CHAPTER II
Two Skeleton Biographies
Bertrand Paul Tressider had been born into a fairly well-to-do, middle-class family. As usual, the unchangeable law of life governing such things permitted him no choice of parents. Presumably, therefore, he would consider himself lucky in not appearing on earth as a Chinese coolie, or, worse still, an African pygmy.
Having been respectably, if not actually luxuriously, ushered into "this best of all possible worlds," he at once became the victim—like everybody else—of environment, heredity and his own devices. He was another unit of evolution; another tiny speck in the pattern of the universe; another spark of energy let loose in a scheme, apparently eternal, for the furtherance of some vast, unfathomable design.
Except for two or three sisters, who appeared on the scene years later, he was an only child. At birth he had been endowed with a very large head. For this reason, his parents watched him closely, hopeful that he might turn out to be a prime minister, although at the same time fearful lest he develop into an imbecile. One never can tell with big heads. Only expert phrenologists know for certain. A bump or two either way, and...
But there was no occasion to worry. Pretty soon little Bertrand began to make it quite plain that he wanted his own way in everything. Also he commenced to exhibit a keen desire to smash things up—toys, and pots and things; all to the accompaniment of violent outbursts of temper. It was a happy day for the fond parents when they definitely accepted this infallible proof of their darling boy's saneness.
As time went on, Bertrand's over-sized cranium, instead of being reckoned a possible symptom of idiocy, became the subject of joyful speculation.
"Mark my words," said Tressider, senior, one evening, when he and his wife were admiring the way the young prodigy was trying to throttle a kitten; "he'll be a great lawyer some day."
Bertrand's mother thought not. She was descended from a family which in the last hundred years had shot forth stray branches delicately blossomed with Church of England clergymen. She said she quite thought her son was cut out for a bishop.
Tressider, senior, of lineage far less esthetic, noting young Bertrand's display of acquisitive gifts, countered with schemes for the boy's future more in keeping with the world's idea of success.