That he never suffered from the lack of a home was certainly as true as that in his work he knew but little of failure, for the first stories he wrote for the magazines brought him into a prominence and popularity that lasted until the end.

But if Richard gained his success early in life and was blessed with a very lovely home to which he could always return, he was not brought up in a manner which in any way could be called lavish.
Lavish he may have been in later years, but if he was it was with the money for which those who knew him best knew how very hard he had worked.
In a general way, I cannot remember that our life as boys differed in any essential from that of other boys.

My brother went to the Episcopal Academy and his weekly report never failed to fill the whole house with an impenetrable gloom and ever-increasing fears as to the possibilities of his future.

At school and at college Richard was, to say the least, an indifferent student.

And what made this undeniable fact so annoying, particularly to his teachers, was that morally he stood so very high.