a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a
home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap
helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of
control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the
moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then
glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a
household kept in dignified turmoil by this child of wealth, who
needed a poor boy's chance to be a lovable, hearty, normal chap. It
was overattention to his health, with its hundreds of impending
possibilities; to his food, with the unsolvable perplexity of what the
doctor advised and of what the young sire wanted. More of
satisfaction, perhaps, was found in clothing the youth, as he cared
less about these details; still, an unending variety of weights and
materials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements might
be adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play and
playmates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almost
prayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, and
tense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving to
wisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and those
other dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequent
trips into the city and frequent visitations from the city were made,
that expert advice be obtained. Consultations were followed by counter
consultations and conferences which but added the mocking counsel of
indecision. And the marble of her beauty began to show faint marrings
chiseled by tension and anxiety--for was not Lawrence her only son!

It was a home of double standards. The father was a wholesome,
serious-minded, essentially reasonable, Cornell man. His ideas were
manly and from time to time he laid down certain principles, and when
at home, with apparently little effort, exacted and secured a ready