Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1919-09-26
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER III.

Until he reached the age Of twelve
Georges education was a domestic
process; tutors came to the house,
and those citizens who yearned for his
taking down often said: "Just wait till
he has to go to public school; then
he'll get it!' But at twelve George
was sent to private school in the
town, and there came from this small
and independent institution no report,
or even rumor, Of Georges getting
anything that he was thought to de-
serve; therefore the yearning still per-
sisted, though growing gaunt with
feeding upon itself.
i The yearners were still yearning
when George at sixteen was sent
away to a great "prep school"
"Now," they said brightly, ''hell get
it! He'll find himself among boys just
as important in their home town as he
is, and they'll knock the stufing out
Of him when he puts on his airs with
them! Oh, but that would be worth
something to seer They were mis-
taken, it appeared, for when George
returned few months later he still
seemed to have the same stufing. He
had been deported by the authorities,
the offense being stated as ''insolence
and profanity" in fact, he had given
the principal of the school instruc-
tons almost identical with those for
merly objected to by the Rev. Malloch
Smith.
But he had not got his come-upance,
and those who counted upon it were
embittered by his appearance upon
| the downtown streets driving q dog
cart at a criminal speed, making pc
destrians retreat from the crossings,
and behaving himself as If he "owned
the earth"
When Mr.. George ANDERSON Nina
! fer came home for the holidays at
Christmastide in his sophomore year,
probably no great change had taken
place inside him, but his exterior was
visibly altered. Nothing about him
encouraged any hope that he had re-
ceiyed his come-upance on the con-
trary, the yearners for that stroke Of
justice must yearn even more itch
ingly: the gilded youths manner had
become polite, but his politeness was
i Of a kind which democratic people
found hard to bear.
Cards were out for ball in his
honor, and this pageant of the ten
antry was held in the ballroom of the
Anderson mansion the night after his
arrival. 1t was, as Mrs. Henry Frank
lin Foster said of Isabel's wedding, "a
big AmberSOn-Style thing" All "old
citizens" recognized as gentry received
cards, and of course so did their dane
ing descendants.
The orchestra and the caterer were
brought from away, in the Anderson
manner, though this was really ges-
ture-perhaps one more of habit than
of ostentation-for servitors of gayety
as proficient as these importatiOns
were nowadays to be found in the
town. 1t was the last Of the great,
long-remembered dances that every
body talked about'-there were get
ting to be so many people in town that
no later than the next year there were
too many for everybody" to hear of
i even such ball as the Ambersons'
George, white-gloved, with a garde-
MIA in his buttonhoIe, stood with his
mother and the Major, empowered In
the big red-and-gold drawing room
downstairs, to receive" the guests !;
and, standing thus together, the trio
offered picturesque example of good
looks persistent through three gene
rations. The Major, his daughter and
his grandson were of a type all AM
berson: tall, straight and regular, with
dark eyes, short noses, good chins !;
and the grandfather's expression, no
less than the grandson's, was one of
family amused condescension. There
was a difference, however. The grand
sons unlined young face had nothing
to offer except this condescension !;
the grandfather's had other things to
say. 1t was handsome, worldly old
face, conscious Of its Importance, but
persuasive rather than arrogant, and
not without tokens of sufferings with
stood. The Majors short white hair
was parted in the middle, like his
grandsons, and in all he stood as
briskly equipped to the fashion as the
exquisite young George.
Isabel standing between her father
and her son, caused vague amaze
ment in the mind of the latter. Her
age, just under forty, was for George
thought of something as remote as
the moons of Jupiter: he could not
possibly have conceived such an age
ever coming to be his own: five years
was the limit of his thinking in time.
Five years ago he had been a child
not yet fourteen and those five years
were an abyss. Five years hence he
would be almost twenty-four; what
the girls he knew called lone of the
older men," He could imagine himself
at twenty-four, but beyond that his
powers staggered and refused the
task. He saw little essential differ
ence between thirty-eight and eighty
eight, and his mother was to him not
woman but wholly mother. The
woman, Isabel, was a stranger to her
son; as completely a stranger as if
he had never in his life seen her or
heard her voice And it was tonight
while he stood with her, receiving"
that he caught a disquieting glimpse
of this stranger whom he thus fleet
ingIv encountered for the first time