Chapter I: Front Matter

_LITTLE NOVELS BY
FAVOURITE AUTHORS_

Their Child

ROBERT HERRICK

Their Child

BY
ROBERT HERRICK

AUTHOR OF “THE WEB OF LIFE,” “THE MAN
WHO WINS,” “THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM,”
ETC.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1903

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903.

Norwood Press
J. B. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood Mass., U.S.A.

MR. ROBERT HERRICK, the author of “The Gospel of Freedom,” “The
Web of Life,” and “The Real World,” was born in Cambridge, Mass.,
April 26, 1868. His father was a lawyer, practising in Boston. His
people on both sides were of New England stock, the Herricks running
back in New England to 1632, and the Emerys, Mannings, Hales, and
Peabodys, with whom among others his genealogy is connected, having
much the same history. Mr. Herrick was educated at the Cambridge
public schools, and at Harvard University, graduating in 1890. His
freshman year and part of his sophomore year were spent in travelling
in the West Indies, Mexico, California, Alaska, and other regions, in
company with his classmate, Philip Stanley Abbot. While in college
Mr. Herrick paid special attention to English studies, attending
courses of lectures delivered by the late Professor Child, Professor
James, and Professor Barrett Wendell, among others.

For a year he was one of the editors of the _Harvard Advocate_,
and contributed several stories to that magazine. Later he was
editor of the _Harvard Monthly_--the purely literary magazine of
the University,--contributing frequently to its pages. One of his
fellow-editors was Norman Hapgood, the author of “Abraham Lincoln:
the Man of the People,” and “George Washington.”

After graduation Mr. Herrick began to teach English at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under Professor George R.
Carpenter (now of Columbia University), and continued to correct
themes and to give an occasional course in literature until 1893,
when he resigned his position in Boston to accept an instructorship
in English at the University of Chicago. In 1895 he was appointed
Assistant Professor of Rhetoric in the University, and he has since
taught chiefly Rhetoric and English Composition.

The summer of 1892 he spent in England and on the Continent. In 1895
he went abroad for fifteen months, for rest and literary work, living
in Paris and Florence during most of the period. While in Europe he
wrote the first draft of “The Man Who Wins,” which was published two
years later; also the first form of “The Gospel of Freedom,” and
various short stories, which were first published in the magazines
and afterward reprinted in “Literary Love Letters and Other Stories,”
and in “Love’s Dilemmas.” In addition to his writing in the line of
fiction, Mr. Herrick has done a great deal of work on more or less
professional topics. Magazine articles about methods of teaching
rhetoric, introductions and notes for school editions of classics,
one or two text-books on rhetoric,--these items give an idea of the
sort of work which has occupied Mr. Herrick’s attention apart from
fiction. He is one of the few modern American writers who have the
courage and the strength to paint life exactly as they see it,--in
its joy, its beauty, its sombreness, and its sorrow alike,--without
making it seem happier or nearer the ideal than it is.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Portrait of Robert Herrick _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

“His wife was ... hurriedly undressing the child” 50

“She knelt beside him and took his head in her hands” 90

THEIR CHILD

THEIR CHILD