My mother was a very fair blonde Northern woman whom I heard praised
for her great beauty - a fact a child is unable to determine for
himself about his own mother. I know that she had large, gray eyes with
dark rings underneath, and that it often seemed as though she had wept.
Her voice, her complexion, her expression, everything vividly suggested
tears to me. And in the silent struggle with my father her resistance
was that of an aggrieved, painful, sensitive nature: his was cool, more
indifferent and gay, but none the less firm. I never heard them
quarrel, but I saw the politely tempered tension in the dignified
house, during the stately meals, even as the servants saw it. Yet my
father would sometimes hum a tune from an opera and joke and laugh
boisterously with his friends; but mother always went about silently
and gravely, gliding over the thick carpets like a spectre and, at her
best, showing but a wan smile.

We were wealthy and prominent people and my parents felt that very
strongly. And when I think about it now, here in my little provincial
town in Holland, where I shine my own boots, then after all I feel
compassion for the two - for my cool, well-bred father, as well as for
my pale, languishing, distinguished mother. For they considered their
high position just and righteous, and complete, and did not see in how
much it was wanting. My mother did not see how tasteless the fashion
was, - her draped and be-ruffled gown in which she thought herself so
elegant and stately, - her own physical beauty and natural grace barely
saving her from becoming an object of absolute ridicule. And my father
did not know how much his traditional power of heredity had already
been undermined by the democratic ideas everywhere astir.

Our luxury too was strangely deficient in many respects. I have