“You seem to have been seeing life,” returned the other.

“Yes, it’s a queer yarn,” said his friend; “if you think you would like, I’ll tell it you.”

Here follows the yarn of Loudon Dodd, not as he told it to his friend, but as he subsequently wrote it.

THE YARN.

CHAPTER I. A SOUND COMMERCIAL EDUCATION.

The beginning of this yarn is my poor father’s character.  There never was a better man, nor a handsomer, nor (in my view) a more unhappy—­unhappy in his business, in his pleasures, in his place of residence, and (I am sorry to say it) in his son.  He had begun life as a land-surveyor, soon became interested in real estate, branched off into many other speculations, and had the name of one of the smartest men in the State of Muskegon.  “Dodd has a big head,” people used to say; but I was never so sure of his capacity.  His luck, at least, was beyond doubt for long; his assiduity, always.  He fought in that daily battle of money-grubbing, with a kind of sad-eyed loyalty like a martyr’s; rose early, ate fast, came home dispirited and over-weary, even from success; grudged himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures of conscientiousness and self-denial.

Unluckily, I never cared a cent for anything but art, and never shall.  My idea of man’s chief end was to enrich the world with things of beauty, and have a fairly good time myself while doing so.  I do not think I mentioned that second part, which is the only one I have managed to carry out; but my father must have suspected the suppression, for he branded the whole affair as self-indulgence.

“Well,” I remember crying once, “and what is your life?  You are only trying to get money, and to get it from other people at that.”

He sighed bitterly (which was very much his habit), and shook his poor head at me.  “Ah, Loudon, Loudon!” said he, “you boys think yourselves very smart.  But, struggle as you please, a man has to work in this world.  He must be an honest man or a thief, Loudon.”

You can see for yourself how vain it was to argue with my father.  The despair that seized upon me after such an interview was, besides, embittered by remorse; for I was at times petulant, but he invariably gentle; and I was fighting, after all, for my own liberty and pleasure, he singly for what he thought to be my good.  And all the time he never despaired.  “There is good stuff in you, Loudon,” he would say; “there is the right stuff in you.  Blood will tell, and you will come right in time.  I am not afraid my boy will ever disgrace me; I am only vexed he should sometimes talk nonsense.”  And then he would pat my shoulder or my hand with a kind of motherly way he had, very affecting in a man so strong and beautiful.