life was quite normal. It included the drooly period, the crawly period, and the thrilling period of walkversus-tumble. It included kindergarten, mumps, the public school, Horatio Alger, stamp-collecting, measles, circuses, and a complete disregard of the rules of personal cleanliness, all in the natural juvenile order. The Santa Claus theory was duly exploded, and Jock had learned with excitement and dismay that storks do not occupy the position of exceeding importance in the world that is so often attributed to them. He became aware that gentlemen like his father might put their feet on desks if they so desired but that ladies like his mother must not, and puzzled a good deal over the reason for such unseemly partiality.
The fact that he had no brothers was a source of intense annoyance to him throughout his childhood. He observed that his friends had brothers (sisters, of course, did not count) and he desired greatly to possess a few of his own. At the age of seven, having been carefully imbued with faith in the efficacy of prayer, he besought God to send him a twin. When God neglected to comply, Jock became a rabid atheist. Into the ears of chosen contemporaries he whispered arguments against the probability of there being such a personage as God, and for a long time maintained a deep conviction that the Supreme Being was just another myth, like Santa, devised by parents for the general befuddlement of the rising generation.
When he was eight his father died. He found this very curious, and pondered at length upon it. First you were; and then all of a sudden you were not, and they put you in a box and hid you somewhere. He missed his father at first, but not for a great while. In time he recalled him only as a big man who had known a lot about baseball but who now dwelt somewhere
