"Nations and individuals travel like the hands of a clock. You can't always live in the midday of your life, but you can in the midday of a nation. When you get an educated taste, you prefer pheasants, bananas, Stilton, and nations when they're at one o'clock. The best flavor—I'm not talking about emotions—the best flavor of anything, including life, comes with one o'clock."
"What time is it over there now?" asked Leighton.
"About eleven," said Leighton, "top wave of success. Now, these are the earmarks of success: a meticulous morality in trifles, ingrowing eyes, crudity, enthusiasm, and a majority."
"Heavens!" cried Lewis, "you told me once you were afraid I was going to be successful. Am I earmarked like that?"
"You will be," said Leighton, "the minute you're driven to sculpturing for the populace—for what it will bring. That's why I'm giving you your own income now, because, when you're married, you're going to be pretty hard pressed. I don't want you to be able to justify the sale of your soul.
"I had an uncle once—he's dead now—that had an only son named Will. Uncle Jim was a hard worker. He had a paper-mill, and he was worth a lot of money. His son Will wasn't a worker. He didn't own the paper-mill, but he never let you forget he was going to. He failed his way through school, but he couldn't quite fail through college. Every time he failed at anything, he used to say: 'It doesn't matter. Dad will give me a start in life, won't you, Dad?' And his father would say, 'I certainly will.'
"Well, one morning a little after Will had been flunked out of college, he was standing on the lawn whittling. I happened to be looking out of the window. I saw Uncle Jim crawling across the grass under cover of a rhododendron bush to a position just behind Will. He was carrying under one arm an enormous fire-cracker, with the fuse lit. He rolled it out on the grass behind Will, and when it went off, Will went, too. He landed seventeen feet from the hole the cracker made.
"When he'd turned around, but before he could get his jaw up, my uncle said: 'Will, I've always promised I'd give you a start in life. Well, I've given it to you—a damn good start, too, judging by the length of that jump. Now you git! Not a word. You just git!'
"Will didn't go very far away. He went to the rival town across the river. He hadn't learned anything about making paper, but a New England Leighton is just naturally born knowing how to make paper. In fifteen years Will didn't have much soul left, but he had enough money to buy his father out and make him sign an agreement to retire. They were both as pleased as Punch. To the day of his death the old man would say, 'I certainly gave you a start in life, Will,' and Will would answer with a grin, 'Dad, you certainly did.'
"The moral of that yarn is that we Leightons have proved over and over that we could play the game of success when we thought it was worth while. Will's generation and mine, generally speaking, thought it was worth while. But your generation—the best of it—isn't going to think so. That's why I'm giving you enough money so that you won't have to think about it all the time."