Not satisfied with posing her son before the young and unthinking as a model of refinement, endowed with the intrinsic qualities of manhood, his intellectual upheavals were often depicted in side talk, with celebrities. Once with maternal discretion as fine as it was impertinent, she told our latest nervously prostrated authoress, who was enjoying a cup of tea in the alcove, about her boy's passion for old books. "Sidney's library is his one extravagance," she confided, sweetly. Then, with unblushing assurance, she told how her son's intellectual indulgence had cost her an orange ranch; yet, owing to the extremely moral character of the fad, she had grown resigned. Only once had she ventured a remonstrance--when a fabulous sum was paid for an atrocious old Dante, too absolutely filthy for any one but a connoisseur. Of course, she knew she was uncultivated, but she preferred her books fresh and clean, with attractive covers. However, there were compensations with every trial, and Sid's veneration for antiquities might still prove a blessing, as she herself would some day be sufficiently antique to justify his supreme devotion. Thus the woman audaciously chattered, advertising fearlessly the bogus literary tastes of her son. If we questioned Sidney's phenomenal reticence upon subjects so near his heart, for convenient reasons all appeared willing to accept the mother's version of the unexplored country where gold abounded--and still waters ran to a depth unparalleled. Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes, I have spare justification for this woman, for so many weeks my daily companion. Even a mother's desperation can not excuse her conduct, although it may possibly moderate its enormity in the eyes of those who have sought to shield with ornate falsehood an unworthy child. With the woman's clear perception, she must have known more certainly than all others the fullest truth concerning her son. She could not be blind to his aimless life, his selfish nature, his depraved, ill-controlled passions. Yet, with all her superior knowledge of the risk, she deemed it her right to supplement her boy's deficiencies by chimerical attractions, sheltering him, if possible, to the end, beneath the decencies and refinements of society. Without his mother in the breach, Sidney Sanderson would undoubtedly have been publicly disgraced many times, for he was not a clever rogue. Yet, only once, to my knowledge, did his disreputable conduct appear in print, and even then the mother proved herself equal to the dastardly emergencies of the scandal.