Jehiel Prince was a capitalist. So was James: a capitalist, and the son of a capitalist. They had some interests in common, and others apart. There was a bank, and there were several large downtown business-blocks whose tenants required a lot of bookkeeping, and there was a horse-car line. There was a bus-line, too, between the railroad depots and the hotels. James destined Raymond for the bank. He would hardly go to college, but at seventeen or so would begin on the collection-register or some such matter; later he might come to be a receiving-teller; pretty soon he might rise to an apprehension of banking as a science and have a line as an official in the _Bankers' Gazette_. Beyond that he might go as far as he was able. James thought that, thus favored in early years, the boy might go far. But Raymond had just taken on Rome, and was finding it even more interesting than Paris. The Academy's professor of ancient history began to regard him as a prodigy. Then, somehow or other, Raymond got hold of Gregorovius, with his "City of Rome in the Middle Ages"--though his teacher did not know of this, and would have been sure to consider it an undesirable deviation from the straight and necessary path; and thenceforth the dozens of ordinary boys about him counted, I feel sure, for less than ever. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put myself into the story as one of the characters. Then the many I's will no longer refer to the author named on the title-page, but will represent the direct participation--direct, even though inconspicuous--of a person whose name, status, and general nature will be made manifest, incidentally and gradually, as we proceed. You object that though one's status and general nature may be revealed "gradually," such can scarcely be the case as regards one's name? But if I tell you that my Christian name is, let us say, Oliver, and then intimate in some succeeding section that my surname is Ormsby, and then do not disclose my middle initial--which may be W--until the middle of the book (in some documentary connection, perhaps), shall I not be doing the thing "gradually"? Oliver W. Ormsby. H'm! I'm not so sure that I like it. Well, my name may turn out, after all, to be something quite different. And possibly I may be found to be without any middle initial whatever. But to return to the method itself. You will find it pursued in many good novels and in many bad ones; with admirable discretion--to make an instance--in "The Way of All Flesh"; and the procedure may be humbly copied here. It will involve, of course, a rather close attendance on both Raymond and Johnny through a long term of years; but perhaps the difficulties involved--or, rather, the awkwardnesses--can be got round in one way or another. At the Academy we like Raymond well enough, on the whole-- You see at once how the method applies: I make myself an attendant there, and I place my age midway between the ages of the other two.