Explore "Gladiator" by Philip Wylie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Calm and quiet held their negative sway over the Danner ménage for an hour, and then there was a disturbed fretting that developed into a lusty bawl. The professor passed a fatigued hand over his brow. He was unaccustomed to the dissonances of his offspring. Young Hugo -- they had named him after a maternal uncle -- had attained the age of one week without giving any indication of unnaturalness.
That is not quite true. He was as fleshy as most healthy infants, but the flesh was more than normally firm. He was inordinately active. His eyes had been gray but, already, they gave promise of the inkiness they afterwards exhibited. He was born with a quantity of black hair -- hair so dark as to be nearly blue. Abednego Danner, on seeing it, exercised the liberty which all husbands take, and investigated rumors of his wife's forbears with his most secret thoughts. The principal rumor was that one of her lusty Covenanter grandsires had been intrigued by a squaw to the point of forgetting his Psalms and recalling only the Song of Solomon.