for certain that "Dad will oppose it." Yes: he can be counted on. He is no longer an incalculable force. He is an homme range. He is a character. He is fixed at forty—like a monument, like a gravestone, with one blank line waiting to mark the formal decease and burial of his body.
ISN'T it true that when one be gins to stop growing one begins to die? When did he begin to die? He looks backward to discover the point at which his vital force began to draw in from the branches to the trunk and gradually retire towards the earth. He looks backward thirty years—thirty-five years. There was a time, back there, very early in his life—say, between his fifth and tenth years—when every morning multiplied his budding interests, and the green shoots of his curiosity pushed eagerly into "the blooming buzzing confusion" of the universe.
Between five and ten, he was a Roosevelt for versatility—yet in that respect he
