The Whole Family | Page 4

of mind which they have quite as much of as we have of
ours. It was intellectual force that built up the Plated-Ware Works of
Eastridge, where there was no other reason for their being, and it was
mental grip that held constantly to the management, and finally grasped
the ownership. Nobody ever said that Talbert had come unfairly into
that, or that he had misused his money in buying men after he began to
come into it in quantity. He was felt in a great many ways, though he
made something of a point of not being prominent in politics, after
being president of the village two terms. The minister of his church was
certainly such a preacher as he liked; and nothing was done in the
church society without him; he gave the town a library building, and a
soldier's monument; he was foremost in getting the water brought in,
which was natural enough since he needed it the most; he took a great
interest in school matters, and had a fight to keep himself off the board
of education; he went into his pocket for village improvements
whenever he was asked, and he was the chief contributor to the public
fountain under the big elm. If he carefully, or even jealously guarded
his own interests, and held the leading law firm in the hollow of his
hand, he was not oppressive, to the general knowledge. He was a
despot, perhaps, but he was Blackstone's ideal of the head of a state, a
good despot. In all his family relations he was of the exemplary
perfection which most other men attain only on their tombstones, and I
had found him the best of neighbors. There were some shadows of
diffidence between the ladies of our families, mainly on the part of my
wife, but none between Talbert and me. He showed me, as a newspaper
man with ideals if not abilities rather above the average, a deference
which pleased my wife, even more than me.
It was the married daughter whom she most feared might, if occasion

offered, give herself more consequence than her due. She had tried to
rule her own family while in her father's house, and now though she
had a house of her own, my wife believed that she had not wholly
relinquished her dominion there. Her husband was the junior member
of the law firm which Talbert kept in his pay, to the exclusion of most
other clients, and he was a very good fellow, so far as I knew, with the
modern conception of his profession which, in our smaller towns and
cities, has resulted in corporation lawyers and criminal lawyers, and has
left to a few aging attorneys the faded traditions and the scanty affairs
of the profession. My wife does not mind his standing somewhat in
awe of his father-in-law, but she thinks poorly of his spirit in relation to
that managing girl he has married. Talbert's son is in the business with
him, and will probably succeed him in it; but it is well known in the
place that he will never be the man his father is, not merely on account
of his college education, but also on account of the easy temperament,
which if he had indulged it to the full would have left him no better
than some kind of artist. As it is, he seems to leave all the push to his
father; he still does some sketching outside, and putters over the
aesthetic details in the business, the new designs for the plated ware,
and the illustrated catalogues which the house publishes every year; I
am in hopes that we shall get the printing, after we have got the
facilities. It would be all right with the young man in the opinion of his
censors if he had married a different kind of woman, but young Mrs.
Talbert is popularly held just such another as her husband, and
easy-going to the last degree. She was two or three years at the Art
Students' League, and it was there that her husband met her before they
both decided to give up painting and get married.
The two youngest children, or the fall chickens as they are called in
recognition of the wide interval between their ages and those of the
other children, are probably of the indeterminate character proper to
their years. We think the girl rather inclines to a hauteur based upon the
general neglect of that quality in the family, where even the eldest sister
is too much engaged in ruling to have much force left for snubbing.
The child carries herself with a vague loftiness, which has apparently
not awaited the moment of long skirts for keeping pretenders to her
favor at a