“I guess I know best how to bring out talent and ability in a youngster,” he affirmed. “Keep ’em in their places and give ’em a little hardship to rise above! That’s the thing that makes men. Give a boy encouragement and he either gets a swelled head or turns out a mollycoddle.” Besides, what encouragement had his father ever given him? II Many times in those months and years, I saw the man opposite me in church or shop and studied him. But there was little to “study.” It puzzled me for a long time how two such people as Johnathan and Anna could remain together year after year in any such loveless connubiality and not realize its prostitution. But of one thing I am convinced absolutely: Johnathan was no hypocrite; up to the time of Nathan’s marriage and still more vital events yet to be delineated, the man, however narrow, had the courage of his convictions. Separating from a woman whom he had once married and by whom he had received children—even if not divorcing her—was not only heresy and against all ethics, but it struck at the very roots of society and nominated him for the seventh strata of the bottomless pit. All marriages were made in heaven. That was the Alpha and Omega of the whole business. The Bible says a man shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh, though they fight openly from New Year’s to Christmas and make the home life of growing children a nerve-racking hell. You can’t get back of the Bible. There it is in black and white. And you know what it says in the ending of Revelations about daring to change one jot or tittle of Holy Writ. If there were unpleasantness in his home, it was the woman’s fault. She rebelled against the hypothesis that he was the head of his house, the arbiter of its destinies, the party responsible for its souls and bodies to God and State. She spat upon the verdict of St. Paul: “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands as unto the law of God.” She was responsible for everything wrong. She was “undermining Church and State.” She was a sinner from wayback. The man totally lacked the capacity to see himself in any other rôle than that of model father, husband, citizen and church member. He was one of those men of whom it may truthfully be said that he took life seriously. To say nothing of himself. To associate, disport or enjoy himself with family or neighbors was something he did not know how to do. He couldn’t have taken enjoyment from life even if he had wanted. It was rather pathetic. He was a finished product of his own philosophy and never saw it. His father had succeeded in doing in him exactly what he was trying to do in Nathan. Only there were leavening and countering chromosomes in Nathan’s make-up ultimately working for the boy’s salvation which had not been Johnathan’s heritage.