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+Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish Volume 1, by George MacDonald
+#29 in our series by George MacDonald
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+
+Title: The Seaboard Parish Volume 1
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8551]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 22, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEABOARD PARISH VOLUME 1 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+BY GEORGE MAC DONALD, LL.D.
+
+VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+   I. HOMILETIC
+  II. CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY
+ III. THE SICK CHAMBER
+  IV. A SUNDAY EVENING
+   V. MY DREAM
+  VI. THE KEW BABY
+ VII. ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING
+VIII. THEODORA'S DOOM
+  IX. A SPRING CHAPTER
+   X. AN IMPORTANT LETTER
+  XI. CONNIE'S DREAM
+ XII. THE JOURNEY
+XIII. WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED
+ XIV. MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN
+  XV. THE OLD CHURCH
+ XVI. CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER
+XVII. MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HOMILETIC.
+
+
+Dear Friends,--I am beginning a new book like an old sermon; but, as you
+know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say
+or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon; and if you had not
+by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not have
+wanted any more of my teaching. And, indeed, I did not think you would want
+any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again
+at my writing-table, to write for you--with a strange feeling, however,
+that I am in the heart of some curious, rather awful acoustic contrivance,
+by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to
+myself as I write them, are heard aloud by multitudes of people whom I
+cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy, that, by a sense of your
+presence, I may speak the more truly, as man to man.
+
+But let me, for a moment, suppose that I am your grandfather, and that you
+have all come to beg for a story; and that, therefore, as usually happens
+in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating a more puzzled
+mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners
+of my brain; indeed, here is one, there is one, peeping out at me like a
+rabbit; but alas, like a rabbit, showing me almost at the same instant the
+tail-end of it, and vanishing with a contemptuous _thud_ of its hind
+feet on the ground. For I must have suitable regard to the desires of my
+children. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if
+at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people what they
+want, would sometimes be to give them only dirt and poison. To give them
+what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could
+not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I am willing to think, is a
+dish of good wholesome venison. Now I suppose my children around me are
+neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy tale, go
+that will not do. What they want is, I believe, something that I know
+about--that has happened to myself. Well, I confess, that is the kind of
+thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me
+something that has happened to himself, especially if he will give me a
+peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the
+closed door, and that person will, so telling, absorb my attention: he has
+something true and genuine and valuable to communicate. They are mostly old
+people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them;
+but that only when they grow old, are they able to see things right, to
+disentangle confusions, and judge righteous judgment. Things which at the
+time appeared insignificant or wearisome, then give out the light that was
+in them, show their own truth, interest, and influence: they are far enough
+off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best
+what it is. How I should like to write a story for old people! The young
+are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people
+come in for a share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody
+under fifty admitted! It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or a
+love story either? I am not so sure about that. The worst of it would be,
+however, that hardly a young person would read it. Now, we old people would
+not like that. We can read young people's books and enjoy them: they would
+not try to read old men's books or old women's books; they would be so sure
+of their being dry. My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we
+not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them; only they cannot
+see the fun. We have strange tales, that we know to be true, and which look
+more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again; only
+somehow they do not belong to the ways of this year--I was going to say
+_week_,--and so the young people generally do not care to hear them. I have
+had one pale-faced boy, to be sure, who will sit at his mother's feet, and
+listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother's
+wedding-gown was as old as Eve's coat of skins. But then he was young
+enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the
+young and the old. Ah! I should like to write for you, old men, old women,
+to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is
+your salvation nearer than when you believed; for, however your souls may
+be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength,
+in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in
+the weakening of its stakes, in the rents through which you see the stars,
+you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the sonship. But
+the one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would
+be, "Friends, let us not grow old." Old age is but a mask; let us not call
+the mask the face. Is the acorn old, because its cup dries and drops it
+from its hold--because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth?
+Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the
+young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a
+dreadful kind of old age. The heart needs never be old. Indeed it should
+always be growing younger. Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when
+we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to
+enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps
+whose duty it would be, to play at leap-frog if there was any necessity for
+putting the matter in that light; and for us, we have the privilege, or if
+we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying
+their leap-frog. But if we must withdraw in a measure from sociable
+relations with our fellows, let it be as the wise creatures that creep
+aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by that their wings may
+grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a
+withdrawing is in the name of youth. And while it is pleasant--no one knows
+how pleasant except him who experiences it--to sit apart and see the drama
+of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free, his
+vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be ready,
+should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering
+old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the
+less true that his hands tremble, and that he would gladly return to his
+chimney-corner. If he is never thus called out, let him examine himself,
+lest he should be falling into the number of those that say, "I go, sir,"
+and go not; who are content with thinking beautiful things in an Atlantis,
+Oceana, Arcadia, or what it may be, but put not forth one of their fingers
+to work a salvation in the earth. Better than such is the man who, using
+just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never has a thought
+of his own.
+
+I have been talking--to my reader is it? or to my supposed group of
+grandchildren? I remember--to my companions in old age. It is time I
+returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of
+the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one word:
+We have yet a work to do, my friends; but a work we shall never do aright
+after ceasing to understand the new generation. We are not the men, neither
+shall wisdom die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people because the
+young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord has something
+fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his message. When
+we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world
+is over. It might end more honourably.
+
+Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you
+about, and how to begin. My story will be rather about my family than
+myself now. I was as it were a little withdrawn, even by the time of which
+I am about to write. I had settled into a gray-haired, quite elderly, yet
+active man--young still, in fact, to what I am now. But even then, though
+my faith had grown stronger, life had grown sadder, and needed all my
+stronger faith; for the vanishing of beloved faces, and the trials of them
+that are dear, will make even those that look for a better country both for
+themselves and their friends, sad, though it will be with a preponderance
+of the first meaning of the word _sad_, which was _settled_, _thoughtful_.
+
+I am again seated in the little octagonal room, which I have made my study
+because I like it best. It is rather a shame, for my books cover over every
+foot of the old oak panelling. But they make the room all the pleasanter
+to the eye, and after I am gone, there is the old oak, none the worse, for
+anyone who prefers it to books.
+
+I intend to use as the central portion of my present narrative the history
+of a year during part of which I took charge of a friend's parish, while
+my brother-in-law, Thomas Weir, who was and is still my curate, took the
+entire charge of Marshmallows. What led to this will soon appear. I will
+try to be minute enough in my narrative to make my story interesting,
+although it will cost me suffering to recall some of the incidents I have
+to narrate.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CONSTANCE'S BIRTHDAY.
+
+
+
+
+
+Was it from observation of nature in its association with human nature, or
+from artistic feeling alone, that Shakspere so often represents Nature's
+mood as in harmony with the mood of the principal actors in his drama? I
+know I have so often found Nature's mood in harmony with my own, even
+when she had nothing to do with forming mine, that in looking back I have
+wondered at the fact. There may, however, be some self-deception about it.
+At all events, on the morning of my Constance's eighteenth birthday, a
+lovely October day with a golden east, clouds of golden foliage about the
+ways, and an air that seemed filled with the ether of an _aurum potabile_,
+there came yet an occasional blast of wind, which, without being absolutely
+cold, smelt of winter, and made one draw one's shoulders together with the
+sense of an unfriendly presence. I do not think Constance felt it at all,
+however, as she stood on the steps in her riding-habit, waiting till the
+horses made their appearance. It had somehow grown into a custom with us
+that each of the children, as his or her birthday came round, should be
+king or queen for that day, and, subject to the veto of father and mother,
+should have everything his or her own way. Let me say for them, however,
+that in the matter of choosing the dinner, which of course was included
+in the royal prerogative, I came to see that it was almost invariably the
+favourite dishes of others of the family that were chosen, and not those
+especially agreeable to the royal palate. Members of families where
+children have not been taught from their earliest years that the great
+privilege of possession is the right to bestow, may regard this as an
+improbable assertion; but others will know that it might well enough be
+true, even if I did not say that so it was. But there was always the choice
+of some individual treat, which was determined solely by the preference of
+the individual in authority. Constance had chosen "a long ride with papa."
+
+I suppose a parent may sometimes be right when he speaks with admiration of
+his own children. The probability of his being correct is to be determined
+by the amount of capacity he has for admiring other people's children.
+However this may be in my own case, I venture to assert that Constance did
+look very lovely that morning. She was fresh as the young day: we were
+early people--breakfast and prayers were over, and it was nine o'clock as
+she stood on the steps and I approached her from the lawn.
+
+"O, papa! isn't it jolly?" she said merrily.
+
+"Very jolly indeed, my dear," I answered, delighted to hear the word from
+the lips of my gentle daughter. She very seldom used a slang word, and when
+she did, she used it like a lady. Shall I tell you what she was like? Ah!
+you could not see her as I saw her that morning if I did. I will, however,
+try to give you a general idea, just in order that you and I should not be
+picturing to ourselves two very different persons while I speak of her.
+
+She was rather little, and so slight that she looked tall. I have often
+observed that the impression of height is an affair of proportion, and has
+nothing to do with feet and inches. She was rather fair in complexion,
+with her mother's blue eyes, and her mother's long dark wavy hair. She
+was generally playful, and took greater liberties with me than any of the
+others; only with her liberties, as with her slang, she knew instinctively
+when, where, and how much. For on the borders of her playfulness there
+seemed ever to hang a fringe of thoughtfulness, as if she felt that the
+present moment owed all its sparkle and brilliance to the eternal sunlight.
+And the appearance was not in the least a deceptive one. The eternal was
+not far from her--none the farther that she enjoyed life like a bird, that
+her laugh was merry, that her heart was careless, and that her voice rang
+through the house--a sweet soprano voice--singing snatches of songs (now a
+street tune she had caught from a London organ, now an air from Handel
+or Mozart), or that she would sometimes tease her elder sister about her
+solemn and anxious looks; for Wynnie, the eldest, had to suffer for her
+grandmother's sins against her daughter, and came into the world with a
+troubled little heart, that was soon compelled to flee for refuge to the
+rock that was higher than she. Ah! my Constance! But God was good to you
+and to us in you.
+
+"Where shall we go, Connie?" I said, and the same moment the sound of the
+horses' hoofs reached us.
+
+"Would it be too far to go to Addicehead?" she returned.
+
+"It is a long ride," I answered.
+
+"Too much for the pony?"
+
+"O dear, no--not at all. I was thinking of you, not of the pony."
+
+"I'm quite as able to ride as the pony is to carry me, papa. And I want to
+get something for Wynnie. Do let us go."
+
+"Very well, my dear," I said, and raised her to the saddle--if I may say
+_raised_, for no bird ever hopped more lightly from one twig to another
+than she sprung from the ground on her pony's back.
+
+In a moment I was beside her, and away we rode.
+
+The shadows were still long, the dew still pearly on the spiders' webs, as
+we trotted out of our own grounds into a lane that led away towards the
+high road. Our horses were fresh and the air was exciting; so we turned
+from the hard road into the first suitable field, and had a gallop to begin
+with. Constance was a good horse-woman, for she had been used to the saddle
+longer than she could remember. She was now riding a tall well-bred pony,
+with plenty of life--rather too much, I sometimes thought, when I was out
+with Wynnie; but I never thought so when I was with Constance. Another
+field or two sufficiently quieted both animals--I did not want to have all
+our time taken up with their frolics--and then we began to talk.
+
+"You are getting quite a woman now, Connie, my dear," I said.
+
+"Quite an old grannie, papa," she answered.
+
+"Old enough to think about what's coming next," I said gravely.
+
+"O, papa! And you are always telling us that we must not think about the
+morrow, or even the next hour. But, then, that's in the pulpit," she added,
+with a sly look up at me from under the drooping feather of her pretty hat.
+
+"You know very well what I mean, you puss," I answered. "And I don't say
+one thing in the pulpit and another out of it."
+
+She was at my horse's shoulder with a bound, as if Spry, her pony, had been
+of one mind and one piece with her. She was afraid she had offended me. She
+looked up into mine with as anxious a face as ever I saw upon Wynnie.
+
+"O, thank you, papa!" she said when I smiled. "I thought I had been rude. I
+didn't mean it, indeed I didn't. But I do wish you would make it a little
+plainer to me. I do think about things sometimes, though you would hardly
+believe it."
+
+"What do you want made plainer, my child?" I asked.
+
+"When we're to think, and when we're not to think," she answered.
+
+I remember all of this conversation because of what came so soon after.
+
+"If the known duty of to-morrow depends on the work of to-day," I answered,
+"if it cannot be done right except you think about it and lay your plans
+for it, then that thought is to-day's business, not to-morrow's."
+
+"Dear papa, some of your explanations are more difficult than the things
+themselves. May I be as impertinent as I like on my birthday?" she asked
+suddenly, again looking up in my face.
+
+We were walking now, and she had a hold of my horse's mane, so as to keep
+her pony close up.
+
+"Yes, my dear, as impertinent as you like--not an atom more, mind."
+
+"Well, papa, I sometimes wish you wouldn't explain things so much. I seem
+to understand you all the time you are preaching, but when I try the text
+afterwards by myself, I can't make anything of it, and I've forgotten every
+word you said about it."
+
+"Perhaps that is because you have no right to understand it."
+
+"I thought all Protestants had a right to understand every word of the
+Bible," she returned.
+
+"If they can," I rejoined. "But last Sunday, for instance, I did not expect
+anybody there to understand a certain bit of my sermon, except your mamma
+and Thomas Weir."
+
+"How funny! What part of it was that?"
+
+"O! I'm not going to tell you. You have no right to understand it. But most
+likely you thought you understood it perfectly, and it appeared to you, in
+consequence, very commonplace."
+
+"In consequence of what?"
+
+"In consequence of your thinking you understood it."
+
+"O, papa dear! you're getting worse and worse. It's not often I ask you
+anything--and on my birthday too! It is really too bad of you to bewilder
+my poor little brains in this way."
+
+"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea that
+you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If you had
+never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount of remark,
+would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much more is this the
+case with truths that belong to the convictions and feelings of the heart.
+Suppose a man had never in his life asked God for anything, or thanked
+God for anything, would his opinion as to what David meant in one of his
+worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole thing would be beyond him. If
+you have never known what it is to have care of any kind upon you, you
+cannot understand what our Lord means when he tells us to take no thought
+for the morrow."
+
+"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
+about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
+
+"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
+perhaps I can help you."
+
+"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
+idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at work
+every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that women any
+more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do? What have I
+been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel very useless and
+wrong sometimes."
+
+"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
+Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish. You
+take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for the poor.
+You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you are learning
+yourselves."
+
+"Yes, but that's not work."
+
+"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And you
+would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light. Not that I
+have anything to complain of."
+
+"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life, when
+there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
+
+"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed you,
+than in doing it where he has placed you?"
+
+"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to do at
+home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her? You won't
+think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will you?"
+
+"No, my dear. I believe that you are really thinking about duty. And
+now comes the moment for considering the passage to which you began by
+referring:--What God may hereafter require of you, you must not give
+yourself the least trouble about. Everything he gives you to do, you must
+do as well as ever you can, and that is the best possible preparation for
+what he may want you to do next. If people would but do what they have to
+do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next. And I do
+not believe that those who follow this rule are ever left floundering on
+the sea-deserted sands of inaction, unable to find water enough to swim
+in."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. That's a little sermon all to myself, and I think I
+shall understand it even when I think about it afterwards. Now let's have a
+trot."
