and scornfully, “I never have any notion what she has in mind. No, sir, I really could not tell you. I no longer pay any attention to what she says—O! not the slightest!” he waved his great hand through the air—“Say!” stiffly and harshly he tapped the boy’s knee, grinning at him with the combative glitter of his ptotic eye—“Say! did you ever find one of them with whom it was possible to carry on a coherent conversation? Did you ever find one of them who would respond to the processes of reason and ordered thought? My dear boy!” he cried, “you cannot talk to them. I assure you, you cannot talk to them. You might as well whistle into the wind or spit into the waters of the Nile, for all the good it will do you. In his youth man will bare the riches of his spirit to them, will exhaust the rich accumulations of his genius—his wisdom, his learning, his philosophy—in an effort to make them worthy of his companionship—and in the end, what does he always find? Why,” said Uncle Bascom bitterly, “that he has spent his powers in talking to an imbecile”—and he snarled vengefully through his nose. In a moment more, he contorted his face, and nasally whined in a grotesque and mincing parody of a woman’s voice, “O, I feel so sick! O, deary me, now! I think my time is coming on again! O, you don’t love me any mo-o-ore! O, I wish I was dead! O, I can’t get up today! O, I wish you’d bring me something nice from ta-own! O, if you loved me you’d buy me a new hat! O, I’ve got nothing to we-e-ar!” here his voice had an added snarl of bitterness—“I’m ashamed to go out on the street with all the other wim-men!”
Then he paused broodingly for a moment more, wheeled abruptly and tapped the boy on the knee again: “The proper study of mankind is—say!” he said with a horrible fixed grimace and in a kind of cunning whisper—“does the poet say—woman? I want to ask you: does he, now? Not on your life!” yelled Uncle Bascom. “The word is man! man! man! Nothing else but man!”
Again he was silent: then, with an accent of heavy sarcasm, he went on: “Your aunt likes music. You may have observed your aunt is fond of music—”
It was, in fact, the solace of her life: on a tiny gramophone which one of her daughters had given her, she played constantly the records of the great composers.
“—Your aunt is fond of music,” Bascom said deliberately. “Perhaps you may have thought—perhaps it seemed to you that she discovered it—perhaps you thought it was your aunt’s own patent and invention—but
