At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was definitely closed.

“I want my views understood,” said Mr. Tappan, addressing the board of solemn-visaged directors assembled in session to determine upon the fate of two motherless little children.  “Indiwidoolism is nurtured in excloosion; the elimination of the extraneous is necessary for the dewelopment of indiwidoolism.  I regard the human indiwidool as sacred.  Like a pearl”—­he pronounced it “poil”—­“it can grow in beauty and symmetry and purity and polish only when nourished in seclusion.  Indiwidoolism is a poil without price; and the natal mansion, gentlemen—­if I may be permitted the simulcritude—­is its oyster.

“My old friend, Anthony Seagrave, shared with me this unalterable conwiction.  I remember in the autumn of 1859——­”

The directors settled themselves in their wadded arm-chairs; several yawned; some folded their hands over their ample stomachs.  The June atmosphere was pleasantly conducive to the sort of after-luncheon introspection which is easily soothed by monotones of the human voice.

And while Mr. Tappan droned on and on, some of the directors watched him with one eye half open, thinking of other things, and some listened, both eyes half closed, thinking of nothing at all.

Many considered Mr. Tappan a very terrible old man, though why terrible, unless the most rigid honesty and bigoted devotion to duty terrifies, nobody seemed to know.

Long Island Dutch—­with all that it implies—­was the dull stock he rooted in.  Born a poor farmer’s son, with a savage passion for learning, he almost destroyed his eyesight in lonely study under the flicker of tallow dips.  All that had ever come to him of knowledge came in these solitary vigils.  Miry and sweating from the plough he mastered the classics, law, chemistry, engineering; and finally emerging heavily from the reek of Long Island fertiliser, struck with a heavy surety at Fortune and brought her to her knees amidst a shower of gold.  And all alone he gathered it in.

On Coenties Slip his warehouse still bore the legend:  “R.  Tappan:  Iron.”  All that he had ever done he had done alone.  He knew of no other way; believed in no other way.

Plain living, plainer clothing, tireless thinking undisturbed—­that had been his childhood; and it had suited him.

Never but once had he made any concession to custom and nature, and that was only when, desiring an heir, he was obliged to enter into human partnership to realise the wish.

His son was what his father had made him under the iron cult of solitary development; and now, the father, loyal in his own way to the memory of his old friend Anthony Seagrave, meant to do his full duty toward the orphaned grandchildren.