+
+"There is one thing more I ought to speak about though, Connie. It is not
+your moral nature alone you ought to cultivate. You ought to make yourself
+as worth God's making as you possibly can. Now I am a little doubtful
+whether you keep up your studies at all."
+
+She shrugged her pretty shoulders playfully, looking up in my face again.
+
+"I don't like dry things, papa."
+
+"Nobody does."
+
+"Nobody!" she exclaimed. "How do the grammars and history-books come to be
+written then?"
+
+In talking to me, somehow, the child always put on a more childish tone
+than when she talked to anyone else. I am certain there was no affection in
+it, though. Indeed, how could she be affected with her fault-finding old
+father?
+
+"No. Those books are exceedingly interesting to the people that make them.
+Dry things are just things that you do not know enough about to care for
+them. And all you learn at school is next to nothing to what you have to
+learn."
+
+"What must I do then?" she asked with a sigh. "Must I go all over my French
+Grammar again? O dear! I do hate it so!"
+
+"If you will tell me something you like, Connie, instead of something you
+don't like, I may be able to give you advice. Is there nothing you are fond
+of?" I continued, finding that she remained silent.
+
+"I don't know anything in particular--that is, I don't know anything in the
+way of school-work that I really liked. I don't mean that I didn't try
+to do what I had to do, for I did. There was just one thing I liked--the
+poetry we had to learn once a week. But I suppose gentlemen count that
+silly--don't they?"
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, I would make that liking of yours the foundation
+of all your work. Besides, I think poetry the grandest thing God has given
+us--though perhaps you and I might not quite agree about what poetry was
+poetry enough to be counted an especial gift of God. Now, what poetry do
+you like best?"
+
+"Mrs. Hemans's, I think, papa."
+
+"Well, very well, to begin with. 'There is,' as Mr. Carlyle said to a
+friend of mine--'There is a thin vein of true poetry in Mrs. Hemans.' But
+it is time you had done with thin things, however good they may be. Most
+people never get beyond spoon-meat--in this world, at least, and they
+expect nothing else in the world to come. I must take you in hand myself,
+and see what I can do for you. It is wretched to see capable enough
+creatures, all for want of a little guidance, bursting with admiration of
+what owes its principal charm to novelty of form, gained at the cost of
+expression and sense. Not that that applies to Mrs. Hemans. She is simple
+enough, only diluted to a degree. But I hold that whatever mental food you
+take should be just a little too strong for you. That implies trouble,
+necessitates growth, and involves delight."
+
+"I sha'n't mind how difficult it is if you help me, papa. But it is
+anything but satisfactory to go groping on without knowing what you are
+about."
+
+I ought to have mentioned that Constance had been at school for two years,
+and had only been home a month that very day, in order to account for my
+knowing so little about her tastes and habits of mind. We went on talking a
+little more in the same way, and if I were writing for young people only,
+I should be tempted to go on a little farther with the account of what we
+said to each other; for it might help some of them to see that the thing
+they like best should, circumstances and conscience permitting, be made the
+centre from which they start to learn; that they should go on enlarging
+their knowledge all round from that one point at which God intended them to
+begin. But at length we fell into a silence, a very happy one on my part;
+for I was more than delighted to find that this one too of my children was
+following after the truth--wanting to do what was right, namely, to obey
+the word of the Lord, whether openly spoken to all, or to herself in the
+voice of her own conscience and the light of that understanding which is
+the candle of the Lord. I had often said to myself in past years, when
+I had found myself in the company of young ladies who announced their
+opinions--probably of no deeper origin than the prejudices of their
+nurses--as if these distinguished them from all the world besides; who were
+profound upon passion and ignorant of grace; who had not a notion whether a
+dress was beautiful, but only whether it was of the newest cut--I had often
+said to myself: "What shall I do if my daughters come to talk and think
+like that--if thinking it can be called?" but being confident that
+instruction for which the mind is not prepared only lies in a rotting
+heap, producing all kinds of mental evils correspondent to the results of
+successive loads of food which the system cannot assimilate, my hope had
+been to rouse wise questions in the minds of my children, in place of
+overwhelming their digestions with what could be of no instruction or
+edification without the foregoing appetite. Now my Constance had begun to
+ask me questions, and it made me very happy. We had thus come a long way
+nearer to each other; for however near the affection of human animals may
+bring them, there are abysses between soul and soul--the souls even of
+father and daughter--over which they must pass to meet. And I do not
+believe that any two human beings alive know yet what it is to love as love
+is in the glorious will of the Father of lights.
+
+I linger on with my talk, for I shrink from what I must relate.
+
+We were going at a gentle trot, silent, along a woodland path--a brown,
+soft, shady road, nearly five miles from home, our horses scattering about
+the withered leaves that lay thick upon it. A good deal of underwood and
+a few large trees had been lately cleared from the place. There were many
+piles of fagots about, and a great log lying here and there along the side
+of the path. One of these, when a tree, had been struck by lightning, and
+had stood till the frosts and rains had bared it of its bark. Now it lay
+white as a skeleton by the side of the path, and was, I think, the cause of
+what followed. All at once my daughter's pony sprang to the other side of
+the road, shying sideways; unsettled her so, I presume; then rearing and
+plunging, threw her from the saddle across one of the logs of which I have
+spoken. I was by her side in a moment. To my horror she lay motionless. Her
+eyes were closed, and when I took her up in my arms she did not open them.
+I laid her on the moss, and got some water and sprinkled her face. Then she
+revived a little; but seemed in much pain, and all at once went off into
+another faint. I was in terrible perplexity.
+
+Presently a man who, having been cutting fagots at a little distance, had
+seen the pony careering through the wood, came up and asked what he could
+do to help me. I told him to take my horse, whose bridle I had thrown over
+the latch of a gate, and ride to Oldcastle Hall, and ask Mrs. Walton to
+come with the carriage as quickly as possible. "Tell her," I said, "that
+her daughter has had a fall from her pony, and is rather shaken. Ride as
+hard as you can go."
+
+The man was off in a moment; and there I sat watching my poor child, for
+what seemed to be a dreadfully long time before the carriage arrived. She
+had come to herself quite, but complained of much pain in her back; and,
+to my distress, I found that she could not move herself enough to make the
+least change of her position. She evidently tried to keep up as well as she
+could; but her face expressed great suffering: it was dreadfully pale, and
+looked worn with a month's illness. All my fear was for her spine.
+
+At length I caught sight of the carriage, coming through the wood as
+fast as the road would allow, with the woodman on the box, directing the
+coachman. It drew up, and my wife got out. She was as pale as Constance,
+but quiet and firm, her features composed almost to determination. I had
+never seen her look like that before. She asked no questions: there was
+time enough for that afterwards. She had brought plenty of cushions and
+pillows, and we did all we could to make an easy couch for the poor girl;
+but she moaned dreadfully as we lifted her into the carriage. We did our
+best to keep her from being shaken; but those few miles were the longest
+journey I ever made in my life.
+
+When we reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly
+called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie--for she was named
+after her mother--had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to
+visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to
+carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom off to
+Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. A young man who had settled at
+Marshmallows as general practitioner a year or two before, was waiting for
+us when we arrived. He helped us to lay her upon a mattress in the position
+in which she felt the least pain. But why should I linger over the
+sorrowful detail? All agreed that the poor child's spine was seriously
+injured, and that probably years of suffering were before her. Everything
+was done that could be done; but she was not moved from that room for nine
+months, during which, though her pain certainly grew less by degrees, her
+want of power to move herself remained almost the same.
+
+When I had left her at last a little composed, with her mother seated by
+her bedside, I called my other two daughters--Wynnie, the eldest, and
+Dorothy, the youngest, whom I found seated on the floor outside, one on
+each side of the door, weeping--into my study, and said to them: "My
+darlings, this is very sad; but you must remember that it is God's will;
+and as you would both try to bear it cheerfully if it had fallen to your
+lot to bear, you must try to be cheerful even when it is your sister's part
+to endure."
+
+"O, papa! poor Connie!" cried Dora, and burst into fresh tears.
+
+Wynnie said nothing, but knelt down by my knee, and laid her cheek upon it.
+
+"Shall I tell you what Constance said to me just before I left the room?" I
+asked.
+
+"Please do, papa."
+
+"She whispered, 'You must try to bear it, all of you, as well as you can.
+I don't mind it very much, only for you.' So, you see, if you want to make
+her comfortable, you must not look gloomy and troubled. Sick people like to
+see cheerful faces about them; and I am sure Connie will not suffer nearly
+so much if she finds that she does not make the household gloomy."
+
+This I had learned from being ill myself once or twice since my marriage.
+My wife never came near me with a gloomy face, and I had found that it
+was quite possible to be sympathetic with those of my flock who were ill
+without putting on a long face when I went to see them. Of course, I do not
+mean that I could, or that it was desirable that I should, look cheerful
+when any were in great pain or mental distress. But in ordinary conditions
+of illness a cheerful countenance is as a message of _all's well_, which
+may surely be carried into a sick chamber by the man who believes that the
+heart of a loving Father is at the centre of things, that he is light all
+about the darkness, and that he will not only bring good out of evil
+at last, but will be with the sufferer all the time, making endurance
+possible, and pain tolerable. There are a thousand alleviations that people
+do not often think of, coming from God himself. Would you not say, for
+instance, that time must pass very slowly in pain? But have you never
+observed, or has no one ever made the remark to you, how strangely fast,
+even in severe pain, the time passes after all?
+
+"We will do all we can, will we not," I went on, "to make her as
+comfortable as possible? You, Dora, must attend to your little brothers,
+that your mother may not have too much to think about now that she will
+have Connie to nurse."
+
+They could not say much, but they both kissed me, and went away leaving
+me to understand clearly enough that they had quite understood me. I then
+returned to the sick chamber, where I found that the poor child had fallen
+asleep.
+
+My wife and I watched by her bedside on alternate nights, until the pain
+had so far subsided, and the fever was so far reduced, that we could allow
+Wynnie to take a share in the office. We could not think of giving her
+over to the care of any but one of ourselves during the night. Her chief
+suffering came from its being necessary that she should keep nearly one
+position on her back, because of her spine, while the external bruise and
+the swelling of the muscles were in consequence so painful, that it needed
+all that mechanical contrivance could do to render the position endurable.
+But these outward conditions were greatly ameliorated before many days were
+over.
+
+This is a dreary beginning of my story, is it not? But sickness of all
+kinds is such a common thing in the world, that it is well sometimes to
+let our minds rest upon it, lest it should take us altogether at unawares,
+either in ourselves or our friends, when it comes. If it were not a good
+thing in the end, surely it would not be; and perhaps before I have done my
+readers will not be sorry that my tale began so gloomily. The sickness in
+Judaea eighteen hundred and thirty-five years ago, or thereabouts, has no
+small part in the story of him who came to put all things under our feet.
+Praise be to him for evermore!
+
+It soon became evident to me that that room was like a new and more sacred
+heart to the house. At first it radiated gloom to the remotest corners; but
+soon rays of light began to appear mingling with the gloom. I could see
+that bits of news were carried from it to the servants in the kitchen, in
+the garden, in the stable, and over the way to the home-farm. Even in the
+village, and everywhere over the parish, I was received more kindly, and
+listened to more willingly, because of the trouble I and my family were in;
+while in the house, although we had never been anything else than a loving
+family, it was easy to discover that we all drew more closely together in
+consequence of our common anxiety. Previous to this, it had been no unusual
+thing to see Wynnie and Dora impatient with each other; for Dora was
+none the less a wild, somewhat lawless child, that she was a profoundly
+affectionate one. She rather resembled her cousin Judy, in fact--whom
+she called Aunt Judy, and with whom she was naturally a great favourite.
+Wynnie, on the other hand, was sedate, and rather severe--more severe, I
+must in justice say, with herself than with anyone else. I had sometimes
+wished, it is true, that her mother, in regard to the younger children,
+were more like her; but there I was wrong. For one of the great goods that
+come of having two parents, is that the one balances and rectifies the
+motions of the other. No one is good but God. No one holds the truth, or
+can hold it, in one and the same thought, but God. Our human life is often,
+at best, but an oscillation between the extremes which together make the
+truth; and it is not a bad thing in a family, that the pendulums of father
+and mother should differ in movement so far, that when the one is at one
+extremity of the swing, the other should be at the other, so that they meet
+only in the point of _indifference_, in the middle; that the predominant
+tendency of the one should not be the predominant tendency of the other.
+I was a very strict disciplinarian--too much so, perhaps, sometimes:
+Ethelwyn, on the other hand, was too much inclined, I thought, to excuse
+everything. I was law, she was grace. But grace often yielded to law, and
+law sometimes yielded to grace. Yet she represented the higher; for in the
+ultimate triumph of grace, in the glad performance of the command from love
+of what is commanded, the law is fulfilled: the law is a schoolmaster to
+bring us to Christ. I must say this for myself, however, that, although
+obedience was the one thing I enforced, believing it the one thing upon
+which all family economy primarily depends, yet my object always was to set
+my children free from my law as soon as possible; in a word, to help them
+to become, as soon as it might be, a law unto themselves. Then they would
+need no more of mine. Then I would go entirely over to the mother's higher
+side, and become to them, as much as in me lay, no longer law and truth,
+but grace and truth. But to return to my children--it was soon evident not
+only that Wynnie had grown more indulgent to Dora's vagaries, but that Dora
+was more submissive to Wynnie, while the younger children began to
+obey their eldest sister with a willing obedience, keeping down their
+effervescence within doors, and letting it off only out of doors, or in the
+out-houses.
+
+When Constance began to recover a little, then the sacredness of that
+chamber began to show itself more powerfully, radiating on all sides a yet
+stronger influence of peace and goodwill. It was like a fountain of gentle
+light, quieting and bringing more or less into tune all that came within
+the circle of its sweetness. This brings me to speak again of my lovely
+child. For surely a father may speak thus of a child of God. He cannot
+regard his child as his even as a book he has written may be his. A man's
+child is his because God has said to him, "Take this child and nurse it
+for me." She is God's making; God's marvellous invention, to be tended
+and cared for, and ministered unto as one of his precious things; a young
+angel, let me say, who needs the air of this lower world to make her wings
+grow. And while he regards her thus, he will see all other children in the
+same light, and will not dare to set up his own against others of God's
+brood with the new-budding wings. The universal heart of truth will thus
+rectify, while it intensifies, the individual feeling towards one's own;
+and the man who is most free from poor partisanship in regard to his own
+family, will feel the most individual tenderness for the lovely human
+creatures whom God has given into his own especial care and responsibility.
+Show me the man who is tender, reverential, gracious towards the children
+of other men, and I will show you the man who will love and tend his own
+best, to whose heart his own will flee for their first refuge after God,
+when they catch sight of the cloud in the wind.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE SICK CHAMBER.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the course of a month there was a good deal more of light in the smile
+with which my darling greeted me when I entered her room in the morning.
+Her pain was greatly gone, but the power of moving her limbs had not yet
+even begun to show itself.
