sible. The father expects the boy to come over to his world, and the boy can't do it. It is the father who must go to the boy's world. He must make himself part of it and try to understand it. And yet how many do it? Did you?"
"Didn't I?" Mr. Quinby asked.
"You did not. Were you ever a boy? Can't you go back to your own boyhood and marvel at some of the wild ideas that came to you? This idea of business came to Bert, and he followed it. And what then? Did you stop to think that, after all, his was only a boy's brain? No; you expected him to see the situation just as you saw it. Instead of sitting down with an air of man to man and showing him in black and white, with pencil and paper, how impossible it all was, you adopted an air of injured dignity and drove him into a shell of silence and distrust. Even after he was committed to the plan, after the store was open, he was still your son—the most precious thing you own in the world. A chasm had formed between you. Did you try to bridge it? No. You never went into his place, never showed any interest in it, never gave any sign of good will, never prepared for the day when, the timbers of the crazy, flimsy, mistaken structure down about his ears, he would be glad to come to you as to a haven.
"And when the day of disaster came, he didn't come to you. You had predicted failure, and had
