shall advance you money until you have a position, but I do not
want you writing whining letters to your mother and sister. You
are from now on to consider yourself disinherited. No Langdon
before you was ever a failure, you are a disgrace to the name.
Yours truly,
Rob’t G. Langdon, Sr.
“Pretty hot letter/’ observed La Fere, after he had finished read
ing, “but your father is simply working off some of his surplus
steam. I would not let that break me up. As to a job, I can give
you one on the Herald; you know 1 am the ‘Old Man’ there now.”'
“Thanks, I’ll accept your offer. It is not the fact that lam a
failure or that my father has disinherited me that has broken me
up, it is what your sister—what Marie thinks of me. When I was
home last Christmas she promised to come down this commence
ment with my sister. Last week I wrote her of my failure and
told her that if she still believed in me to write at once, but that
if she considered me a failure and Avished to break our engage
ment, her silence would be answer enough. I have not heard a
word from her.”
“What if my sister does consider you a failure; be a man,
show her that you can do something. I’ll put'in a good word for
you; you saved my life, you know, down in Cuba. Now, if you
were a small, insignificant fellow like me, there would be some
excuse for your being discouraged, but you, huge and husky; why,
man, you can command respect. If I had your physique, your
looks, I would compel people to recognize me. If you were a
small, weak, insignificant fellow like me and carried your death
warrant on your left side under the fifth rib like I do, then you
would have some excuse for being discouraged. Old fellow,
Say, Ralph, interupted Bob, “I did not invite you to give me
a seimon. It is well enough to talk about compelling people to
respect you and all that, but you forget that it was to please Marie
that I finally accepted my father’s offer of a technical course. She
was so confident that 1 would make a success in it. How can she