hall table, and discovering a tiny rip, ran lightly upstairs to exchange them for another pair, while he passed round the breakfast table, hat in hand, kissing the five children in turn. Then he kissed her too and went swinging down the front walk to catch the last commuters' train.
I happened to see him go that morning. But it's always like that. And when she welcomes him home at night, smiling on the threshold there, the five children are all washed and dressed and in good order, with their latest quarrel hushed to cherubic stillness. The newest magazine is on the library table beneath the softly shaded reading lamp, and a carefully appointed dinner waits. All of the wearisome domestic details of existence he has to be shielded from. For he is a captain of industry.
There are even more difficult men. I know of one who writes. He has to be so protected from the rude environment of this material world that while the muse moves him, his meals carefully prepared by his wife's own hands, because she knows so well what suits his sensitive digestion, are brought to his door. She may not speak to him as she passes in the tray. No servant is ever permitted to do the cleaning in his sanctum. It disturbs the "atmosphere," he says. So his wife herself even washes the floor. Hush! His last novel went into the sixth edition. He's a genius. And his wife says, "You have to take every care of a man who possesses temperament. He's so easily upset." For the lack of a salad just right, a book might have failed.
