In justice to Alicia, however, I must recall that Gertrude, of all the others, has emerged true to her form. She carries, I believe, besides the military title of Major, a decoration from every Allied Nation in Europe and at least two bestowed by reigning sovereigns. She drove out here in her handsome car to see us the other day and was much amazed by the sight of my infant son. "What, Ranny!" she exclaimed with her usual freedom of speech, now enhanced by life in camp as well as court. "You’ve just brought up one family and you’re starting out to get another? You surely are the original of the old woman who lived in a shoe. What a reactionary you are!" "Reactionary? Yes, Gertrude," I smiled in reply, "I suspect I am—in some things. I hate poverty. I hate to think of city or country slums, of oppression, of disorder and uncleanliness—of lawless, rich or unheeded poor. Possibly from among those I rear, some one will arise to fathom and solve these things. I am sure greater wisdom is slowly filtering into our lives. In many respects I am, as you charge, reactionary. I still have a feeling that every human being must be a center of creative life—and that he who rears children is multiplying creators in the world—against the resplendent future!" Gertrude laughed, a shade bitterly I thought, and waved her hand in a gesture of despair at my ancient stupidity. Perhaps I should not have prattled in this strain to Gertrude—more particularly since her recent husband, Minot Blackden, has followed the desire of his eyes elsewhere in Gertrude’s absence, is now happily divorced and married to some one who shares his apartment, and is himself shamelessly begetting offspring! No, Gertrude aside, there is no contour to my story. Dibdin, indeed, still appears and disappears, ever the Flying Dutchman, as of old. He is at home now and often sits and smokes in my study and moralizes—may I whisper it?—perhaps a shade more prosily than of old. "The only devil in the world," he puffed out last night in his gruff manner, as though, pronouncing somebody’s doom, "the only devil is the darkness of chaos. Children are the gage the human race, wisely abetted by Nature, is throwing down to this devil." "And supposing the children you rear should turn out to be ’nobodies’?" I mildly put in, as an obliging straw man. "What does that matter?" he growled. "Most people are nobodies. It’s the nobodies of the world that bring about its catastrophic changes. Mark Antony cunningly put a tongue in every wound of Cæsar’s body in the Forum. Mark Antonys are rare, I grant you. But it’s the First Citizen and Second Citizen who pulled down Republican Rome about the ears of Brutus. Shakespeare as well as Mark Antony knew that in the nobodies resides the real power for doing. The thinkers are the few; the doers are the many. We need ’em all, all—and that’s what kids are for."