When I was considerably younger than I am now, I wrote a story in which appeared the following two sentences: “It always seemed to Haydock that men and women, in becoming parents, somehow or other managed to forfeit a great deal of intelligence. He intended some day to ask a psychologist with children, if it was a provision or a perversion of nature.” I wish I had sufficient space in which to reproduce some of the many peevish, sarcastic letters and acrimonious reviews that these two short sentences called forth. For some reason they seemed to hurt feelings and arouse ire (I don’t quite know what “ire” means, but it has always seemed to me to be a most attractive little word; so short, and yet so bristling with importance) from the Atlantic to the Pacific. People wrote to me in the most curiously unrestrained fashion. One man declared I had deliberately insulted my mother and my father. For some time I was considerably appalled. I began to think that perhaps I had said something juvenile, thoughtless and silly, but since then a good many years have passed, a reaction long since set in and I find that now, even if I am not prepared exactly to stand by my original guns, my position in the matter is at least that of an agnostic. Parents may not necessarily forfeit any part of their intelligence, but, on the other hand, so many of them seem to, that one pauses now and then to speculate on whether, from the evidence, one could not with a little effort deduce a law of nature. Not having children of my own, I of course indulge in much imaginative bringing up, from the earliest years to the time when they “come out” and become engaged, get married and go to live in Alaska, or Brazil, or Chicago. Naturally, my children are much better brought up than are those of people who actually possess them. I admit that in a spectacular sense they don’t strike me as having made a very much greater success of their lives, so far, than have their acquaintances who cannot claim the advantage of having me for a parent. They are not particularly rich, although the boys seem to be able to make a respectable and steady living. Only one of the little tribe has as yet an automobile, and she married it, or rather them, as her husband happens to belong to the kind of American family that collects new kinds of motors very much as some persons collect new kinds of picture postal cards. As she is fond of her husband, I don’t in the least mind confessing that I am glad he has a lot of money. For, self-reliant and independent as I hope to be to the last, her affluence gives me the comfortable feeling that, no matter what happens, I shall never be a charge on the county or a bother to the good Little Sisters of the Poor. Of course they are all crazy about me, because they realize that everything I did was for the best and that I brought them up so remarkably well.