Excerpt from The Fruit of the Tree He was a helpless kind of man; even the younger children could see that. How he made so prosperous a living none of his acquaintances could understand. Those who were in the ivory trade with him knew that he owed his good in come to a rare capacity for judging tusks by touch. It was a gift, inherited, as he believed, from his father, but more probably communi cated by imperceptible training while they were in business together. As the family grew, so did his business, and this was fortunate, for Mims had no money nor had he any private fortune. The men who travelled up and down with him every morning and evening between Ellerslie and the city used to tell each other that they ought to offer him sympathy rather than congratulations as each new baby arrived. Yet they could not see that his responsibilities made any mark upon him. He regarded children in exactly the same way as he regarded the weather; both came as it pleased some Superior Power; he had no control over either. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.