I only repeat this ingenuous and unimportant conversation to show my first impression of what seemed to me then to be a rather commonplace and colorless boy.  I did not realize then how strong could be the effect of such an environment.  Miss Redwood, as I soon discovered, was a timid, wilting individual, who had brought him successfully through the baby diseases and had taught him the elementary things, because that was what she was paid for, corrected his table manners and tried to make him the kind of boy that she would have preferred to be herself had nature fortunately not decided the matter otherwise, and chameleon-like, Jerry reflected her tepor, her supineness and femininity.  She recounted his virtues with pride, while I questioned her, hoping against hope to hear of some prank, the breaking of window-panes, the burning of a haystack or the explosion of a giant cracker under the cook.  But all to no purpose.

So far as I could discover, he had never so much as pulled the tail of a cat.  As old John Benham had said, of original sin he had none.

But my conviction that the boy had good stuff in him was deepened on the morrow, when, banishing books, I took him for a breather over hill and dale, through wood and underbrush, three miles out and three miles in.  I told him stories as we walked and showed him how the Indians trailed their game among the very hills over which we plodded.  I told him that a fine strong body was the greatest thing in the world, a possession to work for and be proud of.  His muscles were flabby, I knew, but I put him a brisk pace and brought him in just before lunch, red of cheek, bright of eye, and splashed with mud from head to foot.  I had learned one of the things I had set out to discover.  He would do his best at whatever task I set him.

I have not said that he was a handsome boy, for youth is amorphous and the promise of today is not always fulfilled by the morrow.  Jerry’s features were unformed at ten and, as has already been suggested, made no distinct impression upon my mind.  Whatever his early photographs may show, at least they gave no sign of the remarkable beauty of feature and lineament which developed in his adolescence.  Perhaps it was that I was more interested in his mind and body and what I could make them than in his face, which, after all, was none of my concern.

That I was committed to my undertaking from the very beginning will soon be evident.  Before three weeks had passed Jerry began to awake and to develop an ego and a personality.  If I had thought him unmagnetic at first, he quickly showed me my mistake.  His imagination responded to the slightest mental touch, too quickly even for the work I had in mind for him.  He would have pleased me better if he had been a little slower to catch the impulse of a new impression.  But I understood.  He had been starved of the things which were a boy’s natural right and heritage, and he ate and drank eagerly