girl, whose only claim was her pretty face,
while her situation was hopelessly degraded. This creature,
Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save
the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to
Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized
by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason,
and--I may add--decency and one day when almost mad with brandy
and morphine he consented to call her his wife. Neither was of
age, and my son was not only a minor (lacking two months of being
twenty), but on that occasion was utterly irrational and
irresponsible, as I am prepared to prove. They intended to
conceal the whole shameful affair from me, but the old
grandmother--fearing that some untoward circumstance might mar
the scheme of possessing the ample fortune she well knew my boy
expected to control--wrote me all the disgraceful facts,
imploring my clemency, and urging me to remove Cuthbert from
associates outside of his classmates, who were dragging him to
ruin. If you, my dear sir, are a father (and I hope you are),
paternal sympathy will enable you to realize approximately the
grief, indignation, almost despairing rage into which I was
plunged. Having informed myself through a special agent sent to
the University of the utter unworthiness and disreputable
character of the connection forced upon me, I telegraphed for