The Thinker - Page 2

but an
unfortunate, a being too fine for everyday life.
"You'll be hearing all sorts of stories, but you are
not to believe what you hear," she said to her son. "He
was a good man, full of tenderness for everyone, and
should not have tried to be a man of affairs. No matter
how much I were to plan and dream of your future, I
could not imagine anything better for you than that you
turn out as good a man as your father."

Several years after the death of her husband, Virginia
Richmond had become alarmed at the growing demands upon
her income and had set herself to the task of
increasing it. She had learned stenography and through
the influence of her husband's friends got the position
of court stenographer at the county seat. There she
went by train each morning during the sessions of the
court, and when no court sat, spent her days working
among the rosebushes in her garden. She was a tall,
straight figure of a woman with a plain face and a
great mass of brown hair.

In the relationship between Seth Richmond and his
mother, there was a quality that even at eighteen had
begun to color all of his traffic with men. An almost
unhealthy respect for the youth kept the mother for the
most part silent in his presence. When she did speak
sharply to him he had only to look steadily into her
eyes to see dawning there the puzzled look he had
already noticed in the eyes of others when he looked at
them.

The truth was that the son thought with remarkable
clearness and the mother did not. She expected from all
people certain conventional reactions to life. A boy
was your son, you scolded him and he trembled and
looked at the floor. When you had scolded enough he
wept and all was forgiven. After the weeping and when
he had gone to bed, you crept into his room and kissed
him.

Virginia Richmond could not understand why her son did
not do these things. After the severest reprimand, he
did not tremble and look at the floor but instead
looked steadily at her, causing uneasy doubts to invade
her mind. As for creeping into his room--after Seth
had passed his fifteenth year, she would have been half
afraid to do anything of the kind.

Once when he was a boy of sixteen, Seth in company with
two other boys ran away from home. The three boys
climbed into the open door of an empty freight car and
rode some forty miles to a town where a fair was being
held. One of the boys had a bottle filled with a
combination of whiskey and blackberry wine, and the
three sat with legs dangling out of the car door
drinking from the bottle. Seth's two companions sang
and waved their hands to idlers about the stations of
the towns through