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of the child, who had been named John and who proved to be a
sickly infant. Seymour resumed
his
old habits, he lost the jobs he
was given because of his sister, and now jobs were no longer plentiful
and employers were less patient with Seymour than ever before.
Sarah expressed to her friends her extreme admiration for
Rebecca, and said that she would not do what Rebecca did for the
sake of her mother and brother. But in expressing this admiration
Sarah condemned her sister's marriage without being conscious that
this was one of her motives in speaking as she did. And she felt per–
plexed because, in spite of all, it seemed to her that she had made
a better marriage than her sister. Michael was the worst kind of
husband, but he was not like James who devoted so many of his
thoughts to deciding how he might best secure a comfortable life
and lessen his own efforts, for as a dentist it was possible for him
to choose his own leisure.
Seymour was James's most unfavorable critic. He noted how
much James loved a big breakfast, and how slowly he ate, seeming
to relish every bite and chew. And he quoted to his mother James's
sentence: "To me a good dinner is more important than anything
else." But Seymour also liked to eat. He wolfed his food, bending
over the newspaper, but there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
it was fairly important to Seymour that he be well fed. It was true
that Seymour's taste in this as in many other things differed from
James and was indeed antithetical, for his liking for pickles, delicates–
sen, and cake made him dislike the wholesome foods upon which
James insisted. So too with James's love of talk. He spoke of very
different subjects and he was interested in politics, national affairs,
and science, to all of which Seymour was indifferent. He
also
used
the big words, the five-dollar words, as Seymour called them, which
had at first impressed the Hart family, for when they were mystified
they were impressed, and they suffered from a will to admire James.
But again Seymour also loved to talk and he was also a person of
theories. He felt that all politicans were crooks and thus dismissed
politics from his mind; but his interest in the lives of all ·human
beings resembled the passion of the chess player who reViews or reads
about great performances. It was his mother who told Seymour
t!
whether he liked it or not it was true that his condemnation of James
was touched off by the fact that they were both infatuated with their
own desires.
"You are both selfish in the same way," she said, and in her
sixty years of life she had learned to discriminate exactly between
