Note 21 — Chapter Twelve
Reading edition
... I suppose it can be said that the years of our childhood (years that of course excluded Davey) were Father’s palmy years. If, with our proverbial family-capacity for land-poverty, there were times when Father felt actual pinch for ready money, we children knew nothing of it. Excepting Davey, everyone of us was given the full advantage of a grade and a High School education, to say nothing of Henry, who took his Law and Bachelor of Arts degrees at State University.
Phil was probably the most energetic of us all. Restless, ambitious, impulsive in a dangerous way, up to his fortieth year, he was a source of constant anxiety to my father, who had scant patience with his daring land-ventures, and who came to his assistance only after terrific flares of temper.
At this writing, and while my dear brother lies desperately ill at his country home thirty miles out of Springfield, I suppose he ranks as one of the richest men of the state. I actually remember the day that dear Phil’s tide turned, so to speak. The day that my Stevey, with one hundred dollars in his pocket, closeted his Uncle Phil, who happened to be in Centralia on the difficult matter of borrowing twenty-five hundred dollars from the bank, and put up to him a proposition for a landing-field and hangar that had to do with an aëromail parcel-post-delivery scheme.... Ah me, what acorns of days those were....