"P. S.--Josephus has just come back! Lean, and singed by hot ashes, I
judge. I dread the shock to him when he knows about the yard!"
III
MARTIN CORTRIGHT'S LETTERS TO BARBARA AND DOCTOR RICHARD RUSSELL
"December 10, 19--.
"MY DEAR BARBARA:--
"You have often asked me to write you something of myself, my youth, but
where shall I begin?
"I sometimes think that I must have been born facing backward, and a
fatality has kept me walking in that direction ever since, so wide a
space there seems to be to-day between myself and those whose age shows
them to be my contemporaries.
"My father, being a man of solid position both in commerce and society,
and having a far greater admiration for men of art and letters than would
have been tolerated by his wholly commercial Knickerbocker forbears, I,
his youngest child and only son, grew up to man's estate among the set of
contemporaries that formed his world, men of literary and social parts,
whose like I may safely say, for none will contradict, are unknown to the
rising generation of New Yorkers; for not only have types changed, but
also the circumstances and appreciations under which the development of
those types was possible.
"In my nineteenth year events occurred that altered the entire course of
my life, for not only did the almost fatal accident and illness that laid
me low bar my study of a profession, but it rendered me at the same time,
though I did not then realize it, that most unfortunate of beings, the
semi-dependent son of parents whose overzeal to preserve a boy's life
that is precious, causes them to deprive him of the untrammelled manhood
that alone makes the life worth living.
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