“I’m going to say you can’t write any more poetry until you know your own mind. What you’ve written in to-night’s paper goes to show the injury an immature, undisciplined boy can do to himself and to those who love him—by not knowing his own mind. All over this town to-night sensible people are reading your poetry. They’re laughing at you and pitying you. But they’re damning me as your father for not keeping a guiding hand on you, training your thoughts and impulses into healthy, money-making channels. To-night in the House of God I hung my head in shame for the thing my son had done. Even a minister of the Gospel rebuked me before the Elders in the Temple. And that shame, your shame as well as mine, is almost greater than I can bear. It can’t be duplicated, young man. It’s got to stop before you do something far more sickening.” “But, Pa! I like to write poetry! It comes so easy——” “Who are you—little, inconsequential, immature Nathaniel Forge—that you should consider yourself capable or talented enough to go before the public with your silly little rhymes? What do you know about life and its responsibilities and penalties—merely living here in this quiet, sheltered, comfortable home with your dear father and mother and little sister? Hasn’t it yet dawned on your brazen little brain that all the great poets have been men of mature intellect and venerable years—Longfellow, Tennyson, Whittier—what were they but bent beneath the weight of time, with gray heads and flowing beards——?” “Bryant wrote ‘Thanatopsis’ at eighteen!” flashed Nathan. “And it’s one of the biggest poems in the English language!” “Don’t argue!” roared Johnathan, his temper rising. “‘Harken to my counsel and give heed to my understanding!’ I’m talking for your own best interest.” “Hang it all, Pa, I don’t care about business! I don’t take to money-making at all!” “Then all the more reason why you should be made to take to money-making—correct a weakness in your character. Making money, doing business, is fine and manly and virile. But is there anything fine and manly and virile about wasting your time on silly, obscene lines of rhymes—that start a whole town laughing at you and pointing the finger of scorn at your father? Answer me, sir! Answer me!” “I don’t know what to answer. You cut all the solid ground out from under me. I thought I’d found something I could be a success in, if I did it long enough. But you throw me all up in the air. I don’t know what I want to be, or what I want to aim for, at all!”