+
+One day she received me with a still happier smile than I had yet seen upon
+her face, put out her thin white hand, took mine and kissed it, and said,
+"Papa," with a lingering on the last syllable.
+
+"What is it, my pet?" I asked.
+
+"I am so happy!"
+
+"What makes you so happy?" I asked again.
+
+"I don't know," she answered. "I haven't thought about it yet. But
+everything looks so pleasant round me. Is it nearly winter yet, papa? I've
+forgotten all about how the time has been going."
+
+"It is almost winter, my dear. There is hardly a leaf left on the
+trees--just two or three disconsolate yellow ones that want to get away
+down to the rest. They go fluttering and fluttering and trying to break
+away, but they can't."
+
+"That is just as I felt a little while ago. I wanted to die and get away,
+papa; for I thought I should never be well again, and I should be in
+everybody's way.--I am afraid I shall not get well, after all," she added,
+and the light clouded on her sweet face.
+
+"Well, my darling, we are in God's hands. We shall never get tired of you,
+and you must not get tired of us. Would you get tired of nursing me, if I
+were ill?"
+
+"O, papa!" And the tears began to gather in her eyes.
+
+"Then you must think we are not able to love so well as you."
+
+"I know what you mean. I did not think of it that way. I will never think
+so about it again. I was only thinking how useless I was."
+
+"There you are quite mistaken, my dear. No living creature ever was
+useless. You've got plenty to do there."
+
+"But what have I got to do? I don't feel able for anything," she said; and
+again the tears came in her eyes, as if I had been telling her to get up
+and she could not.
+
+"A great deal of our work," I answered, "we do without knowing what it is.
+But I'll tell you what you have got to do: you have got to believe in God,
+and in everybody in this house."
+
+"I do, I do. But that is easy to do," she returned.
+
+"And do you think that the work God gives us to do is never easy? Jesus
+says his yoke is easy, his burden is light. People sometimes refuse to do
+God's work just because it is easy. This is, sometimes, because they cannot
+believe that easy work is his work; but there may be a very bad pride in
+it: it may be because they think that there is little or no honour to be
+got in that way; and therefore they despise it. Some again accept it with
+half a heart, and do it with half a hand. But, however easy any work may
+be, it cannot be well done without taking thought about it. And such
+people, instead of taking thought about their work, generally take thought
+about the morrow, in which no work can be done any more than in yesterday.
+The Holy Present!--I think I must make one more sermon about it--although
+you, Connie," I said, meaning it for a little joke, "do think that I have
+said too much about it already."
+
+"Papa, papa! do forgive me. This is a judgment on me for talking to you as
+I did that dreadful morning. But I was so happy that I was impertinent."
+
+"You silly darling!" I said. "A judgment! God be angry with you for that!
+Even if it had been anything wrong, which it was not, do you think God has
+no patience? No, Connie. I will tell you what seems to me much more likely.
+You wanted something to do; and so God gave you something to do."
+
+"Lying in bed and doing nothing!"
+
+"Yes. Just lying in bed, and doing his will."
+
+"If I could but feel that I was doing his will!"
+
+"When you do it, then you will feel you are doing it."
+
+"I know you are coming to something, papa. Please make haste, for my back
+is getting so bad."
+
+"I've tired you, my pet. It was very thoughtless of me. I will tell you the
+rest another time," I said, rising.
+
+"No, no. It will make me much worse not to hear it all now."
+
+"Well, I will tell you. Be still, my darling, I won't be long. In the time
+of the old sacrifices, when God so kindly told his ignorant children to
+do something for him in that way, poor people were told to bring, not a
+bullock or a sheep, for that was more than they could get, but a pair of
+turtledoves, or two young pigeons. But now, as Crashaw the poet says,
+'Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.' God wanted to teach people to
+offer themselves. Now, you are poor, my pet, and you cannot offer yourself
+in great things done for your fellow-men, which was the way Jesus did.
+But you must remember that the two young pigeons of the poor were just as
+acceptable to God as the fat bullock of the rich. Therefore you must say to
+God something like this:--'O heavenly Father, I have nothing to offer
+thee but my patience. I will bear thy will, and so offer my will a
+burnt-offering unto thee. I will be as useless as thou pleasest.' Depend
+upon it, my darling, in the midst of all the science about the world and
+its ways, and all the ignorance of God and his greatness, the man or woman
+who can thus say, _Thy will be done_, with the true heart of giving up is
+nearer the secret of things than the geologist and theologian. And now, my
+darling, be quiet in God's name."
+
+She held up her mouth to kiss me, but did not speak, and I left her, and
+sent Dora to sit with her.
+
+In the evening, when I went into her room again, having been out in my
+parish all the morning, I began to unload my budget of small events.
+Indeed, we all came in like pelicans with stuffed pouches to empty them in
+her room, as if she had been the only young one we had, and we must cram
+her with news. Or, rather, she was like the queen of the commonwealth
+sending out her messages into all parts, and receiving messages in return.
+I might call her the brain of the house; but I have used similes enough for
+a while.
+
+After I had done talking, she said--
+
+"And you have been to the school too, papa?"
+
+"Yes. I go to the school almost every day. I fancy in such a school as ours
+the young people get more good than they do in church. You know I had made
+a great change in the Sunday-school just before you came home."
+
+"I heard of that, papa. You won't let any of the little ones go to school
+on the Sunday."
+
+"No. It is too much for them. And having made this change, I feel the
+necessity of being in the school myself nearly every day, that I may do
+something direct for the little ones."
+
+"And you'll have to take me up soon, as you promised, you know, papa--just
+before Sprite threw me."
+
+"As soon as you like, my dear, after you are able to read again."
+
+"O, you must begin before that, please.--You could spare time to read a
+little to me, couldn't you?" she said doubtfully, as if she feared she was
+asking too much.
+
+"Certainly, my dear; and I will begin to think about it at once."
+
+It was in part the result of this wish of my child's that it became the
+custom to gather in her room on Sunday evenings. She was quite unable for
+any kind of work such as she would have had me commence with her, but I
+used to take something to read to her every now and then, and always after
+our early tea on Sundays.
+
+What a thing it is to have one to speak and think about and try to find out
+and understand, who is always and altogether and perfectly good! Such a
+centre that is for all our thoughts and words and actions and imaginations!
+It is indeed blessed to be human beings with Jesus Christ for the centre of
+humanity.
+
+In the papers wherein I am about to record the chief events of the
+following years of my life, I shall give a short account of what passed at
+some of these assemblies in my child's room, in the hope that it may give
+my friends something, if not new, yet fresh to think about. For God has so
+made us that everyone who thinks at all thinks in a way that must be more
+or less fresh to everyone else who thinks, if he only have the gift of
+setting forth his thoughts so that we can see what they are.
+
+I hope my readers will not be alarmed at this, and suppose that I am about
+to inflict long sermons upon them. I am not. I do hope, as I say, to teach
+them something; but those whom I succeed in so teaching will share in the
+delight it will give me to write about what I love most.
+
+As far as I can remember, I will tell how this Sunday-evening class began.
+I was sitting by Constance's bed. The fire was burning brightly, and the
+twilight had deepened so nearly into night that it was reflected back from
+the window, for the curtains had not yet been drawn. There was no light in
+the room but that of the fire.
+
+Now Constance was in the way of asking often what kind of day or night it
+was, for there never was a girl more a child of nature than she. Her heart
+seemed to respond at once to any and every mood of the world around her.
+To her the condition of air, earth, and sky was news, and news of poetic
+interest too. "What is it like?" she would often say, without any more
+definite shaping of the question. This same evening she said:
+
+"What is it like, papa?"
+
+"It is growing dark," I answered, "as you can see. It is a still evening,
+and what they call a black frost. The trees are standing as still as if
+they were carved out of stone, and would snap off everywhere if the wind
+were to blow. The ground is dark, and as hard as if it were of cast iron. A
+gloomy night rather, my dear. It looks as if there were something upon its
+mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out one
+after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange thing
+the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and mice,
+and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I said, with no very categorical
+arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers that don't go to sleep like the rest,
+but send out their scent all night long. Only those are gone now. There are
+no scents abroad, not even of the earth in such a frost as this."
+
+"Don't you think it looks sometimes, papa, as if God turned his back on the
+world, or went farther away from it for a while?"
+
+"Tell me a little more what you mean, Connie."
+
+"Well, this night now, this dark, frozen, lifeless night, which you have
+been describing to me, isn't like God at all--is it?"
+
+"No, it is not. I see what you mean now."
+
+"It is just as if he had gone away and said, 'Now you shall see what you
+can do without me.'
+
+"Something like that. But do you know that English people--at least I think
+so--enjoy the changeful weather of their country much more upon the whole
+than those who have fine weather constantly? You see it is not enough to
+satisfy God's goodness that he should give us all things richly to enjoy,
+but he must make us able to enjoy them as richly as he gives them. He has
+to consider not only the gift, but the receiver of the gift. He has to make
+us able to take the gift and make it our own, as well as to give us the
+gift. In fact, it is not real giving, with the full, that is, the divine,
+meaning of giving, without it. He has to give us to the gift as well as
+give the gift to us. Now for this, a break, an interruption is good, is
+invaluable, for then we begin to think about the thing, and do something in
+the matter ourselves. The wonder of God's teaching is that, in great part,
+he makes us not merely learn, but teach ourselves, and that is far grander
+than if he only made our minds as he makes our bodies."
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. For since I have been ill, you would
+wonder, if you could see into me, how even what you tell me about the world
+out of doors gives me more pleasure than I think I ever had when I could go
+about in it just as I liked."
+
+"It wouldn't do that, though, you know, if you hadn't had the other first.
+The pleasure you have comes as much from your memory as from my news."
+
+"I see that, papa."
+
+"Now can you tell me anything in history that confirms what I have been
+saying?"
+
+"I don't know anything about history, papa. The only thing that comes into
+my head is what you were saying yourself the other day about Milton's
+blindness."
+
+"Ah, yes. I had not thought of that. Do you know, I do believe that God
+wanted a grand poem from that man, and therefore blinded him that he might
+be able to write it. But he had first trained him up to the point--given
+him thirty years in which he had not to provide the bread of a single day,
+only to learn and think; then set him to teach boys; then placed him at
+Cromwell's side, in the midst of the tumultuous movement of public affairs,
+into which the late student entered with all his heart and soul; and then
+last of all he cast the veil of a divine darkness over him, sent him into a
+chamber far more retired than that in which he laboured at Cambridge, and
+set him like the nightingale to sing darkling. The blackness about him was
+just the great canvas which God gave him to cover with forms of light and
+music. Deep wells of memory burst upwards from below; the windows of heaven
+were opened from above; from both rushed the deluge of song which flooded
+his soul, and which he has poured out in a great river to us."
+
+"It was rather hard for poor Milton, though, wasn't it, papa?"
+
+"Wait till he says so, my dear. We are sometimes too ready with our
+sympathy, and think things a great deal worse than those who have to
+undergo them. Who would not be glad to be struck with _such_ blindness as
+Milton's?"
+
+"Those that do not care about his poetry, papa," answered Constance, with a
+deprecatory smile.
+
+"Well said, my Connie. And to such it never can come. But, if it please
+God, you will love Milton before you are about again. You can't love one
+you know nothing about."
+
+"I have tried to read him a little."
+
+"Yes, I daresay. You might as well talk of liking a man whose face you had
+never seen, because you did not approve of the back of his coat. But you
+and Milton together have led me away from a far grander instance of what we
+had been talking about. Are you tired, darling?"
+
+"Not the least, papa. You don't mind what I said about Milton?"
+
+"Not at all, my dear. I like your honesty. But I should mind very much if
+you thought, with your ignorance of Milton, that your judgment of him was
+more likely to be right than mine, with my knowledge of him."
+
+"O, papa! I am only sorry that I am not capable of appreciating him."
+
+"There you are wrong again. I think you are quite capable of appreciating
+him. But you cannot appreciate what you have never seen. You think of him
+as dry, and think you ought to be able to like dry things. Now he is not
+dry, and you ought not to be able to like dry things. You have a figure
+before you in your fancy, which is dry, and which you call Milton. But it
+is no more Milton than your dull-faced Dutch doll, which you called after
+her, was your merry Aunt Judy. But here comes your mamma; and I haven't
+said what I wanted to say yet."
+
+"But surely, husband, you can say it all the same," said my wife. "I will
+go away if you can't."
+
+"I can say it all the better, my love. Come and sit down here beside me. I
+was trying to show Connie--"
+
+"You did show me, papa."
+
+"Well, I was showing Connie that a gift has sometimes to be taken away
+again before we can know what it is worth, and so receive it right."
+
+Ethelwyn sighed. She was always more open to the mournful than the glad.
+Her heart had been dreadfully wrung in her youth.
+
+"And I was going on to give her the greatest instance of it in human
+history. As long as our Lord was with his disciples, they could not see
+him right: he was too near them. Too much light, too many words, too much
+revelation, blinds or stupefies. The Lord had been with them long enough.
+They loved him dearly, and yet often forgot his words almost as soon as he
+said them. He could not get it into them, for instance, that he had not
+come to be a king. Whatever he said, they shaped it over again after their
+own fancy; and their minds were so full of their own worldly notions of
+grandeur and command, that they could not receive into their souls the gift
+of God present before their eyes. Therefore he was taken away, that his
+Spirit, which was more himself than his bodily presence, might come into
+them--that they might receive the gift of God into their innermost being.
+After he had gone out of their sight, and they might look all around and
+down in the grave and up in the air, and not see him anywhere--when they
+thought they had lost him, he began to come to them again from the other
+side--from the inside. They found that the image of him which his presence
+with them had printed in light upon their souls, began to revive in the
+dark of his absence; and not that only, but that in looking at it without
+the overwhelming of his bodily presence, lines and forms and meanings began
+to dawn out of it which they had never seen before. And his words came back
+to them, no longer as they had received them, but as he meant them. The
+spirit of Christ filling their hearts and giving them new power, made them
+remember, by making them able to understand, all that he had said to them.
+They were then always saying to each other, 'You remember how;' whereas
+before, they had been always staring at each other with astonishment and
+something very near incredulity, while he spoke to them. So that after he
+had gone away, he was really nearer to them than he had been before. The
+meaning of anything is more than its visible presence. There is a soul in
+everything, and that soul is the meaning of it. The soul of the world
+and all its beauty has come nearer to you, my dear, just because you are
+separated from it for a time."
+
+"Thank you, dear papa. I do like to get a little sermon all to myself now
+and then. That is another good of being ill."
+
+"You don't mean me to have a share in it, then, Connie, do you?" said my
+wife, smiling at her daughter's pleasure.
+
+"O, mamma! I should have thought you knew all papa had got to say by this
+time. I daresay he has given you a thousand sermons all to yourself."
+
+"Then you suppose, Connie, that I came into the world with just a boxful of
+sermons, and after I had taken them all out there were no more. I should be
+sorry to think I should not have a good many new things to say by this time
+next year."
+
+"Well, papa, I wish I could he sure of knowing more next year."
+
+"Most people do learn, whether they will or not. But the kind of learning
+is very different in the two cases."
