it was to be poor and to suffer the pangs of hunger and
failure. That he never suffered from the lack of a home was
certainly as true as that in his work he knew but little of
failure, for the first stories he wrote for the magazines
brought him into a prominence and popularity that lasted until
the end. But if Richard gained his success early in life and
was blessed with a very lovely home to which he could always
return, he was not brought up in a manner which in any way could
be called lavish. Lavish he may have been in later years, but if
he was it was with the money for which those who knew him best
knew how very hard he had worked.

In a general way, I cannot remember that our life as boys
differed in any essential from that of other boys. My brother
went to the Episcopal Academy and his weekly report never
failed to fill the whole house with an impenetrable gloom and
ever-increasing fears as to the possibilities of his future.
At school and at college Richard was, to say the least, an
indifferent student. And what made this undeniable fact so
annoying, particularly to his teachers, was that morally he
stood so very high. To "crib," to lie, or in any way to cheat
or to do any unworthy act was, I believe, quite beyond his
understanding. Therefore, while his constant lack of interest
in his studies goaded his teachers to despair, when it came to
a question of stamping out wrongdoing on the part of the
student body he was invariably found aligned on the side of
the faculty. Not that Richard in any way resembled a prig or
was even, so far as I know, ever so considered by the most
reprehensible of his fellow students. He was altogether too
red-blooded for that, and I believe the students whom he