“Well, one morning a little after Will had been flunked out of college, he was standing on the lawn whittling.  I happened to be looking out of the window.  I saw Uncle Jim crawling across the grass under cover of a rhododendron bush to a position just behind Will.  He was carrying under one arm an enormous fire-cracker, with the fuse lit.  He rolled it out on the grass behind Will, and when it went off, Will went, too.  He landed seventeen feet from the hole the cracker made.

“When he’d turned around, but before he could get his jaw up, my uncle said:  ’Will, I’ve always promised I’d give you a start in life.  Well, I’ve given it to you—­a damn good start, too, judging by the length of that jump.  Now you git!  Not a word.  You just git!’

“Will didn’t go very far away.  He went to the rival town across the river.  He hadn’t learned anything about making paper, but a New England Leighton is just naturally born knowing how to make paper.  In fifteen years Will didn’t have much soul left, but he had enough money to buy his father out and make him sign an agreement to retire.  They were both as pleased as Punch.  To the day of his death the old man would say, ’I certainly gave you a start in life, Will,’ and Will would answer with a grin, ‘Dad, you certainly did.’

“The moral of that yarn is that we Leightons have proved over and over that we could play the game of success when we thought it was worth while.  Will’s generation and mine, generally speaking, thought it was worth while.  But your generation—­the best of it—­isn’t going to think so.  That’s why I’m giving you enough money so that you won’t have to think about it all the time.”

“I’m grateful, Dad,” said Lewis.  “It’s easier to breathe that way.”

Leighton nodded.  “Sometimes,” He continued, “I feel guilty, as though it were cowardly not to have lived where I was put.  But—­have you ever seen a straw, caught on a snag, try to stop a river?  To your sentimentalist that straw looks heroic; to anybody that knows the difference between bathos and pathos it simply looks silly.  The river of life is bigger than that of any nation.  We can’t stop it, but we can swell it by going with it.  Did you ever see a mule drink against the current?”

“No,” said Lewis, his eyes lighting with memory of a thing that he knew.

“Did you ever see free cattle face a gale?”

“No,” said Lewis again.

“Out of the mouths of the dumb come words of wisdom,” said Leighton.  “Go with life, Boy.  Don’t get stranded on a snag.  You’ll only look silly.  I’m glad you’ve traveled around a bit, because the wider the range of your legs the wider your range of vision, and, let me tell you, you’ll need a mighty broad field of sight to take in America and the Americans.

“Your country and mine is a national paradox.  It’s the only country where you can’t buy little things for money.  For instance, you can’t buy four seats that somebody else has a right to from a railway conductor for sixty-two and a half cents.  There isn’t any price at which you can get an American to say, ‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir,’ every time he does anything for you.”