Paradise Garden | Page 7

but I put him a brisk pace and brought him in just before lunch,
red of cheek, bright of eye, and splashed with mud from head to foot. I
had learned one of the things I had set out to discover. He would do his
best at whatever task I set him.
I have not said that he was a handsome boy, for youth is amorphous
and the promise of today is not always fulfilled by the morrow. Jerry's
features were unformed at ten and, as has already been suggested, made
no distinct impression upon my mind. Whatever his early photographs
may show, at least they gave no sign of the remarkable beauty of
feature and lineament which developed in his adolescence. Perhaps it
was that I was more interested in his mind and body and what I could
make them than in his face, which, after all, was none of my concern.
That I was committed to my undertaking from the very beginning will
soon be evident. Before three weeks had passed Jerry began to awake
and to develop an ego and a personality. If I had thought him
unmagnetic at first, he quickly showed me my mistake. His imagination
responded to the slightest mental touch, too quickly even for the work I
had in mind for him. He would have pleased me better if he had been a
little slower to catch the impulse of a new impression. But I understood.
He had been starved of the things which were a boy's natural right and
heritage, and he ate and drank eagerly of the masculine fare I provided.
He had shed a few tears at Miss Redwood's departure and I liked him
for them, for they showed his loyalty, but he had no more games of the
nursery nor the mawkish sentimentality that I found upon the nursery
shelves. I had other plans for Jerry. John Benham should have his wish.
I would make Jerry as nearly the Perfect Man as mortal man could
make God's handiwork. Spiritually he should grow "from within,"
directed by me, but guided by his own inner light. Physically he should
grow as every well-made boy should grow, sturdy in muscle and bone,
straight of limb, deep of chest, sound of mind and strong of heart. I
would make Jerry a Greek.
Perhaps these plans may seem strange coming from one who had
almost grown old before he had been young. But I had made sure that
Jerry should profit by my mistakes, growing slowly, built like the

Benham Wall, of material that should endure the sophistries of the
world and remain unbroken.
I worked Jerry hard that first winter and spring, and his physical
condition showed that I had no need to fear for his health. And when
the autumn came I decided to bring him face to face with nature when
she is most difficult. I was a good woodsman, having been born and
bred in the northern part of the state, and until I went to the University
had spent a part of each year in the wilderness. We left Horsham Manor
one October day, traveling light, and made for the woods. We were
warmly clad, but packed no more than would be essential for existence.
A rifle, a shotgun, an ax, and hunting knives were all that we carried
besides tea, flour, a side of bacon, the ammunition and implements for
cooking. By night we had built a rough shack and laid our plans for a
permanent cabin of spruce logs, which we proposed to erect before the
snow flew. Game was abundant, and before our bacon was gone our
larder was replenished. I had told Radford of our plans and the
gamekeepers were instructed to give us a wide berth. Jerry learned to
shoot that year, not for fun, but for existence, for one evening when we
came in with an empty game bag we both went to our blankets hungry.
The cabin rose slowly, and the boy learned to do his share of work with
the ax. He was naturally clever with his hands, and there was no end to
his eagerness. He was living in a new world, where each new day
brought some new problem to solve, some difficulty to be surmounted.
He had already put aside childish things and had entered early upon a
man's heritage. There are persons who will say that I took great risks in
thus exposing Jerry while only in his eleventh year, but I can answer by
the results achieved. We lived in the woods from the fifteenth of
October until a few days before Christmas. During that time we had
built a cabin, ten feet by twelve, with a stone fireplace and a roof of
clay; had laid a