the most precious thing that had ever come his way. LITTLE 

 ' I know a man who loves his mother-in-law, because JOURNEYS 

 she did pity him. Our Oneida friends had " Community 

 Mothers' who took care of everybody's babies, just 

 as if they were their own, and with marked success, 

 for the genus hoodlum never evolved at Oneida. Grand- 

 mother love served all purposes for little Isaac New- 



" 



ton, just as it did for John Fiske. 



John Fiske's grandmother was his first teacher, and 

 she started out with the assumption that genius al- 

 ways skips one generation. She believed that she 

 was dealing with a record-breaker, and she was. What 

 she did not know about the classics, was known by 

 others whom she delegated to teach her grandchild. 

 Q When her baby genius was just out of linsey wool- 

 sey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico 

 waist, she began preparing him for college. The old 

 lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she 

 judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. 

 And the Harvard man she saw in her waking dreams, 

 she created in her own image. Harvard requires per- 

 spective, and viewed over the years through a mist of 

 melancholy it is very beautiful. At close range we 

 often get a Jarrett Bumbell flavor of cigarettes and a 

 sight of the foam that made Milwaukee famous. To a 

 great degree gran'ma Fiske created her Harvard out 

 of the stuff that dreams are made on. When her little 

 charge was six years old she began preparing him for 

 Harvard by teaching him to say "amo, amas, amat." 

 \. Q At seven years of age he was reading Caesar's Com- 



137 



