THE LONG TRAIL 



me that when his term in the White House 

 ended the following spring he planned to 

 make a trip to Africa, and that if I wished 

 to do so I could accompany him. There 

 was no need to ask whether I wanted to 

 go. At school, when we were writing 

 compositions, mine almost invariably took 

 the form of some imaginary journey 

 across the "Dark Continent." Still, father 

 had ever made it a practice to talk to us as 

 if we were contemporaries. He would 

 never order or even tell us to follow a cer- 

 tain line ; instead, he discussed it with us, 

 and let us draw our own conclusions. In 

 that way we felt that, while we had his 

 unreserved backing, we were yet acting on 

 our own initiative and were ourselves re- 

 sponsible for the results. If a boy is 

 forced to do a thing he often makes but a 

 half-hearted attempt to succeed, and lays 

 his failure to the charge of the person who 

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