From the deepest of his inside
all the way out he believed it was the finest city in the world.
"Finest" was his word. He thought of it as his city as he thought
of his family as his family; and just as profoundly believed his city
to be the finest city in the world, so did he believe his family to
be--in spite of his son Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a
matter of fact, he knew nothing worth knowing about either.
Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and
considered the failure--the "odd one"--of the family. Born during
that most dangerous and anxious of the early years, when the mother
fretted and the father took his chance, he was an ill-nourished baby,
and grew meagerly, only lengthwise, through a feeble childhood. At
his christening he was committed for life to "Bibbs" mainly through
lack of imagination on his mother's part, for though it was her maiden
name, she had no strong affection for it; but it was "her turn" to
name the baby, and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of
anything else she liked AT ALL!" She offered this explanation one
day when the sickly boy was nine and after a long fit of brooding had
demanded some reason for his name's being Bibbs.
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