+
+"But I want to ask you one question, papa: do you think that we should not
+know Jesus better now if he were to come and let us see him--as he came to
+the disciples so long, long ago? I wish it were not so long ago."
+
+"As to the time, it makes no difference whether it was last year or two
+thousand years ago. The whole question is how much we understand, and
+understanding, obey him. And I do not think we should be any nearer that if
+he came amongst us bodily again. If we should, he would come. I believe we
+should be further off it."
+
+"Do you think, then," said Connie, in an almost despairing tone, as if I
+were the prophet of great evil, "that we shall never, never, never see
+him?"
+
+"That is _quite_ another thing, my Connie. That is the heart of my hopes by
+day and my dreams by night. To behold the face of Jesus seems to me the one
+thing to be desired. I do not know that it is to be prayed for; but I think
+it will be given us as the great bounty of God, so soon as ever we are
+capable of it. That sight of the face of Jesus is, I think, what is meant
+by his glorious appearing, but it will come as a consequence of his spirit
+in us, not as a cause of that spirit in us. The pure in heart shall see
+God. The seeing of him will be the sign that we are like him, for only by
+being like him can we see him as he is. All the time that he was with them,
+the disciples never saw him as he was. You must understand a man before you
+can see and read his face aright; and as the disciples did not understand
+our Lord's heart, they could neither see nor read his face aright. But when
+we shall be fit to look that man in the face, God only knows."
+
+"Then do you think, papa, that we, who have never seen him, could know him
+better than the disciples? I don't mean, of course, better than they knew
+him after he was taken away from them, but better than they knew him while
+he was still with them?"
+
+"Certainly I do, my dear."
+
+"O, papa! Is it possible? Why don't we all, then?"
+
+"Because we won't take the trouble; that is the reason."
+
+"O, what a grand thing to think! That would be worth living--worth being
+ill for. But how? how? Can't you help me? Mayn't one human being help
+another?"
+
+"It is the highest duty one human being owes to another. But whoever wants
+to learn must pray, and think, and, above all, obey--that is simply, do
+what Jesus says."
+
+There followed a little silence, and I could hear my child sobbing. And the
+tears stood in; my wife's eyes--tears of gladness to hear her daughter's
+sobs.
+
+"I will try, papa," Constance said at last. "But you _will_ help me?"
+
+"That I will, my love. I will help you in the best way I know; by trying to
+tell you what I have heard and learned about him--heard and learned of the
+Father, I hope and trust. It is coming near to the time when he was born;--
+but I have spoken quite as long as you are able to bear to-night."
+
+"No, no, papa. Do go on."
+
+"No, my dear; no more to-night. That would be to offend against the very
+truth I have been trying to set forth to you. But next Sunday--you have
+plenty to think about till then--I will talk to you about the baby Jesus;
+and perhaps I may find something more to help you by that time, besides
+what I have got to say now."
+
+"But," said my wife, "don't you think, Connie, this is too good to keep all
+to ourselves? Don't you think we ought to have Wynnie and Dora in?"
+
+"Yes, yes, mamma. Do let us have them in. And Harry and Charlie too."
+
+"I fear they are rather young yet," I said. "Perhaps it might do them
+harm."
+
+"It would be all the better for us to have them anyhow," said Ethelwyn,
+smiling.
+
+"How do you mean, my dear?"
+
+"Because you will say things more simply if you have them by you. Besides,
+you always say such things to children as delight grown people, though they
+could never get them out of you."
+
+It was a wife's speech, reader. Forgive me for writing it.
+
+"Well," I said, "I don't mind them coming in, but I don't promise to say
+anything directly to them. And you must let them go away the moment they
+wish it."
+
+"Certainly," answered my wife; and so the matter was arranged.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+When I went in to see Constance the next Sunday morning before going to
+church, I knew by her face that she was expecting the evening. I took care
+to get into no conversation with her during the day, that she might be
+quite fresh. In the evening, when I went into her room again with my Bible
+in my hand, I found all our little company assembled. There was a glorious
+fire, for it was very cold, and the little ones were seated on the rug
+before it, one on each side of their mother; Wynnie sat by the further side
+of the bed, for she always avoided any place or thing she thought another
+might like; and Dora sat by the further chimney-corner, leaving the space
+between the fire and my chair open that I might see and share the glow.
+
+"The wind is very high, papa," said Constance, as I seated myself beside
+her.
+
+"Yes, my dear. It has been blowing all day, and since sundown it has blown
+harder. Do you like the wind, Connie?"
+
+"I am afraid I do like it. When it roars like that in the chimneys, and
+shakes the windows with a great rush as if it _would_ get into the house
+and tear us to pieces, and then goes moaning away into the woods and
+grumbles about in them till it grows savage again, and rushes up at us with
+fresh fury, I am afraid I delight in it. I feel so safe in the very jaws of
+danger."
+
+"Why, you are quite poetic, Connie," said Wynnie.
+
+"Don't laugh at me, Wynnie. Mind I'm an invalid, and I can't bear to be
+laughed at," returned Connie, half laughing herself, and a little more than
+a quarter crying.
+
+Wynnie rose and kissed her, whispered something to her which made her laugh
+outright, and then sat down again.
+
+"But tell me, Connie," I said, "why you are _afraid_ you enjoy hearing the
+wind about the house."
+
+"Because it must be so dreadful for those that are out in it."
+
+"Perhaps not quite so bad as we think. You must not suppose that God has
+forgotten them, or cares less for them than for you because they are out in
+the wind."
+
+"But if we thought like that, papa," said Wynnie, "shouldn't we come to
+feel that their sufferings were none of our business?"
+
+"If our benevolence rests on the belief that God is less loving than we, it
+will come to a bad end somehow before long, Wynnie."
+
+"Of course, I could not think that," she returned.
+
+"Then your kindness would be such that you dared not, in God's name, think
+hopefully for those you could not help, lest you should, believing in his
+kindness, cease to help those whom you could help! Either God intended that
+there should be poverty and suffering, or he did not. If he did not
+intend it--for similar reasons to those for which he allows all sorts of
+evils--then there is nothing between but that we should sell everything
+that we have and give it away to the poor."
+
+"Then why don't we?" said Wynnie, looking truth itself in my face.
+
+"Because that is not God's way, and we should do no end of harm by so
+doing. We should make so many more of those who will not help themselves
+who will not be set free from themselves by rising above themselves. We are
+not to gratify our own benevolence at the expense of its object--not to
+save our own souls as we fancy, by putting other souls into more danger
+than God meant for them."
+
+"It sounds hard doctrine from your lips, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Many things will look hard in so many words, which yet will be found
+kindness itself when they are interpreted by a higher theory. If the one
+thing is to let people have everything they want, then of course everyone
+ought to be rich. I have no doubt such a man as we were reading of in the
+papers the other day, who saw his servant girl drown without making the
+least effort to save her, and then bemoaned the loss of her labour for the
+coming harvest, thinking himself ill-used in her death, would hug his own
+selfishness on hearing my words, and say, 'All right, parson! Every man for
+himself! I made my own money, and they may make theirs!' _You_ know that is
+not exactly the way I should think or act with regard to my neighbour. But
+if it were only that I have seen such noble characters cast in the mould of
+poverty, I should be compelled to regard poverty as one of God's powers in
+the world for raising the children of the kingdom, and to believe that it
+was not because it could not be helped that our Lord said, 'The poor ye
+have always with you.' But what I wanted to say was, that there can be no
+reason why Connie should not enjoy what God has given her, although he has
+not thought fit to give as much to everybody; and above all, that we shall
+not help those right whom God gives us to help, if we do not believe that
+God is caring for every one of them as much as he is caring for every one
+of us. There was once a baby born in a stable, because his poor mother
+could get no room in a decent house. Where she lay I can hardly think. They
+must have made a bed of hay and straw for her in the stall, for we know the
+baby's cradle was the manger. Had God forsaken them? or would they not have
+been more _comfortable_, if that was the main thing, somewhere else? Ah! if
+the disciples, who were being born about the same time of fisher-fathers
+and cottage-mothers, to get ready for him to call and teach by the time he
+should be thirty years of age--if they had only been old enough, and had
+known that he was coming--would they not have got everything ready for him?
+They would have clubbed their little savings together, and worked day and
+night, and some rich women would have helped them, and they would have
+dressed the baby in fine linen, and got him the richest room their money
+would get, and they would have made the gold that the wise men brought into
+a crown for his little head, and would have burnt the frankincense before
+him. And so our little manger-baby would have been taken away from us. No
+more the stable-born Saviour--no more the poor Son of God born for us all,
+as strong, as noble, as loving, as worshipful, as beautiful as he was poor!
+And we should not have learned that God does not care for money; that if he
+does not give more of it it is not that it is scarce with him, or that he
+is unkind, but that he does not value it himself. And if he sent his own
+son to be not merely brought up in the house of the carpenter of a little
+village, but to be born in the stable of a village inn, we need not suppose
+because a man sleeps under a haystack and is put in prison for it next day,
+that God does not care for him."
+
+"But why did Jesus come so poor, papa?"
+
+"That he might be just a human baby. That he might not be distinguished
+by this or by that accident of birth; that he might have nothing but a
+mother's love to welcome him, and so belong to everybody; that from the
+first he might show that the kingdom of God and the favour of God lie not
+in these external things at all--that the poorest little one, born in the
+meanest dwelling, or in none at all, is as much God's own and God's care
+as if he came in a royal chamber with colour and shine all about him. Had
+Jesus come amongst the rich, riches would have been more worshipped
+than ever. See how so many that count themselves good Christians honour
+possession and family and social rank, and I doubt hardly get rid of them
+when they are all swept away from them. The furthest most of such reach is
+to count Jesus an exception, and therefore not despise him. See how, even
+in the services of the church, as they call them, they will accumulate
+gorgeousness and cost. Had I my way, though I will never seek to rouse
+men's thoughts about such external things, I would never have any vessel
+used in the eucharist but wooden platters and wooden cups."
+
+"But are we not to serve him with our best?" said my wife.
+
+"Yes, with our very hearts and souls, with our wills, with our absolute
+being. But all external things should be in harmony with the spirit of his
+revelation. And if God chose that his Son should visit the earth in homely
+fashion, in homely fashion likewise should be everything that enforces and
+commemorates that revelation. All church-forms should be on the other side
+from show and expense. Let the money go to build decent houses for God's
+poor, not to give them his holy bread and wine out of silver and gold and
+precious stones--stealing from the significance of the _content_ by the
+meretricious grandeur of the _continent_. I would send all the church-plate
+to fight the devil with his own weapons in our overcrowded cities, and in
+our villages where the husbandmen are housed like swine, by giving them
+room to be clean and decent air from heaven to breathe. When the people
+find the clergy thus in earnest, they will follow them fast enough, and the
+money will come in like salt and oil upon the sacrifice. I would there were
+a few of our dignitaries that could think grandly about things, even as
+Jesus thought--even as God thought when he sent him. There are many of
+them willing to stand any amount of persecution about trifles: the same
+enthusiasm directed by high thoughts about the kingdom of heaven as within
+men and not around them, would redeem a vast region from that indifference
+which comes of judging the gospel of God by the church of Christ with its
+phylacteries and hems."
+
+"There is one thing," said Wynnie, after a pause, "that I have often
+thought about--why it was necessary for Jesus to come as a baby: he could
+not do anything for so long."
+
+"First, I would answer, Wynnie, that if you would tell me why it is
+necessary for all of us to come as babies, it would be less necessary for
+me to tell you why he came so: whatever was human must be his. But I would
+say next, Are you sure that he could not do anything for so long? Does a
+baby do nothing? Ask mamma there. Is it for nothing that the mother lifts
+up such heartfuls of thanks to God for the baby on her knee? Is it nothing
+that the baby opens such fountains of love in almost all the hearts around?
+Ah! you do not think how much every baby has to do with the saving of the
+world--the saving of it from selfishness, and folly, and greed. And for
+Jesus, was he not going to establish the reign of love in the earth? How
+could he do better than begin from babyhood? He had to lay hold of
+the heart of the world. How could he do better than begin with his
+mother's--the best one in it. Through his mother's love first, he grew into
+the world. It was first by the door of all the holy relations of the family
+that he entered the human world, laying hold of mother, father, brothers,
+sisters, all his friends; then by the door of labour, for he took his share
+of his father's work; then, when he was thirty years of age, by the door of
+teaching; by kind deeds, and sufferings, and through all by obedience unto
+the death. You must not think little of the grand thirty years wherein he
+got ready for the chief work to follow. You must not think that while he
+was thus preparing for his public ministrations, he was not all the time
+saving the world even by that which he was in the midst of it, ever laying
+hold of it more and more. These were things not so easy to tell. And you
+must remember that our records are very scanty. It is a small biography we
+have of a man who became--to say nothing more--the Man of the world--the
+Son of Man. No doubt it is enough, or God would have told us more; but
+surely we are not to suppose that there was nothing significant, nothing
+of saving power in that which we are not told.--Charlie, wouldn't you have
+liked to see the little baby Jesus?"
+
+"Yes, that I would. I would have given him my white rabbit with the pink
+eyes."
+
+"That is what the great painter Titian must have thought, Charlie; for he
+has painted him playing with a white rabbit,--not such a pretty one as
+yours."
+
+"I would have carried him about all day," said Dora, "as little Henny
+Parsons does her baby-brother."
+
+"Did he have any brother or sister to carry him about, papa?" asked Harry.
+
+"No, my boy; for he was the eldest. But you may be pretty sure he carried
+about his brothers and sisters that came after him."
+
+"Wouldn't he take care of them, just!" said Charlie.
+
+"I wish I had been one of them," said Constance.
+
+"You are one of them, my Connie. Now he is so great and so strong that he
+can carry father and mother and all of us in his bosom."
+
+Then we sung a child's hymn in praise of the God of little children, and
+the little ones went to bed. Constance was tired now, and we left her with
+Wynnie. We too went early to bed.
+
+About midnight my wife and I awoke together--at least neither knew which
+waked the other. The wind was still raving about the house, with lulls
+between its charges.
+
+"There's a child crying!" said my wife, starting up.
+
+I sat up too, and listened.
+
+"There is some creature," I granted.
+
+"It is an infant," insisted my wife. "It can't be either of the boys."
+
+I was out of bed in a moment, and my wife the same instant. We hurried on
+some of our clothes, going to the windows and listening as we did so. We
+seemed to hear the wailing through the loudest of the wind, and in the
+lulls were sure of it. But it grew fainter as we listened. The night was
+pitch dark. I got a lantern, and hurried out. I went round the house till I
+came under our bed-room windows, and there listened. I heard it, but not so
+clearly as before. I set out as well as I could judge in the direction of
+the sound. I could find nothing. My lantern lighted only a few yards around
+me, and the wind was so strong that it blew through every chink, and
+threatened momently to blow it out. My wife was by my side before I knew
+she was coming.
+
+"My dear!" I said, "it is not fit for you to be out."
+
+"It is as fit for me as for a child, anyhow," she said. "Do listen."
+
+It was certainly no time for expostulation. All the mother was awake in
+Ethelwyn's bosom. It would have been cruelty to make her go in, though she
+was indeed ill-fitted to encounter such a night-wind.
