Ever since he could remember, his strongest passion had been for
books, for reading. Before he was born the wilderness was
subdued and the cruel toil of his parents' early life was
mitigated by the growth of towns, the spread of civilization.
There was a chance for some leisure, for the higher gratification
of the intense American passion for education. A small library
had sprung up in one corner of the general room of the old
farm-house--from the seeds of a Bible, an almanac, Milton's
Paradise Lost, Baxter's Saint's Rest and a Government report on
cattle. But the art collection had stood still for years--a
facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, another of the
Emancipation Proclamation, pictures of Washington, Lincoln and
Napoleon, the last held in that household second only to
Washington in all history as a "leveler."

The only daughter, Arabella, had been sent to boarding-school in
Cincinnati. She married a rich man, lived in the city and, under
the inspiration of English novels and the tutelage of a woman
friend who visited in New York and often went abroad, was
developing ideas of family and class and rank. She talked
feelingly of the "lower classes" and of the duty of the "upper
class" toward them. Her "goings-on" created an acid prejudice
against higher education in her father's mind. As she was
unfolding to him a plan for sending Hampden to Harvard he
interrupted with, "No MORE idiots in my family at my expense,"
and started out to feed the pigs. The best terms Hampden's
mother could make were that he should not be disinherited and
cast off if he went to Battle Field and paid his own way.

He did not tell Pauline all of this, nor did he repeat to her the