Note 22 — Chapter Thirteen
Reading edition
... seldom, if ever, did I see my brother in the throes of those rare fits of passion that invariably were to leave him the victim of one of the black headaches to which he was subject.
Of course, there was the unspeakable occasion of Steve and the dog. My pen will scarcely drag across the page that memory of the face of a child torn with anguish. I recall how I trembled for the pain-of-the-world that must inevitably find its way into a heart that was capable of suffering as David was the day he came running to me with a wounded dog in his arms. O Steve—Son—Boy—except for my unquenchable faith in you which you have so superbly justified, I think that would have been the sorriest hour of my life.
In subsequent years, I have, of course, seen David control my Father’s kind of wrath, but only with great effort. There comes to my mind that memorable occasion of a state dinner to the Queen of Holland, in the days when visiting queens and royalty were still a novelty to us in America. At this function an Italian plenipotentiary constituted himself an ambassador-without-portfolio, and introduced a diplomatic topic at the banquet-table which threw great embarrassment upon the guest-of-honor and drew admirably restrained but nonetheless angry public rebuke from the President. Another time, when my brother’s face was my Father’s all over again, as it quivered in anger, was when I happened to be seated in his office, and he overheard, with what I always call that curious third ear of his, a secretary out in an anteroom, insolently dismissing a World War veteran, who was presenting what he thought were sufficient credentials for admission to see the President.