for her child's character. It was a home of formal morality. Sunday
morning services were religiously attended; charities of free giving,
the giving which did not cost personal effort, were never failing. It
was a home of selfish unselfishness. All weaknesses in the son
throughout the passing years were winked at. Never from his mother did
Lawrence know that sympathy, sometimes hard, often abrupt, never
pampering, which breeds self-help.

Lawrence went to the most painstakingly selected, private preparatory-
schools, and later, as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered
Cornell. He had no taste for business. For years he had been
associated with gifted and agreeable doctors; he liked the dignity of
the title; so, after two years of academic work, he entered the
medical department and graduated with his class. These were good
years. His was not a nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were
quite wholesome, and college fraternity camaraderie brought out much
that was worthy. In the face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went
out for track, made good, stuck to his training and in his senior year
represented the scarlet and white, getting a second in the
intercollegiate low hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he might
have been saved!

All through his college days a morbid fear had shortened his mother's
sleep hours with its wretchedness. Her boy was everything that would
attract attractive women. Away from her influence he might marry
beneath him, so all the refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were
utilized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth might become her
daughter-in-law. The two women were clever, and woe it was that his
commencement-day was soon followed by his wedding-day. No more
sumptuous wedding-trip could have been arranged-to California, to the