simple moral truths, learning thereby insensibly the lessons of good manners and good taste. In his reading of Homer and Hesiod the tricks and treacheries of the gods are to be banished, the terrors of the world below to be dispelled, and the misbehavior of the Homeric heroes are to be censured.

   "If there is such a thing as original sin—and this I beg leave to doubt, having looked into the eyes of my boy and failed to find it there—then teaching can eradicate it, especially teaching under such conditions as those which I now impose. The person who will be chosen by my executors for the training of my boy will be first of all a man of the strictest probity. He will assume this task with a grave sense of his responsibility to me and to his Maker. If after a proper period of time he does not discover in his own heart a sincere affection for my child, he will be honest enough to confess the truth, and be discharged of the obligation. For it is clear that without love, such an experiment is foredoomed to failure. To a man such as my mind has pictured, affection here will not be difficult, for nature has favored Jerry with gifts of mind and body."

   Everywhere in John Benham's instructions there were signs of a deep and corroding cynicism which no amount of worldly success had been able to dispel. Everywhere could be discovered a hatred of modern social forms and a repugnance for the modern woman, against whom he warns the prospective tutor in language which is as unmistakable as the Benham Wall. It pleased me to find at least one wise man who agreed with me in this particular. Until the age of twenty-one, woman was to be taboo for Jerry Benham, not only her substance, but her essence. Like the mention of hell to ears polite, she was forbidden at Horsham Manor. No woman was to be permitted to come upon the estate in any capacity. The gardeners, grooms, gamekeepers, cooks, house servants—all were to be men at good wages chosen for their discretion in this excellent conspiracy. The penalty for infraction of this rule of silence was summary dismissal.

   I read the pages through until the end, and then sat for a long while thinking, the wonderful possibilities of the plan taking a firmer hold upon me. The Perfect Man! And I, Roger Canby, should make him.

   With Ballard the elder, to whom and to those plutocratic associates, as had been predicted, my antecedents and acquirements had proven satisfactory, I journeyed on the twelfth of December to Greene County in the Ballard limousine. A rigorous watch was kept upon the walls of Horsham Manor, and in response to 

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