Every proverb, every slang phrase and colloquialism, is what one might
call a petrified inspiration. Once upon a time it was a living thing, a
lightning flash in some man's soul; and now it glides off our tongue
without our ever thinking of its meaning. So, when the event transpired
which marks the beginning of my story, the newspapers one and all
remarked that Robert van Rensselaer was born with a silver spoon in his
mouth.
Into the particular circumstances of the event it is not necessary to
go, furthermore than to say that the arrival occasioned considerable
discomfort, to the annoyance of my hero's mother, who had never
experienced any discomfort before. His father, Mr. Chauncey van
Rensselaer, was a respected member of our metropolitan high society,
combining the major and minor _desiderata_ of wealth and good-breeding,
and residing in a twentieth-century palace at number four thousand
eleven hundred and forty-four Fifth Avenue. At the time of the opening
of our story van Rensselaer _pere_ had fled from the scene of the
trouble and was passing the time playing billiards with some sympathetic
friends, and when the telephone-bell rang they opened some champagne and
drank to the health of van Rensselaer _fils_. Later on, when the father
stood in the darkened apartment and gazed upon the red and purple mite
of life, proud emotions swelled high in his heart, and he vowed that he
would make a gentleman of Robert van Rensselaer,--a gentleman after the
pattern of his father.
At the outset of the career of my hero I have to note the amount of
attention which he received from the press, and from an anxious public.
Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer was wealthy, according to New York and Fifth
Avenue standards, and Baby van Rensselaer was provided with an
introductory outfit of costumes at an estimated cost of seventeen
thousand dollars. I have a file of van Rensselaer clippings, and would
quote the elaborate descriptions, and preserve them to a grateful
posterity; but in the meantime Master Robert van Rensselaer would be
grown up. I pass on to the time when he was a growing boy, with two
governesses, and several tutors, and a groom, and such other attendants
as every boy has to have.