+
+Another wail reached us. It seemed to come from a thicket at one corner of
+the lawn. We hurried thither. Again a cry, and we knew we were much nearer
+to it. Searching and searching we went.
+
+"There it is!" Ethelwyn almost screamed, as the feeble light of the lantern
+fell on a dark bundle of something under a bush. She caught at it. It gave
+another pitiful wail--the poor baby of some tramp, rolled up in a dirty,
+ragged shawl, and tied round with a bit of string, as if it had been a
+parcel of clouts. She set off running with it to the house, and I followed,
+much fearing she would miss her way in the dark, and fall. I could hardly
+get up with her, so eager was she to save the child. She darted up to her
+own room, where the fire was not yet out.
+
+"Run to the kitchen, Harry, and get some hot water. Take the two jugs
+there--you can empty them in the sink: you won't know where to find
+anything. There will be plenty in the boiler."
+
+By the time I returned with the hot water, she had taken off the child's
+covering, and was sitting with it, wrapped in a blanket, before the fire.
+The little thing was cold as a stone, and now silent and motionless. We
+had found it just in time. Ethelwyn ordered me about as if I had been a
+nursemaid. I poured the hot water into a footbath.
+
+"Some cold water, Harry. You would boil the child."
+
+"You made me throw away the cold water," I said, laughing.
+
+"There's some in the bottles," she returned. "Make haste."
+
+I did try to make haste, but I could not be quick enough to satisfy
+Ethelwyn.
+
+"The child will be dead," she cried, "before we get it in the water."
+
+She had its rags off in a moment--there was very little to remove after the
+shawl. How white the little thing was, though dreadfully neglected! It was
+a girl--not more than a few weeks old, we agreed. Her little heart was
+still beating feebly; and as she was a well-made, apparently healthy
+infant, we had every hope of recovering her. And we were not disappointed.
+She began to move her little legs and arms with short, convulsive motions.
+
+"Do you know where the dairy is, Harry?" asked my wife, with no great
+compliment to my bumps of locality, which I had always flattered myself
+were beyond the average in development.
+
+"I think I do," I answered.
+
+"Could you tell which was this night's milk, now?"
+
+"There will be less cream on it," I answered.
+
+"Bring a little of that and some more hot water. I've got some sugar here.
+I wish we had a bottle."
+
+I executed her commands faithfully. By the time I returned the child was
+lying on her lap clean and dry--a fine baby I thought. Ethelwyn went on
+talking to her, and praising her as if she had not only been the finest
+specimen of mortality in the world, but her own child to boot. She got her
+to take a few spoonfuls of milk and water, and then the little thing fell
+fast asleep.
+
+Ethelwyn's nursing days were not so far gone by that she did not know where
+her baby's clothes were. She gave me the child, and going to a wardrobe
+in the room brought out some night-things, and put them on. I could not
+understand in the least why the sleeping darling must be indued with little
+chemise, and flannel, and nightgown, and I do not know what all, requiring
+a, world of nice care, and a hundred turnings to and fro, now on its little
+stomach, now on its back, now sitting up, now lying down, when it would
+have slept just as well, and I venture to think much more comfortably,
+if laid in blankets and well covered over. But I had never ventured to
+interfere with any of my own children, devoutly believing up to this
+moment, though in a dim unquestioning way, that there must be some hidden
+feminine wisdom in the whole process; and now that I had begun to question
+it, I found that my opportunity had long gone by, if I had ever had one.
+And after all there may be some reason for it, though I confess I do
+strongly suspect that all these matters are so wonderfully complicated
+in order that the girl left in the woman may have her heart's content of
+playing with her doll; just as the woman hid in the girl expends no end of
+lovely affection upon the dull stupidity of wooden cheeks and a body of
+sawdust. But it was a delight to my heart to see how Ethelwyn could not be
+satisfied without treating the foundling in precisely the same fashion as
+one of her own. And if this was a necessary preparation for what, should
+follow, I would be the very last to complain of it.
+
+We went to bed again, and the forsaken child of some half-animal mother,
+now perhaps asleep in some filthy lodging for tramps, lay in my Ethelwyn's
+bosom. I loved her the more for it; though, I confess, it would have been
+very painful to me had she shown it possible for her to treat the baby
+otherwise, especially after what we had been talking about that same
+evening.
+
+So we had another child in the house, and nobody knew anything about it but
+ourselves two. The household had never been disturbed by all the going and
+coming. After everything had been done for her, we had a good laugh over
+the whole matter, and then Ethelwyn fell a-crying.
+
+"Pray for the poor thing, Harry," she sobbed, "before you come to bed."
+
+I knelt down, and said:
+
+"O Lord our Father, this is as much thy child and as certainly sent to us
+as if she had been born of us. Help us to keep the child for thee. Take
+thou care of thy own, and teach us what to do with her, and how to order
+our ways towards her."
+
+Then I said to Ethelwyn,
+
+"We will not say one word more about it tonight. You must try to go to
+sleep. I daresay the little thing will sleep till the morning, and I am
+sure I shall if she does. Good-night, my love. You are a true mother. Mind
+you go to sleep."
+
+"I am half asleep already, Harry. Good-night," she returned.
+
+I know nothing more about anything till I in the morning, except that I had
+a dream, which I have not made up my mind yet whether I shall tell or not.
+We slept soundly--God's baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MY DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+I think I will tell the dream I had. I cannot well account for the
+beginning of it: the end will appear sufficiently explicable to those who
+are quite satisfied that they get rid of the mystery of a thing when they
+can associate it with something else with which they are familiar. Such
+do not care to see that the thing with which they associate it may be as
+mysterious as the other. For although use too often destroys marvel, it
+cannot destroy the marvellous. The origin of our thoughts is just as
+wonderful as the origin of our dreams.
+
+In my dream I found myself in a pleasant field full of daisies and white
+clover. The sun was setting. The wind was going one way, and the shadows
+another. I felt rather tired, I neither knew nor thought why. With an old
+man's prudence, I would not sit down upon the grass, but looked about for
+a more suitable seat. Then I saw, for often in our dreams there is an
+immediate response to our wishes, a long, rather narrow stone lying a few
+yards from me. I wondered how it could have come there, for there were no
+mountains or rocks near: the field was part of a level country. Carelessly,
+I sat down upon it astride, and watched the setting of the sun. Somehow I
+fancied that his light was more sorrowful than the light of the setting sun
+should be, and I began to feel very heavy at the heart. No sooner had the
+last brilliant spark of his light vanished, than I felt the stone under me
+begin to move. With the inactivity of a dreamer, however, I did not care
+to rise, but wondered only what would come next. My seat, after several
+strange tumbling motions, seemed to rise into the air a little way, and
+then I found that I was astride of a gaunt, bony horse--a skeleton horse
+almost, only he had a gray skin on him. He began, apparently with pain,
+as if his joints were all but too stiff to move, to go forward in the
+direction in which he found himself. I kept my seat. Indeed, I never
+thought of dismounting. I was going on to meet what might come. Slowly,
+feebly, trembling at every step, the strange steed went, and as he went his
+joints seemed to become less stiff, and he went a little faster. All at
+once I found that the pleasant field had vanished, and that we were on the
+borders of a moor. Straight forward the horse carried me, and the moor
+grew very rough, and he went stumbling dreadfully, but always recovering
+himself. Every moment it seemed as if he would fall to rise no more, but
+as often he found fresh footing. At length the surface became a little
+smoother, and he began a horrible canter which lasted till he reached
+a low, broken wall, over which he half walked, half fell into what was
+plainly an ancient neglected churchyard. The mounds were low and covered
+with rank grass. In some parts, hollows had taken the place of mounds.
+Gravestones lay in every position except the level or the upright, and
+broken masses of monuments were scattered about. My horse bore me into the
+midst of it, and there, slow and stiff as he had risen, he lay down again.
+Once more I was astride of a long narrow stone. And now I found that it was
+an ancient gravestone which I knew well in a certain Sussex churchyard, the
+top of it carved into the rough resemblance of a human skeleton--that of a
+man, tradition said, who had been killed by a serpent that came out of a
+bottomless pool in the next field. How long I sat there I do not know; but
+at last I saw the faint gray light of morning begin to appear in front of
+me. The horse of death had carried me eastward. The dawn grew over the top
+of a hill that here rose against the horizon. But it was a wild dreary
+dawn--a blot of gray first, which then stretched into long lines of dreary
+yellow and gray, looking more like a blasted and withered sunset than a
+fresh sunrise. And well it suited that waste, wide, deserted churchyard, if
+churchyard I ought to call it where no church was to be seen--only a vast
+hideous square of graves. Before me I noticed especially one old grave, the
+flat stone of which had broken in two and sunk in the middle. While I sat
+with my eyes fixed on this stone, it began to move; the crack in the middle
+closed, then widened again as the two halves of the stone were lifted up,
+and flung outward, like the two halves of a folding door. From the grave
+rose a little child, smiling such perfect contentment as if he had just
+come from kissing his mother. His little arms had flung the stones apart,
+and as he stood on the edge of the grave next to me, they remained
+outspread from the action for a moment, as if blessing the sleeping people.
+Then he came towards me with the same smile, and took my hand. I rose, and
+he led me away over another broken wall towards the hill that lay before
+us. And as we went the sun came nearer, the pale yellow bars flushed into
+orange and rosy red, till at length the edges of the clouds were swept with
+an agony of golden light, which even my dreamy eyes could not endure, and I
+awoke weeping for joy.
+
+This waking woke my wife, who said in some alarm:
+
+"What is the matter, husband?"
+
+So I told her my dream, and how in my sleep my gladness had overcome me.
+
+"It was this little darling that set you dreaming so," she said, and
+turning, put the baby in my arms.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE NEW BABY.
+
+
+
+
+
+I will not attempt to describe the astonishment of the members of our
+household, each in succession, as the news of the child spread. Charlie was
+heard shouting across the stable-yard to his brother:
+
+"Harry, Harry! Mamma has got a new baby. Isn't it jolly?"
+
+"Where did she get it?" cried Harry in return.
+
+"In the parsley-bed, I suppose," answered Charlie, and was nearer right
+than usual, for the information on which his conclusion was founded had no
+doubt been imparted as belonging to the history of the human race.
+
+But my reader can easily imagine the utter bewilderment of those of the
+family whose knowledge of human affairs would not allow of their curiosity
+being so easily satisfied as that of the boys. In them was exemplified that
+confusion of the intellectual being which is produced by the witness of
+incontestable truth to a thing incredible--in which case the probability
+always is, that the incredibility results from something in the mind of the
+hearer falsely associated with and disturbing the true perception of the
+thing to which witness is borne.
+
+Nor was the astonishment confined to the family, for it spread over the
+parish that Mrs. Walton had got another baby. And so, indeed, she had. And
+seldom has baby met with a more hearty welcome than this baby met with from
+everyone of our family. They hugged it first, and then asked questions. And
+that, I say, is the right way of receiving every good gift of God. Ask what
+questions you will, but when you see that the gift is a good one, make
+sure that you take it. There is plenty of time for you to ask questions
+afterwards. Then the better you love the gift, the more ready you will be
+to ask, and the more fearless in asking.
+
+The truth, however, soon became known. And then, strange to relate, we
+began to receive visits of condolence. O, that poor baby! how it was
+frowned upon, and how it had heads shaken over it, just because it was not
+Ethelwyn's baby! It could not help that, poor darling!
+
+"Of course, you'll give information to the police," said, I am sorry to
+say, one of my brethren in the neighbourhood, who had the misfortune to be
+a magistrate as well.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Why! That they may discover the parents, to be sure."
+
+"Wouldn't it be as hard a matter to prove the parentage, as it would be
+easy to suspect it?" I asked. "And just think what it would be to give the
+baby to a woman who not only did not want her, but who was not her mother.
+But if her own mother came to claim her now, I don't say I would refuse
+her, but I should think twice about giving her up after she had once
+abandoned her for a whole night in the open air. In fact I don't want the
+parents."
+
+"But you don't want the child."
+
+"How do you know that?" I returned--rather rudely, I am afraid, for I am
+easily annoyed at anything that seems to me heartless--about children
+especially.
+
+"O! of course, if you want to have an orphan asylum of your own, no one has
+a right to interfere. But you ought to consider other people."
+
+"That is just what I thought I was doing," I answered; but he went on
+without heeding my reply--
+
+"We shall all be having babies left at our doors, and some of us are not so
+fond of them as you are. Remember, you are your brother's keeper."
+
+"And my sister's too," I answered. "And if the question lies between
+keeping a big, burly brother like you, and a tiny, wee sister like that, I
+venture to choose for myself."
+
+"She ought to go to the workhouse," said the magistrate--a friendly,
+good-natured man enough in ordinary--and rising, he took his hat and
+departed.
+
+
+This man had no children. So he was--or was not, so much to blame. Which?
+_I_ say the latter.
+
+Some of Ethelwyn's friends were no less positive about her duty in the
+affair. I happened to go into the drawing-room during the visit of one of
+them--Miss Bowdler.
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Walton," she was saying, "you'll be having all the
+tramps in England leaving their babies at your door."
+
+"The better for the babies," interposed I, laughing.
+
+"But you don't think of your wife, Mr. Walton."
+
+"Don't I? I thought I did," I returned dryly.
+
+"Depend upon it, you'll repent it."
+
+"I hope I shall never repent of anything but what is bad."
+
+"Ah! but, really! it's not a thing to be made game of."
+
+"Certainly not. The baby shall be treated with all due respect in this
+house."
+
+"What a provoking man you are! You know what I mean well enough."
+
+"As well as I choose to know--certainly," I answered.
+
+This lady was one of my oldest parishioners, and took liberties for which
+she had no other justification, except indeed an unhesitating belief in the
+superior rectitude of whatever came into her own head can be counted
+as one. When she was gone, my wife turned to me with a half-comic,
+half-anxious look, and said:
+
+"But it would be rather alarming, Harry, if this were to get abroad, and
+we couldn't go out at the door in the morning without being in danger of
+stepping on a baby on the door-step."
+
+"You might as well have said, when you were going to be married, 'If God
+should send me twenty children, whatever should I do?' He who sent us this
+one can surely prevent any more from coming than he wants to come. All that
+we have to think of is to do right--not the consequences of doing right.
+But leaving all that aside, you must not suppose that wandering mothers
+have not even the attachment of animals to their offspring. There are not
+so many that are willing to part with babies as all that would come to. If
+you believe that God sent this one, that is enough for the present. If he
+should send another, we should know by that that we had to take it in."
+
+My wife said the baby was a beauty. I could see that she was a plump,
+well-to-do baby; and being by nature no particular lover of babies as
+babies--that is, feeling none of the inclination of mothers and nurses
+and elder sisters to eat them, or rather, perhaps, loving more for what I
+believed than what I saw--that was all I could pretend to discover. But
+even the aforementioned elderly parishioner was compelled to allow before
+three months were over that little Theodora--for we turned the name of
+my youngest daughter upside down for her--"was a proper child." To none,
+however, did she seem to bring so much delight as to our dear Constance.
