While the old folks were industriously settling themselves in the New Jersey woods-- Here let me relieve my mind by saying a few words in mitigation of the unfilial and snobbish conduct of Edna and me. I admit we deserve nothing but condemnation. I admit I am more to blame than she because I could have compelled her to act better toward our families, though of course I could not have changed her feelings--or my own, for that matter. But, as often happens in this world, the thing that was in motive shameful turned out well. We and our families had grown hopelessly apart. Intercourse with them could not but have been embarrassing and uncomfortable for both sides. When we got them the farm, got them away from the malarial and squalid part of Passaic into a healthful region where they lived in much better health and in a comfort they could appreciate, we did the best possible thing for them, as well as for ourselves. Do not think for a moment that because I am ashamed of my snobbish motives I am therefore advocating the keeping up of irksome and absurd ties merely out of wormy sentimentality. It has always seemed to me, when we have but the one chance at life, the one chance to make the best of our talents and opportunities, that only moral or mental weakness, or both, would waste the one chance in the bondage of outworn ties. When one has outgrown any association, lop it off relentlessly, say I. If the living lets the dying cling to it, the dying does not live but the living dies. If you are associated with anyone in any way--business, social, ties of affection, whatever you please--and if you do not wish to lose that one, then keep yourself alive and abreast of him or her. And if you let yourself begin to decay and find yourself cut away, whose is the fault, if fault there be? We--Edna and I--perhaps did not do all we might to make our outgrown families happy; I say perhaps, though I am by no means sure that we did not do all that was in our power, for they certainly would have got no pleasure out of seeing more of two people so uncongenial to them in every respect. At any rate, we did not leave our families to starve or to suffer. Hard though my charming, lovely wife was, I cannot conceive her sinking to that depth. On the whole, I feel that we could honestly say we took the right course with them. That is, we helped them without hindering ourselves. We did the right thing, though not in the right way. While our families were choosing a farm, were fixing up the buildings to suit their needs and tastes, were moving themselves from their ancient haunts, Edna was as industriously busy making far deeper inroads on the new prosperity. She was planning the conquest of New York.