Wilbur Larch watched Homer carefully. In A Brief History of St. Cloud’s, he would write, “How I resent fatherhood! The feelings it gives one: they completely ruin one’s objectivity, they wreck one’s sense of fair play. I worry that I have caused Homer Wells to skip his childhood—I worry that he has absolutely skipped being a child! But many orphans find it easier to skip childhood altogether than to indulge themselves as children when they are orphans. If I helped Homer Wells to skip his childhood, did I help him skip a bad thing? Damn the confusion of feeling like a father! Loving someone as
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