“That must be what’s been the matter with me,” he argued to himself, as the hours slipped on toward midnight. “I wanted something better at home and father and mother couldn’t grasp it. I tried to get it in the business and in so far as I got it the business prospered and there was money and we approached some degree of happiness. I wanted to go on and up with Milly and she couldn’t appreciate it. And I’ve subconsciously hated everything and everyone about me because they gave me no approval or supplied no incentive or showed understanding of that urge to create, improve, Go Up. That hatred made for intoleration and I kept it repressed inside me. I’m not a hick! I won’t admit it. Nobody can be a hick so long as they’ve got the urge to go on up, to rise to better things, better ways of living, better ways of understanding one’s fellows, better ways of expressing the fine things of life in Art ideas,—up, up—toward God waiting at the Top. Perfection at last. The provincials are only those who hide in the backwaters, content to stay in the backwaters, to remain in their tracks, to be satisfied with little, inconsequential things, to see no reason for changing their standards. And I’m not!” Torn and mangled of spirit as he was that night, emaciated with the great hunger of brain and heart for a birthright of sane, constructive, inspiring, encouraging, understanding parenthood which had been denied him, Nathan fought out his problem, step by step, for himself, and in the recesses of his own soul looked for the way, the truth and the light. He would keep moving. To move meant enlightenment. It must mean enlightenment. He would hew at his niche and accomplish his task though a thousand millstones and anvils were loaded upon him. Somewhere were High Hilltops, peopled with soft voices and calm eyes, manifestations of elegant living because such was social efficiency—still another phase of omnipotent perfection toward which he groped blindly—Art waves in which the soul of him might bathe luxuriantly, somewhere were High Hill Tops. There was no disgrace being born in the valley so long as he had no choice in the matter and was consistently and sincerely hunting the evasive pathway up to those Hill Tops—up to the Dwelling Places of Light. My friend had within him the gift of the Magi beyond rubies,—the great galvanism of Divinity—energizing, vitalizing, driving his young Soul Indomitable to cry from far up the heights “Excelsior!”—to battle forever toward the stars. Yet he knew it not. To Abaddon with cloying, handicapping, misunderstanding parenthood! With fretting, abusive womanhood—with coarse environments—with petty twopenny handicaps! He would go on,—doing his duty as he saw it, taking advantage of the last iota of opportunities as they came, fighting as he went,—true to the Aryan that was in him.