+Oftener than not, when I went into her room, I found the sleepy, useless
+little thing lying beside her on the bed, and her staring at it with such
+loving eyes! How it began, I do not know, but it came at last to be called
+Connie's Dora, or Miss Connie's baby, all over the house, and nothing
+pleased Connie better. Not till she saw this did her old nurse take quite
+kindly to the infant; for she regarded her as an interloper, who had no
+right to the tenderness which was lavished upon her. But she had no sooner
+given in than the baby began to grow dear to her as well as to the rest. In
+fact, the house was ere long full of nurses. The staff included everyone
+but myself, who only occasionally, at the entreaty of some one or other of
+the younger ones, took her in my arms.
+
+But before she was three months old, anxious thoughts began to intrude, all
+centering round the question in what manner the child was to be brought up.
+Certainly there was time enough to think of this, as Ethelwyn constantly
+reminded me; but what made me anxious was that I could not discover the
+principle that ought to guide me. Now no one can tell how soon a principle
+in such a case will begin, even unconsciously, to operate; and the danger
+was that the moment when it ought to begin to operate would be long past
+before the principle was discovered, except I did what I could now to find
+it out. I had again and again to remind myself that there was no cause for
+anxiety; for that I might certainly claim the enlightenment which all who
+want to do right are sure to receive; but still I continued uneasy just
+from feeling a vacancy where a principle ought to have been.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ANOTHER SUNDAY EVENING.
+
+
+
+
+
+During all this time Connie made no very perceptible progress--in the
+recovery of her bodily powers, I mean, for her heart and mind advanced
+remarkably. We held our Sunday-evening assemblies in her room pretty
+regularly, my occasional absence in the exercise of my duties alone
+interfering with them. In connection with one of these, I will show how
+I came at length to make up my mind as to what I would endeavour to
+keep before me as my object in the training of little Theodora, always
+remembering that my preparation might be used for a very different end
+from what I purposed. If my intention was right, the fact that it might be
+turned aside would not trouble me.
+
+We had spoken a good deal together about the infancy and childhood of
+Jesus, about the shepherds, and the wise men, and the star in the east, and
+the children of Bethlehem. I encouraged the thoughts of all the children to
+rest and brood upon the fragments that are given us, and, believing that
+the imagination is one of the most powerful of all the faculties for aiding
+the growth of truth in the mind, I would ask them questions as to what they
+thought he might have said or done in ordinary family occurrences, thus
+giving a reality in their minds to this part of his history, and trying to
+rouse in them a habit of referring their conduct to the standard of his. If
+we do not thus employ our imagination on sacred things, his example can be
+of no use to us except in exactly corresponding circumstances--and when can
+such occur from one end to another of our lives? The very effort to think
+how he would have done, is a wonderful purifier of the conscience, and,
+even if the conclusion arrived at should not be correct from lack of
+sufficient knowledge of his character and principles, it will be better
+than any that can be arrived at without this inquiry. Besides, the asking
+of such questions gave me good opportunity, through the answers they
+returned, of seeing what their notions of Jesus and of duty were, and thus
+of discovering how to help the dawn of the light in their growing minds.
+Nor let anyone fear that such employment of the divine gift of imagination
+will lead to foolish vagaries and useless inventions; while the object is
+to discover the right way--the truth--there is little danger of that.
+Besides, there I was to help hereby in the actual training of their
+imaginations to truth and wisdom. To aid in this, I told them some of
+the stories that were circulated about him in the early centuries of the
+church, but which the church has rejected as of no authority; and I showed
+them how some of them could not be true, because they were so unlike those
+words and actions which we had the best of reasons for receiving as true;
+and how one or two of them might be true--though, considering the company
+in which we found them, we could say nothing for certain concerning them.
+And such wise things as those children said sometimes! It is marvellous how
+children can reach the heart of the truth at once. Their utterances are
+sometimes entirely concordant with the results arrived at through years of
+thought by the earnest mind--results which no mind would ever arrive at
+save by virtue of the child-like in it.
+
+Well, then, upon this evening I read to them the story of the boy Jesus in
+the temple. Then I sought to make the story more real to them by dwelling a
+little on the growing fears of his parents as they went from group to group
+of their friends, tracing back the road towards Jerusalem and asking every
+fresh company they knew if they had seen their boy, till at length they
+were in great trouble when they could not find him even in Jerusalem. Then
+came the delight of his mother when she did find him at last, and his
+answer to what she said. Now, while I thus lingered over the simple story,
+my children had put many questions to me about Jesus being a boy, and not
+seeming to know things which, if he was God, he must have known, they
+thought. To some of these I had just to reply that I did not understand
+myself, and therefore could not teach them; to others, that I could explain
+them, but that they were not yet, some of them, old enough to receive and
+understand my explanation; while others I did my best to answer as simply
+as I could. But at this point we arrived at a question put by Wynnie, to
+answer which aright I considered of the greatest importance. Wynnie said:
+
+"That is just one of the things about Jesus that have always troubled me,
+papa."
+
+"What is, my dear?" I said; for although I thought I knew well enough what
+she meant, I wished her to set it forth in her own words, both for her own
+sake, and the sake of the others, who would probably understand the
+difficulty much better if she presented it herself.
+
+"I mean that he spoke to his mother--"
+
+"Why don't you say _mamma_, Wynnie?" said Charlie. "She was his own mamma,
+wasn't she, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; but don't you know that the shoemaker's children down in the
+village always call their mamma _mother_?"
+
+"Yes; but they are shoemaker's children."
+
+"Well, Jesus was one of that class of people. He was the son of a
+carpenter. He called his mamma, _mother_. But, Charlie, _mother_ is the
+more beautiful word of the two, by a great deal, I think. _Lady_ is a very
+pretty word; but _woman_ is a very beautiful word. Just so with _mamma_ and
+_mother_. _Mamma_ is pretty, but _mother_ is beautiful."
+
+"Why don't we always say _mother_ then?"
+
+"Just because it is the most beautiful, and so we keep it for Sundays--that
+is, for the more solemn times of life. We don't want it to get common to us
+with too much use. We may think it as much as we like; thinking does not
+spoil it; but saying spoils many things, and especially beautiful words.
+Now we must let Wynnie finish what she was saying."
+
+"I was saying, papa, that I can't help feeling as if--I know it can't be
+true--but I feel as if Jesus spoke unkindly to his mother when he said that
+to her."
+
+I looked at the page and read the words, "How is it that ye sought me? wist
+ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" And I sat silent for a
+while.
+
+"Why don't you speak, papa?" said Harry.
+
+"I am sitting wondering at myself, Harry," I said. "Long after I was your
+age, Wynnie, I remember quite well that those words troubled me as they now
+trouble you. But when I read them over now, they seemed to me so lovely
+that I could hardly read them aloud. I can recall the fact that they
+troubled me, but the mode of the fact I scarcely can recall. I can hardly
+see now wherein lay the hurt or offence the words gave me. And why is that?
+Simply because I understand them now, and I did not understand them then.
+I took them as uttered with a tone of reproof; now I hear them as uttered
+with a tone of loving surprise. But really I cannot feel sure what it was
+that I did not like. And I am confident it is so with a great many things
+that we reject. We reject them simply because we do not understand them.
+Therefore, indeed, we cannot with truth be said to reject them at all. It
+is some false appearance that we reject. Some of the grandest things in
+the whole realm of truth look repellent to us, and we turn away from them,
+simply because we are not--to use a familiar phrase--we are not up to them.
+They appear to us, therefore, to be what they are not. Instruction sounds
+to the proud man like reproof; illumination comes on the vain man like
+scorn; the manifestation of a higher condition of motive and action
+than his own, falls on the self-esteeming like condemnation; but it is
+consciousness and conscience working together that produce this impression;
+the result is from the man himself, not from the higher source. From the
+truth comes the power, but the shape it assumes to the man is from the man
+himself."
+
+"You are quite beyond me now, papa," said Wynnie.
+
+"Well, my dear," I answered, "I will return to the words of the boy Jesus,
+instead of talking more about them; and when I have shown you what they
+mean, I think you will allow that that feeling you have about them is all
+and altogether an illusion."
+
+"There is one thing first," said Connie, "that I want to understand. You
+said the words of Jesus rather indicated surprise. But how could he be
+surprised at anything? If he was God, he must have known everything."
+
+"He tells us himself that he did not know everything. He says once that
+even _he_ did not know one thing--only the Father knew it."
+
+"But how could that be if he was God?"
+
+"My dear, that is one of the things that it seems to me impossible I should
+understand. Certainly I think his trial as a man would not have been
+perfect had he known everything. He too had to live by faith in the Father.
+And remember that for the Divine Sonship on earth perfect knowledge was not
+necessary, only perfect confidence, absolute obedience, utter holiness.
+There is a great tendency in our sinful natures to put knowledge and power
+on a level with goodness. It was one of the lessons of our Lord's life that
+they are not so; that the one grand thing in humanity is faith in God; that
+the highest in God is his truth, his goodness, his rightness. But if Jesus
+was a real man, and no mere appearance of a man, is it any wonder that,
+with a heart full to the brim of the love of God, he should be for a moment
+surprised that his mother, whom he loved so dearly, the best human being
+he knew, should not have taken it as a matter of course that if he was not
+with her, he must be doing something his Father wanted him to do? For this
+is just what his answer means. To turn it into the ordinary speech of our
+day, it is just this: 'Why did you look for me? Didn't you know that I must
+of course be doing something my Father had given me to do?' Just think of
+the quiet sweetness of confidence in this. And think what a life his must
+have been up to that twelfth year of his, that such an expostulation with
+his mother was justified. It must have had reference to a good many things
+that had passed before then, which ought to have been sufficient to make
+Mary conclude that her missing boy must be about God's business somewhere.
+If her heart had been as full of God and God's business as his, she would
+not have been in the least uneasy about him. And here is the lesson of his
+whole life: it was all his Father's business. The boy's mind and hands
+were full of it. The man's mind and hands were full of it. And the risen
+conqueror was full of it still. For the Father's business is everything,
+and includes all work that is worth doing. We may say in a full grand
+sense, that there is nothing but the Father and his business."
+
+"But we have so many things to do that are not his business," said Wynnie,
+with a sigh of oppression.
+
+"Not one, my darling. If anything is not his business, you not only have
+not to do it, but you ought not to do it. Your words come from the want of
+spiritual sight. We cannot see the truth in common things--the will of God
+in little everyday affairs, and that is how they become so irksome to us.
+Show a beautiful picture, one full of quiet imagination and deep thought,
+to a common-minded man; he will pass it by with some slight remark,
+thinking it very ordinary and commonplace. That is because he is
+commonplace. Because our minds are so commonplace, have so little of the
+divine imagination in them, therefore we do not recognise the spiritual
+meaning and worth, we do not perceive the beautiful will of God, in the
+things required of us, though they are full of it. But if we do them we
+shall thus make acquaintance with them, and come to see what is in them.
+The roughest kernel amongst them has a tree of life in its heart."
+
+"I wish he would tell me something to do," said Charlie. "Wouldn't I do
+it!"
+
+I made no reply, but waited for an opportunity which I was pretty sure was
+at hand, while I carried the matter a little further.
+
+"But look here, Wynnie; listen to this," I said, "'And he went down with
+them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.' Was that not doing
+his Father's business too? Was it not doing the business of his Father in
+heaven to honour his father and his mother, though he knew that his days
+would not be long in that land? Did not his whole teaching, his whole
+doing, rest on the relation of the Son to the Father and surely it was
+doing his Father's business then to obey his parents--to serve them, to be
+subject to them. It is true that the business God gives a man to do may be
+said to be the peculiar walk in life into which he is led, but that is only
+as distinguishing it from another man's peculiar business. God gives us
+all our business, and the business which is common to humanity is
+more peculiarly God's business than that which is one man's and not
+another's--because it lies nearer the root, and is essential. It does not
+matter whether a man is a farmer or a physician, but it greatly matters
+whether he is a good son, a good husband, and so on. O my children!" I
+said, "if the world could but be brought to believe--the world did I say?--
+if the best men in the world could only see, as God sees it, that service
+is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers, if they could see that
+God is the hardest worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do
+the most service, surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church.
+Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that
+contempt which shows that there is no true recognition of the fact that
+the same principle runs through the highest duty and the lowest--that the
+lowest work which God gives a man to do must be in its nature noble, as
+certainly noble as the highest. This would destroy condescension, which
+is the rudeness, yes, impertinence, of the higher, as it would destroy
+insolence, which is the rudeness of the lower. He who recognised the
+dignity of his own lower office, would thereby recognise the superiority of
+the higher office, and would be the last either to envy or degrade it. He
+would see in it his own--only higher, only better, and revere it. But I am
+afraid I have wearied you, my children."
+
+"O, no, papa!" said the elder ones, while the little ones gaped and said
+nothing.
+
+"I know I am in danger of doing so when I come to speak upon this subject:
+it has such a hold of my heart and mind!--Now, Charlie, my boy, go to bed."
+
+But Charlie was very comfortable before the fire, on the rug, and did not
+want to go. First one shoulder went up, and then the other, and the corners
+of his mouth went down, as if to keep the balance true. He did not move to
+go. I gave him a few moments to recover himself, but as the black frost
+still endured, I thought it was time to hold up a mirror to him. When he
+was a very little boy, he was much in the habit of getting out of temper,
+and then as now, he made a face that was hideous to behold; and to cure him
+of this, I used to make him carry a little mirror about his neck, that the
+means might be always at hand of showing himself to him: it was a sort of
+artificial conscience which, by enabling him to see the picture of his own
+condition, which the face always is, was not unfrequently operative in
+rousing his real conscience, and making him ashamed of himself. But now the
+mirror I wanted to hold up to him was a past mood, in the light of which
+the present would show what it was.
+
+"Charlie," I said, "a little while ago you were wishing that God would give
+you something to do. And now when he does, you refuse at once, without even
+thinking about it."
+
+"How do you know that God wants me to go to bed?" said Charlie, with
+something of surly impertinence, which I did not meet with reproof at once
+because there was some sense along with the impudence.
+
+"I know that God wants you to do what I tell you, and to do it pleasantly.
+Do you think the boy Jesus would have put on such a face as that--I wish I
+had the little mirror to show it to you--when his mother told him it was
+time to go to bed?"
+
+And now Charlie began to look ashamed. I left the truth to work in him,
+because I saw it was working. Had I not seen that, I should have compelled
+him to go at once, that he might learn the majesty of law. But now that his
+own better self, the self enlightened of the light that lighteneth every
+man that cometh into the world, was working, time might well be afforded it
+to work its perfect work. I went on talking to the others. In the space of
+not more than one minute, he rose and came to me, looking both good and
+ashamed, and held up his face to kiss me, saying, "Goodnight, papa." I bade
+him good-night, and kissed him more tenderly than usual, that he might know
+that it was all right between us. I required no formal apology, no begging
+of my pardon, as some parents think right. It seemed enough to me that
+his heart was turned. It is a terrible thing to run the risk of changing
+humility into humiliation. Humiliation is one of the proudest conditions
+in the human world. When he felt that it would be a relief to say more
+explicitly, "Father, I have sinned," then let him say it; but not till
+then. To compel manifestation is one surest way to check feeling.
