Everything I was, I owed to Mother. She made me what I am. But I was played out, as a student of history; I was the family failure, the goat, the rotten egg. Raymond still wrestled gleefully with nuclear physics, with Heisenberg and Schrodinger and the others. Mark gloried in his fastball and his slider and his curve. Paul daubed canvas merrily in his Greenwich Village flat near N.Y.U., and even Robert seemed to take delight in keeping books. Only I had failed. History had become repugnant to me. I was in rebellion against it. I would disappoint my mother, become the butt of my brothers' scorn, and live in despair, hating the profession of historian and fitted by training for nothing else. I was graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, a few days after my twenty-first birthday. I wired Mother that I was on my way home, and bought train-tickets. It was a long and grueling journey to Wisconsin. I spent my time thinking, trying to choose between the unpleasant alternatives that faced me. I could attempt duplicity, telling my mother I was still studying history, while actually preparing myself for some more attractive profession--the law, perhaps. I could confess to her at once my failure of purpose, ask her forgiveness, for disappointing her and flawing her grand scheme, and try to begin afresh in another field. Or I could forge ahead with history, compelling myself grimly to take an interest, cramping and paining myself so that my mother's design would be complete. None of them seemed desirable paths to take. I brooded over it, and was weary and apprehensive by the time I arrived at our farm. * * * * * The first of my brothers I saw was Mark. He sat on the front porch of the big house, reading a book which I recognized at once and with some surprise as Volume I of Churchill. He looked up at me and smiled feebly. I frowned. "I didn't expect to find _you_ here, Mark. According to the local sports pages the Braves are playing on the Coast this week. How come you're not with them?" His voice was a low murmur. "Because they gave me my release," he said. "What?" He nodded. "I'm washed up at 21. They made me a free agent; that means I can hook up with any team that wants me." "And you're just taking a little rest before offering yourself around?" He shook his head. "I'm through. Kaput. Harry, I just can't stand baseball. It's a silly, stupid game. You know how many times I had to stand out there in baggy knickers and throw a bit of horsehide at some jerk with a club in his paws? A hundred, hundred-fifty times a game, every four days. For what? What the hell does it all mean? Why should I bother?" There was a strange gleam in his eyes. I said, "Have you told Mother?" "I don't dare! She thinks I'm on leave, or something. Harry, how can I tell her--"