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7

The last incident should be a lesson to parents, resulting in a terrifying experience I can relive to this day. This probably happened when I was 5 and hence, sounds almost incredible but now, almost 65 years later, I can relive the crucial part of it as though it had happened quite recently. There was a well known military school at Manlius, N.Y. named St. John's, some 15 miles from Syracuse. Even at age 5, this school was evidently known to me. On this occasion, my parents wanted me to do something, I don't remember what, but I was resisting strongly doing it and it was becoming quite an issue. Suddenly my father told me that unless I complied with their request immediately and without any further argument, he would phone St. John's and arrange to send me out there at once to stay -- in other words, I would be ousted from my home and, in effect, be put in custody in a military school with its tough regimen where my life would be rugged and lonely -- I would be kicked out of my home and renounced by me parents. Apparently I thought that my father was kidding and wasn't prepared to do this unthinkable thing to me -- at any rate, I remember vividly his walking to the telephone, living the receiver and telling the operator to get him St. John's Military Academy at Manlius, and it suddenly dawned on me that he wasn't kidding and was about to carry out his threat! Years later, I realized that he'd held the hook down on the phone and hadn't talked to the operator at all, but I thought he had and my terror at the prospect of being sent to Manlius was sufficient to make me recall it 65 years later as if it were a fresh experience. Of course, I quickly complied with the request I'd been resisting and the affair was ended -- except in the impression it made on me, one I'll not forget ever. Perhaps it was good for me, perhaps not; at any rate, I think that ever since then, I've had an unusually strong respect for discipline.

III

In 1908, we moved across town into the James Street Hill section which, from a social standpoint, was several points above McClennan Avenue, rating right up near the top of the scale. My father bought a brick-and-stucco house at 326 Highland Avenue; it was a new house in a very genteel location. The house was not large but fully adequate, having four bedrooms and two baths on the second floor as well as two rooms finished off in the attic for servants quarters. On the ground floor, were a large front hall, living room, dining room, butler's pantry and kitchen. The front porch was very small but there was a large side porch opening off the living room and overlooking a spacious garden next door. There was no garage but when we moved we had no car. I believe we moved around April 1st and I began to live through a seven year period ending February 26, 1915, when my father died, which I look back upon as among the happiest of my life.