Mamma said she would tell him something after a while when they were alone. And she did. According to her view, children, in public, should be seen but not heard; they should speak only when spoken to; they should be well mannered, circumspect; they should especially be respectful toward their elders; they must never put themselves forward, or try to be smart or show off, or otherwise attract attention to themselves; must remain in the background; speak in subdued tones and say: “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” “yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am,” and she thus went on setting forth a complete code of ethics and etiquette for children in general and for her child in especial particularity, for she trusted he would not become, so she said, a young ruffian like other people’s children that were devoid of table manners in particular, and used the language of the streets. This was Mamma’s theory. In practice she vacillated, oscillated, vibrated, ricochetted, made figures of eight and spirals in her temperamental emotionalism and mother love, meanwhile clutching at the straw of her theory. And this was not all. Secretly she kept a note book. In this she entered carefully and minutely all the wonderful sayings of her son as observed by herself, or as transmitted in long letters from Grandmamma. True to form, she immediately entered the gravy item, wrote a long letter to Grandmamma about it, confessed she nearly strangled in suppressing her delight; and how the other people present were convulsed, as a loud voice, within the dining room’s wilderness, proclaimed the unholy truth that this was not like Grandmamma’s gravy—it was only just a little flour and water. Officially the child was squelched; and officially Mamma kept an eye to weatherward. But in her secret book she gave way to self flattery.
Not so with Father. There was no sentiment, no nonsense about him. He would not rave for thirty minutes over a single blossom; a brief moment of appreciation sufficed; during which he would express regret at the absence in him of the sense of smell. This was the regular formula—unless it came to “Scenery.” What he had fixed firmly in mind was a practical program fitted to a child that had grown up like a weed—a program of physical training, combined with presumptive education and sure discipline. This program he set in motion by pulling his son out of bed at five in the morning, standing him upright, hurrying him into his clothes and leading him by the hand straight to the town pump. Here Sullivan Senior pumped vigorously until certain the water was of lowest temperature; then he gave unto the child to drink. The child, as commanded, drank the full cup, shuddered, and complained of the chill. Well, if he was chilly, he must run—to establish circulation—again a new word. There was no help for it. After a sharp quarter mile, the son of Patrick Sullivan was convinced that “circulation” was now established, and said so. They settled to a brisk walk. At the end of two miles they came upon a narrow arm of the sea, which spread into a beautiful sequestered pool, at the point reached, with water deep, and clear green, and banks quite high. Strip! was the order. Strip it was. No sooner done than the high priest dexterously seized the neophyte, and, bracing himself, with a back-forward swing cast the youngster far out, saw him splash and disappear; then he dived, came up beside a wildly splashing sputtering unit, trod water, put the child in order, and with hand spread under his son’s breast began to teach him the simple beginnings of scientific swimming. “Must not stay too long in the water,” he said. “Would Sonny like a ride astride Papa’s shoulders to a landing?” Sonny would and did. He gloried as he felt beneath him the powerful heave and sink and heave of a fine swimmer, as he grasped his father’s hair, and saw the bank approach.
On land he took note of his father’s hairy chest, his satiny white skin and quick flexible muscles over which the sunshine danced with each movement. He had never seen a man completely stripped, and was pleased and vastly proud to have such a father, especially when the father, an object lesson in view, made exhibition dives and swam this way and that way in lithe mastery. And he asked his father to promise him he would teach him how to do these things, that he too might become a great swimmer. For he had a new ideal now, an ideal upsprung in a
