sin with his life. Death is said to pay all debts, but there are some
it cannot pay. To my father I owed my present ambitionless, idle,
good-for-nothing life, my mother's illness, years of disgrace, the loss
of a name--everything.

Paine was my mother's maiden name; she was christened Comfort Paine. My
own Christian name is Roscoe and my middle name is Paine. My other name,
the name I was born with, the name that Mother took when she married,
we dropped when the disgrace came upon us. It was honored and respected
once; now when it was repeated people coupled it with shame and crime
and dishonor and broken trust.

As a boy I remember myself as a spoiled youngster who took the luxuries
of this world for granted. I attended an expensive and select private
school, idled my way through that somehow, and entered college, a
happy-go-lucky young fellow with money in my pocket. For two-thirds
of my Freshman year--which was all I experienced of University life--I
enjoyed myself as much as possible, and studied as little. Then came the
telegram. I remember the looks of the messenger who brought it, the cap
he wore, and the grin on his young Irish face when the fellow sitting
next me at the battered black oak table in the back room of Kelly's
asked him to have a beer. I remember the song we were singing, the crowd
of us, how it began again and then stopped short when the others saw the
look on my face. The telegram contained but four words: "Come home at
once." It was signed with the name of my father's lawyer.

I presume I shall never forget even the smallest incident of that night
journey in the train and the home-coming. The lawyer's meeting me at the
station in the early morning; his taking care that I should not see the
newspapers, and his breaking the news to me. Not of the illness or death