The Opinions of a Philosopher

by Robert Grant

VI

Little Fred has been graduated from college without the loss of his front teeth or an eye. He has a few scars, which will not permanently disfigure him; and though he halts slightly as the result of a strained tendon in the calf of one of his legs, Dr. Meredith assures us that this is chiefly a nervous symptom, which will pass off presently. He says Fred is a little run down, and he advises raw eggs and milk between meals. I assume that the doctor is right, but it seems strange to me that a boy should get run down through foot-ball exercise. However, he is to go abroad for six months, which ought to mend matters, and then buckle down to work with Leggatt & Paine. He is an honest, manly fellow, who will make friends, and, provided he does not break his neck in following the hounds or playing polo, is likely to do well.

David, my second boy, is a born chemist and a genuine book-lover besides. He is at the School of Science, to which we decided to send him, instead of to college, in view of the fact that his proclivities were in the line of gases and forces rather than Greek roots and history. He is doing famously, I believe; and though I am a profound ignoramus on such matters, I should not be at all surprised if he were to make a name for himself early in life by some valuable discovery in the electrical or bacillic line. He has lately made a test of all the wall-papers and upholstery in our house, and discovered, to our dismay, that there is arsenic in pretty nearly everything, including some of the bed-sheets, which, strange to state, in spite of their innocent appearance, proved to be particularly full of the deleterious poison. We have had to overhaul everything in consequence, and Josephine firmly believes that Fred's nervous halt is due to the presence of arsenic in his system, for the bed-sheets in his college room belonged to the condemned batch. Seeing that the rest of us are perfectly well, I secretly suspect that late hours and tobacco are more to blame than arsenic for my athletic son's condition; but in the teeth of scientific warning I have not ventured to run the risk of continued exposure, and have consented to the purchase of new carpets, curtains, window-shades, and other household apparel.

I am much more concerned, to tell the truth, lest some of the germs which David is cosseting in his bed-chamber may get loose and ravage the community. He has a bacillus farm, where, according to his account, the cholera germ, the germ of tuberculosis, the typhoid-fever germ, and the diphtheria germ are growing side by side for his private edification. As Josephine says, there are certain risks which a brave man has to take; but I am not sure that this is one of them. Even my darling is a little anxious on the score of contamination, in spite of her scientific son's assurance that his pets are thoroughly harmless.

I do not really know whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both, notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly fond of the social interests of the day and of the other sex. I foresee that he bids fair to be a leading man of affairs, and to figure prominently in society, and later on to become a member of Congress or to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. But he is just like everybody else, so to speak; or rather he accepts the world as he finds it and accommodates himself to it. Now, David is cast in a different mould. He is essentially unconventional. And yet, though his mother sighs now and then over his repugnance to young ladies, and tries to badger him into looking a little more spruce, I can perceive that she is thoroughly proud of his originality and independence, and believes that he is even more likely than his conventional brother to distinguish himself and immortalize the family name. Josephine used to say, when the boys were little, that she hoped one of them would be a clergyman, and I know that she has more sympathy than I—and I have considerable—with a scheme of life which entertains starving in a garret for the sake of art or science as a meritorious contingency. She has held up before her boys, since their earliest childhood, the perils of idle and purely worldly living, and spurred them to make the most of themselves.

Curiously enough, our two girls are just as dissimilar to each other as Fred and David. Josie, the elder—who, as I have already specified, is, according to the world at large, the image of her mother at the same age—will not be troublesome in the least degree, so my wife tells me. She has taken to society as a duck takes to water. She has a natural aptitude for pleasing and being pleased; consequently she has plenty of partners. My wife says that, considering the dear child was all legs and arms three years ago, we have every reason to congratulate ourselves that she has turned out such a pleasant-looking girl, and that her red hair is decidedly ornamental. I call her handsome, but Josephine declares that I make myself ridiculous by the assertion, and that it is very rare that a girl who has not really a ray of beauty to commend her becomes such a thorough-going favorite in her first season.

"She constantly reminds me of you, and that is enough for me," I remarked, tenderly, on one occasion.

"You make me boil when you say that, Fred. I was really a very pretty girl, if I do say it; whereas Josie, the sweet soul, only just escapes being homely. Her smile and her hair save her, so that she passes. But it is a libel to compare her with what I was at her age. We must look facts in the face, dear."

"People tell me every day that she is the living image of her mother," I answered humbly.