+
+My readers must not judge it silly to record a boy's unwillingness to go to
+bed. It is precisely the same kind of disobedience that some of them are
+guilty of themselves, and that in things not one whit more important than
+this, only those things happen to be _their_ wish at the moment, and not
+Charlie's, and so gain their superiority.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THEODORA'S DOOM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Try not to get weary, respected reader, of so much of what I am afraid
+most people will call tiresome preaching. But I know if you get anything
+practicable out of it, you will not be so soon tired of it. I promise you
+more story by and by. Only an old man, like an old horse, must be allowed
+to take very much his own way--go his own pace, I should have said. I am
+afraid there must be a little more of a similar sort in this chapter.
+
+On the Monday morning I set out to visit one or two people whom the
+severity of the weather had kept from church on the Sunday. The last severe
+frost, as it turned out, of the season, was possessing the earth. The sun
+was low in the wintry sky, and what seemed a very cold mist up in the air
+hid him from the earth. I was walking along a path in a field close by a
+hedge. A tree had been cut down, and lay upon the grass. A short distance
+from it lay its own figure marked out in hoar-frost. There alone was there
+any hoar-frost on the field; the rest was all of the loveliest tenderest
+green. I will not say the figure was such an exact resemblance as a
+photograph would have been; still it was an indubitable likeness. It
+appeared to the hasty glance that not a branch not a knot of the upper
+side of the tree at least was left unrepresented in shining and glittering
+whiteness upon the green grass. It was very pretty, and, I confess, at
+first, very puzzling. I walked on, meditating on the phenomenon, till at
+length I found out its cause. The hoar-frost had been all over the field in
+the morning. The sun had been shining for a time, and had melted the frost
+away, except where he could only cast a shadow. As he rose and rose,
+the shadow of the tree had shortened and come nearer and nearer to its
+original, growing more and more like as it came nearer, while the frost
+kept disappearing as the shadow withdrew its protection. When the shadow
+extended only to a little way from the tree, the clouds came and covered
+the sun, and there were no more shadows, only one great one of the clouds.
+Then the frost shone out in the shape of the vanished shadow. It lay at a
+little distance from the tree, because the tree having been only partially
+lopped, some great stumps of boughs held it up from the ground, and thus,
+when the sun was low, his light had shone a little way through beneath, as
+well as over the trunk.
+
+My reader needs not be afraid; I am not going to "moralise this spectacle
+with a thousand similes." I only tell it him as a very pretty phenomenon.
+But I confess I walked on moralising it. Any new thing in nature--I mean
+new in regard to my knowledge, of course--always made me happy; and I was
+full of the quiet pleasure it had given me and of the thoughts it had
+brought me, when, as I was getting over a stile, whom should I see in the
+next field, coming along the footpath, but the lady who had made herself so
+disagreeable about Theodora. The sight was rather a discord in my feeling
+at that moment; perhaps it would have been so at any moment. But I prepared
+myself to meet her in the strength of the good humour which nature had just
+bestowed upon me. For I fear the failing will go with me to the grave
+that I am very ready to be annoyed, even to the loss of my temper, at the
+urgings of ignoble prudence.
+
+"Good-morning, Miss Bowdler," I said.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Walton," she returned "I am afraid you thought me
+impertinent the other week; but you know by this time it is only my way."
+
+"As such I take it," I answered with a smile.
+
+She did not seem quite satisfied that I did not defend her from her own
+accusation; but as it was a just one, I could not do so. Therefore she went
+on to repeat the offence by way of justification.
+
+"It was all for Mrs. Walton's sake. You ought to consider her, Mr. Walton.
+She has quite enough to do with that dear Connie, who is likely to be an
+invalid all her days--too much to take the trouble of a beggar's brat as
+well."
+
+"Has Mrs. Walton been complaining to you about it, Miss Bowdler?" I asked.
+
+"O dear, no!" she answered. "She is far too good to complain of anything.
+That's just why her friends must look after her a bit, Mr. Walton."
+
+"Then I beg you won't speak disrespectfully of my little Theodora."
+
+"O dear me! no. Not at all. I don't speak disrespectfully of her."
+
+"Even amongst the class of which she comes, 'a beggar's brat' would be
+regarded as bad language."
+
+"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Mr. Walton! If you _will_ take offence--"
+
+"I do take offence. And you know there is One who has given especial
+warning against offending the little ones."
+
+Miss Bowdler walked away in high displeasure--let me hope in conviction of
+sin as well. She did not appear in church for the next two Sundays. Then
+she came again. But she called very seldom at the Hall after this, and I
+believe my wife was not sorry.
+
+Now whether it came in any way from what that lady had said as to my wife's
+trouble with Constance and Theodora together, I can hardly tell; but,
+before I had reached home, I had at last got a glimpse of something like
+the right way, as it appeared to me, of bringing up Theodora. When I went
+into the house, I looked for my wife to have a talk with her about it; but,
+indeed, it always necessary to find her every time I got home. I found her
+in Connie's room as I had expected. Now although we were never in the habit
+of making mysteries of things in which there was no mystery, and talked
+openly before our children, and the more openly the older they grew, yet
+there were times when we wanted to have our talks quite alone, especially
+when we had not made up our minds about something. So I asked Ethelwyn to
+walk out with me.
+
+"I'm afraid I can't just this moment, husband," she answered. She was in
+the way of using that form of address, for she said it meant everything
+without saying it aloud. "I can't just this moment, for there is no one at
+liberty to stay with Connie."
+
+"O, never mind me, mamma," said Connie cheerfully. "Theodora will take care
+of me," and she looked fondly at the child, who was lying by her side fast
+asleep.
+
+"There!" I said. And both, looked up surprised, for neither knew what I
+meant. "I will tell you afterwards," I said, laughing. "Come along, Ethel."
+
+"You can ring the bell, you know, Connie, if you should want anything, or
+your baby should wake up and be troublesome. You won't want me long, will
+you, husband?"
+
+"I'm not sure about that. You must tell Susan to watch for the bell."
+
+Susan was the old nurse.
+
+Ethel put on her hooded cloak, and we went out together. I took her across
+to the field where I had seen the hoary shadow. The sun had not shone out,
+and I hoped it would be there to gladden her dear eyes as it had gladdened
+mine; but it was gone. The warmth of the sun, without his direct rays, had
+melted it away, as sacred influences will sometimes do with other shadows,
+without the mind knowing any more than the grass how the shadow departed.
+There, reader! I have got a bit of a moral in about it before you knew what
+I was doing. But I was sorry my wife could see it only through my eyes and
+words. Then I told her about Miss Bowdler, and what she had said. Ethel
+was very angry at her impertinence in speaking so to me. That was a wife's
+feeling, you know, and perhaps excusable in the first impression of the
+thing.
+
+"She seems to think," she said, "that she was sent into the world to keep
+other people right instead of herself. I am very glad you set her down, as
+the maids say."
+
+"O, I don't think there's much harm in her," I returned, which was easy
+generosity, seeing my wife was taking my part. "Indeed, I am not sure that
+we are not both considerably indebted to her; for it was after I met her
+that a thought came into my head as to how we ought to do with Theodora."
+
+"Still troubling yourself about that, husband?"
+
+"The longer the difficulty lasts, the more necessary is it that it should
+be met," I answered. "Our measures must begin sometime, and when, who can
+tell? We ought to have them in our heads, or they will never begin at all."
+
+"Well, I confess they are rather of a general nature at present--belonging
+to humanity rather than the individual, as you would say--consisting
+chiefly in washing, dressing, feeding, and apostrophe, varied with
+lullabying. But our hearts are a better place for our measures than our
+heads, aren't they?"
+
+"Certainly; I walk corrected. Only there's no fear about your heart. I'm
+not quite so sure about your head."
+
+"Thank you, husband. But with you for a head it doesn't matter, does it?"
+
+"I don't know that. People should always strengthen the weaker part, for no
+chain is stronger than its weakest link; no fortification stronger than
+its most assailable point. But, seriously, wife, I trust your head nearly,
+though not quite, as much as your heart. Now to go to business. There's
+one thing we have both made up our minds about--that there is to be no
+concealment with the child. God's fact must be known by her. It would be
+cruel to keep the truth from her, even if it were not sure to come upon her
+with a terrible shock some day. She must know from the first, by hearing it
+talked of--not by solemn and private communication--that she came out of
+the shrubbery. That's settled, is it not?"
+
+"Certainly. I see that to be the right way," responded Ethelwyn.
+
+"Now, are we bound to bring her up exactly as our own, or are we not?"
+
+"We are bound to do as well for her as for our own."
+
+"Assuredly. But if we brought her up just as our own, would that, the facts
+being as they are, be to do as well for her as for our own?"
+
+"I doubt it; for other people would not choose to receive her as we have
+done."
+
+"That is true. She would be continually reminded of her origin. Not that
+that in itself would be any evil; but as they would do it by excluding or
+neglecting her, or, still worse, by taking liberties with her, it would be
+a great pain. But keeping that out of view, would it be good for herself,
+knowing what she will know, to be thus brought up? Would it not be kinder
+to bring her up in a way that would make it easier for her to relieve the
+gratitude which I trust she will feel, not for our sakes--I hope we are
+above doing anything for the sake of the gratitude which will be given for
+it, and which is so often far beyond the worth of the thing done--"
+
+  "Alas! the gratitude of men
+  Hath oftener left me mourning,"
+
+said Ethel.
+
+"Ah! you understand that now, my Ethel!"
+
+"Yes, thank you, I do."
+
+"But we must wish for gratitude for others' sake, though we may be willing
+to go without it for our own. Indeed, gratitude is often just as painful as
+Wordsworth there represents it. It makes us so ashamed; makes us think how
+much more we _might_ have done; how lovely a thing it is to give in return
+for such common gifts as ours; how needy the man or woman must be in whom a
+trifle awakes so much emotion."
+
+"Yes; but we must not in justice think that it is merely that our little
+doing seems great to them: it is the kindness shown them therein, for
+which, often, they are more grateful than for the gift, though they can't
+show the difference in their thanks."
+
+"And, indeed, are not aware of it themselves, though it is so. And yet, the
+same remarks hold good about the kindness as about the gift. But to return
+to Theodora. If we put her in a way of life that would be recognisant of
+whence she came, and how she had been brought thence, might it not be
+better for her? Would it not be building on the truth? Would she not be
+happier for it?"
+
+
+"You are putting general propositions, while all the time you have
+something particular and definite in your own mind; and that is not fair to
+my place in the conference," said Ethel. "In fact, you think you are trying
+to approach me wisely, in order to persuade, I will not say _wheedle_, me
+into something. It's a good thing you have the harmlessness of the dove,
+Harry, for you've got the other thing."
+
+"Well, then, I will be as plain as ever I can be, only premising that what
+you call the cunning of the serpent--"
+
+"Wisdom, Harry, not cunning."
+
+"Is only that I like to give my arguments before my proposition. But here
+it is--bare and defenceless, only--let me warn you--with a whole battery
+behind it: it is, to bring up little Theodora as a servant to Constance."
+
+My wife laughed.
+
+"Well," she said, "for one who says so much about not thinking of the
+morrow, you do look rather far forward."
+
+"Not with any anxiety, however, if only I know that I am doing right."
+
+"But just think: the child is about three months old."
+
+"Well; Connie will be none the worse that she is being trained for her. I
+don't say that she is to commence her duties at once."
+
+"But Connie may be at the head of a house of her own long before that."
+
+"The training won't be lost to the child though. But I much fear, my love,
+that Connie will never be herself again. There is no sign of it. And Turner
+does not give much hope."
+
+"O Harry, Harry, don't say so! I can't bear it. To think of the darling
+child lying like that all her life!"
+
+"It is sad, indeed; but no such awful misfortune surely, Ethel. Haven't
+you seen, as well as I, that the growth of that child's nature since her
+accident has been marvellous? Ten times rather would I have her lying there
+such as she is, than have her well and strong and silly, with her bonnets
+inside instead of outside her head."
+
+"Yes, but she needn't have been like that. Wynnie never will."
+
+"Well, but God does all things not only well, but best, absolutely best.
+But just think what it would be in any circumstances to have a maid that
+had begun to wait upon her from the first days that she was able to toddle
+after something to fetch it for her."
+
+"Won't it be like making a slave of her?"
+
+"Won't it be like giving her a divine freedom from the first? The lack of
+service is the ruin of humanity."
+
+"But we can't train her then like one of our own."
+
+"Why not"? Could we not give her all the love and all the teaching?"
+
+"Because it would not be fair to give her the education of a lady, and then
+make a servant of her."
+
+"You forget that the service would be part of her training from the first;
+and she would know no change of position in it. When we tell her that she
+was found in the shrubbery, we will add that we think God sent her to
+take care of Constance. I do not believe myself that you can have perfect
+service except from a lady. Do not forget the true notion of service as the
+essence of Christianity, yea, of divinity. It is not education that unfits
+for service: it is the want of it."
+
+"Well, I know that the reading girls I have had, have, as a rule, served me
+worse than the rest."
+
+"Would you have called one of those girls educated? Or even if they had
+been educated, as any of them might well have been, better than nine-tenths
+of the girls that go to boarding-schools, you must remember that they had
+never been taught service--the highest accomplishment of all. To that
+everything aids, when any true feeling of it is there. But for service of
+this high sort, the education must begin with the beginning of the dawn of
+will. How often have you wished that you had servants who would believe in
+you, and serve you with the same truth with which you regarded them! The
+servants born in a man's house in the old times were more like his children
+than his servants. Here is a chance for you, as it were of a servant born
+in your own house. Connie loves the child: the child will love Connie, and
+find her delight in serving her like a little cherub. Not one of the maids
+to whom you have referred had ever been taught to think service other than
+an unavoidable necessity, the end of life being to serve yourself, not to
+serve others; and hence most of them would escape from it by any marriage
+almost that they had a chance of making. I don't say all servants are like
+that; but I do think that most of them are. I know very well that most
+mistresses are as much to blame for this result as the servants are; but
+we are not talking about them. Servants nowadays despise work, and yet are
+forced to do it--a most degrading condition to be in. But they would not be
+in any better condition if delivered from the work. The lady who despises
+work is in as bad a condition as they are. The only way to set them free
+is to get them to regard service not only as their duty, but as therefore
+honourable, and besides and beyond this, in its own nature divine. In
+America, the very name of servant is repudiated as inconsistent with human
+dignity. There is _no_ dignity but of service. How different the whole
+notion of training is now from what it was in the middle ages! Service was
+honourable then. No doubt we have made progress as a whole, but in some
+things we have degenerated sadly. The first thing taught then was how to
+serve. No man could rise to the honour of knighthood without service. A
+nobleman's son even had to wait on his father, or to go into the family of
+another nobleman, and wait upon him as a page, standing behind his chair at
+dinner. This was an honour. No notion of degradation was in it. It was a
+necessary step to higher honour. And what was the next higher honour? To be
+set free from service? No. To serve in the harder service of the field; to
+be a squire to some noble knight; to tend his horse, to clean his armour,
+to see that every rivet was sound, every buckle true, every strap strong;
+to ride behind him, and carry his spear, and if more than one attacked him,
+to rush to his aid. This service was the more honourable because it was
+harder, and was the next step to higher honour yet. And what was this
+higher honour? That of knighthood. Wherein did this knighthood consist? The
+very word means simply _service_. And for what was the knight thus waited
+upon by his squire? That he might be free to do as he pleased? No, but that
+he might be free to be the servant of all. By being a squire first, the
+servant of one, he learned to rise to the higher rank, that of servant of
+all. His horse was tended, this armour observed, his sword and spear and
+shield held to his hand, that he might have no trouble looking after
+himself, but might be free, strong, unwearied, to shoot like an arrow to
+the rescue of any and every one who needed his ready aid. There was a grand
+heart of Christianity in that old chivalry, notwithstanding all its abuses
+which must be no more laid to its charge than the burning of Jews and
+heretics to Christianity. It was the lack of it, not the presence of it
+that occasioned the abuses that coexisted with it. Train our Theodora as a
+holy child-servant, and there will be no need to restrain any impulse of
+wise affection from pouring itself forth upon her. My firm belief is that
+we should then love and honour her far more than if we made her just like
+one of our own."
+
+"But what if she should turn out utterly unfit for it?"
+
+"Ah! then would come an obstacle. But it will not come till that discovery
+is made."
+
+"But if we should be going wrong all the time?"
+
+"Now, there comes the kind of care that never troubles me, and which I so
+strongly object to. It won't hurt her anyhow. And we ought always to act
+upon the ideal; it is the only safe ground of action. When that which
+contradicts and resists, and would ruin our ideal, opposes us, then we
+must take measures; but not till then can we take measures, or know what
+measures it may be necessary to take. But the ideal itself is the only
+thing worth striving after. Remember what our Lord himself said: 'Be ye
+therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.'"
+
+"Well, I will think about it, Harry. There is time enough."
+
+"Plenty. No time only not to think about it. The more you think about it
+the better. If a thing be a good thing, the more you think about it the
+better it will look; for its real nature will go on coming out and showing
+itself. I cannot doubt that you will soon see how good it is."
+
+We then went home. It was only two days after that my wife said to me--
+
+"I am more than reconciled to your plan, husband. It seems to me
+delightful."
+
+When we reentered Connie's room, we found that her baby had just waked, and
+she had managed to get one arm under her, and was trying to comfort her,
+for she was crying.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A SPRING CHAPTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+More especially now in my old age, I find myself "to a lingering motion
+bound." I would, if I might, tell a tale day by day, hour by hour,
+following the movement of the year in its sweet change of seasons. This
+may not be, but I will indulge myself now so far as to call this a spring
+chapter, and so pass to the summer, when my reader will see why I have
+called my story "The Seaboard Parish."
+
+I was out one day amongst my people, and I found two precious things:
+one, a lovely little fact, the other a lovely little primrose. This was
+a pinched, dwarfish thing, for the spring was but a baby herself, and so
+could not mother more than a brave-hearted weakling. The frost lay all
+about it under the hedge, but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough,
+and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would
+have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature,
+seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt
+justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed
+as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and all,
+with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little woman--a
+present from the outside world which she loved so much. And as I went there
+dawned upon me the recollection of a little mirror in which, if I could
+find it, she would see it still more lovely than in a direct looking at
+itself. So I set myself to find it; for it lay in fragments in the drawers
+and cabinets of my memory. And before I got home I had found all the pieces
+and put them together; and then it was a lovely little sonnet which a
+friend of mine had written and allowed me to see many years before. I was
+in the way of writing verses myself; but I should have been proud to have
+written this one. I never could have done that. Yet, as far as I knew, it
+had never seen the light through the windows of print. It was with some
+difficulty that I got it all right; but I thought I had succeeded very
+nearly, if not absolutely, and I said it over and over, till I was sure I
+should not spoil its music or its meaning by halting in the delivery of it.
+
+"Look here, my Connie, what I have brought you," I said.
+
+She held out her two white, half-transparent hands, took it as if it had
+been a human baby and looked at it lovingly till the tears came in her
+eyes. She would have made a tender picture, as she then lay, with her two
+hands up, holding the little beauty before her eyes. Then I said what I
+have already written about the mirror, and repeated the sonnet to her. Here
+it is, and my readers will owe me gratitude for it. My friend had found
+the snowdrop in February, and in frost. Indeed he told me that there was a
+tolerable sprinkling of snow upon the ground:
+
+  "I know not what among the grass thou art,
+    Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower,
+    Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power
+  To send thine image through them to the heart;
+  But when I push the frosty leaves apart,
+    And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower,
+    Thou growest up within me from that hour,
+  And through the snow I with the spring depart.
+
+  I have no words. But fragrant is the breath,
+    Pale Beauty, of thy second life within.
+  There is a wind that cometh for thy death,
+    But thou a life immortal dost begin,
+  Where, in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell
+  Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!"
+
+"Will you say it again, papa?" said Connie; "I do not quite understand it."
+
+"I will, my dear. But I will do something better as well. I will go and
+write it out for you, as soon as I have given you something else that I
+have brought."
+
+"Thank you, papa. And please write it in your best Sunday hand, that I may
+read it quite easily."
+
+I promised, and repeated the poem.
+
+"I understand it a little better," she said; "but the meaning is just like
+the primrose itself, hidden up in its green leaves. When you give it me in
+writing, I will push them apart and find it. Now, tell me what else you
+have brought me."
+
+I was greatly pleased with the resemblance the child saw between the plant
+and the sonnet; but I did not say anything in praise; I only expressed
+satisfaction. Before I began my story, Wynnie came in and sat down with us.
+
+"I have been to see Miss Aylmer, this morning," I said. "She feels the loss
+of her mother very much, poor thing."
+
+"How old was she, papa?" asked Connie.
+
+"She was over ninety, my dear; but she had forgotten how much herself, and
+her daughter could not be sure about it. She was a peculiar old lady,
+you know. She once reproved me for inadvertently putting my hat on the
+tablecloth. 'Mr. Shafton,' she said, 'was one of the old school; he would
+never have done that. I don't know what the world is coming to.'"
+
+My two girls laughed at the idea of their papa being reproved for bad
+manners.
+
+"What did you say, papa?" they asked.
+
+"I begged her pardon, and lifted it instantly. 'O, it's all right now, my
+dear,' she said, 'when you've taken it up again. But I like good manners,
+though I live in a cottage now.'"
+
+"Had she seen better days, then?" asked Wynnie.
+
+"She was a farmer's daughter, and a farmer's widow. I suppose the chief
+difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead of a
+good-sized farmhouse."
+
+"But what is the story you have to tell us?"
+
+"I'm coming to that when you have done with your questions."
+
+"We have done, papa."
+
+"After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the
+cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good
+deal of her mother's sense of dignity about her,--but I want your mother to
+hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie."
+
+"O, do make haste, Wynnie," said Connie.
+
+When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
+
+"Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to
+rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, 'Here it is, at
+last!' She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother's, and was holding it
+in one hand, while with the other she drew from the pocket--what do you
+think?"
+
+Various guesses were hazarded.
+
+"No, no--nothing like it. I know you _could_ never guess. Therefore it
+would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The old woman
+of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was wearing at the
+very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an iron horseshoe."
+
+"What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?"
+
+"That she proceeded at once to do. 'Do you remember, sir,' she said,
+'how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?' 'I do
+remember having observed it there,' I answered; 'for once when I took
+notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, "I hope you are not afraid
+of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?" And she looked a little offended, and assured me
+to the contrary.' 'Well,' her daughter went on, 'about three months ago, I
+missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it. And here it is!
+I can hardly think she can have carried it about all that time without me
+finding it out, but I don't know. Here it is, anyhow. Perhaps when she felt
+death drawing nearer, she took it from somewhere where she had hidden it,
+and put it in her pocket. If I had found it in time, I would have put it
+in her coffin.' 'But why?' I asked. 'Do tell me the story about it, if you
+know it.' 'I know it quite well, for she told me all about it once. It is
+the shoe of a favourite mare of my father's--one he used to ride when he
+went courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man
+coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to
+bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go
+over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw
+there, for it was under the window of my grandfather's room, that her shoes
+mightn't make a noise and wake him. And that's one of the shoes,' she said,
+holding it up to me. 'When the mare died, my mother begged my father for
+the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted her
+neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.'"
+
+"But it was very naughty of her, wasn't it," said Wynnie, "to do that
+without her father's knowledge?"
+
+"I don't say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we
+ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might find
+that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn't a father,
+we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a child. The
+father's part has to come first, and teach the child's part. Now, if I
+might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was
+much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and
+unreasonable man--such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter's head
+that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of the
+consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The whole thing, I
+allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to blame, and far
+more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more likely from the high
+character of the old dame, and the romantic way in which she clung to the
+memory of the courtship. A true heart only does not grow old. And I have,
+therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a happy one. Besides, I daresay
+it was very much the custom of the country where they were, and that makes
+some difference."
+
+"Well, I'm sure, papa, you wouldn't like any of us to go and do like that,"
+said Wynnie.
+
+"Assuredly not, my dear," I answered, laughing. "Nor have I any fear of
+it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things to
+trouble me if you did?"
+
+"If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an _if_"
+said Wynnie.
+
+"It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you
+as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all possible
+for you to do such a thing."
+
+"It's too dreadful to talk about, papa," said Wynnie; and the subject was
+dropped.
+
+She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in
+danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are
+whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the
+wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the
+perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her
+own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the
+doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been
+deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This came
+of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction with
+herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine sympathy,
+or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared herself;
+and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no one was
+yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts for them,
+always give them the best and take the worst for herself. If there was any
+part in the dish that she was helping that she thought nobody would like,
+she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked like a determined
+self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She did not care for her
+own comfort enough to feel it any mortification; though I observed that
+when her mother or I helped her to anything nice, she ate it with as much
+relish as the youngest of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready
+to meet the least kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect,
+and had been so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not
+since she was the merest child had there been any contest between us.
+Now, of course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best
+earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some
+passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion to
+her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those thoughts
+came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother sometimes said
+to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor man. She would
+brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment of the best sort.
+And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show. She would choose to sit
+with one candle lit when there were two on the table, wasting her eyes to
+save the candles. "Which will you have for dinner to-day, papa, roast beef
+or boiled?" she asked me once, when her mother was too unwell to attend to
+the housekeeping. And when I replied that I would have whichever she liked
+best--"The boiled beef lasts longest, I think," she said. Yet she was not
+only as liberal and kind as any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer,
+and perhaps more important for the final formation of a character,
+carefully just to everyone with whom she had any dealings. Her sense of
+law was very strong. Law with her was something absolute, and not to be
+questioned. In her childhood there was one lady to whom for years she
+showed a decided aversion, and we could not understand it, for it was the
+most inoffensive Miss Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of
+us happening to allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss
+Boulderstone had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three
+and four was in disgrace--_in the corner_, in fact. Miss Boulderstone
+interceded for her; and this was the whole front of her offending.
+
+"I _was_ so angry!" she said. "'As if my papa did not know best when I
+ought to come out of the corner!' I said to myself. And I couldn't bear her
+for ever so long after that."
+
+Miss Boulderstone, however, though not very interesting, was quite a
+favourite before she died. She left Wynnie--for she and her brother were
+the last of their race--a death's-head watch, which had been in the family
+she did not know how long. I think it is as old as Queen Elizabeth's time.
+I took it to London to a skilful man, and had it as well repaired as
+its age would admit of; and it has gone ever since, though not with the
+greatest accuracy; for what could be expected of an old death's-head,
+the most transitory thing in creation? Wynnie wears it to this day, and
+wouldn't part with it for the best watch in the world.
+
+I tell the reader all this about my daughter that he may be the more able
+to understand what will follow in due time. He will think that as yet my
+story has been nothing but promises. Let him only hope that I will fulfil
+them, and I shall be content.
+
+Mr. Boulderstone did not long outlive his sister. Though the old couple,
+for they were rather old before they died, if, indeed, they were not born
+old, which I strongly suspect, being the last of a decaying family that had
+not left the land on which they were born for a great many generations--
+though the old people had not, of what the French call sentiments, one
+between them, they were yet capable of a stronger and, I had almost said,
+more romantic attachment, than many couples who have married from love; for
+the lady's sole trouble in dying was what her brother _would_ do without
+her; and from the day of her death, he grew more and more dull and
+seemingly stupid. Nothing gave him any pleasure but having Wynnie to dinner
+with him. I knew that it must be very dull for her, but she went often, and
+I never heard her complain of it, though she certainly did look fagged--not
+_bored_, observe, but fagged--showing that she had been exerting herself to
+meet the difficulties of the situation. When the good man died, we found
+that he had left all his money in my hands, in trust for the poor of the
+parish, to be applied in any way I thought best. This involved me in much
+perplexity, for nothing is more difficult than to make money useful to the
+poor. But I was very glad of it, notwithstanding.
+
+My own means were not so large as my readers may think. The property my
+wife brought me was much encumbered. With the help of her private fortune,
+and the income of several years (not my income from the church, it may be
+as well to say), I succeeded in clearing off the encumbrances. But even
+then there remained much to be done, if I would be the good steward that
+was not to be ashamed at his Lord's coming. First of all there were many
+cottages to be built for the labourers on the estate. If the farmers would
+not, or could not, help, I must do it; for to provide decent dwellings for
+them, was clearly one of the divine conditions in the righteous tenure of
+property, whatever the human might be; for it was not for myself alone, or
+for myself chiefly, that this property was given to me; it was for those
+who lived upon it. Therefore I laid out what money I could, not only in
+getting all the land clearly in its right relation to its owner, but
+in doing the best I could for those attached to it who could not help
+themselves. And when I hint to my reader that I had some conscience in
+paying my curate, though, as they had no children, they did not require so
+much as I should otherwise have felt compelled to give them, he will easily
+see that as my family grew up I could not have so much to give away of
+my own as I should have liked. Therefore this trust of the good Mr.
+Boulderstone was the more acceptable to me.
+
+One word more ere I finish this chapter.--I should not like my friends to
+think that I had got tired of our Christmas gatherings, because I have made
+no mention of one this year. It had been pretermitted for the first time,
+because of my daughter's illness. It was much easier to give them now than
+when I lived at the vicarage, for there was plenty of room in the old hall.
+But my curate, Mr. Weir, still held a similar gathering there every Easter.
+
+Another one word more about him. Some may wonder why I have not mentioned
+him or my sister, especially in connection with Connie's accident. The fact
+was, that he had taken, or rather I had given him, a long holiday. Martha
+had had several disappointing illnesses, and her general health had
+suffered so much in consequence that there was even some fear of her lungs,
+and a winter in the south of France had been strongly recommended. Upon
+this I came in with more than a recommendation, and insisted that they
+should go. They had started in the beginning of October, and had not
+returned up to the time of which I am now about to write--somewhere in the
+beginning of the month of April. But my sister was now almost quite well,
+and I was not sorry to think that I should soon have a little more leisure
+for such small literary pursuits as I delighted in--to my own enrichment,
+and consequently to the good of my parishioners and friends.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AN IMPORTANT LETTER.
+
+
+
+
+
+It was, then, in the beginning of April that I received one morning an
+epistle from an old college friend of mine, with whom I had renewed my
+acquaintance of late, through the pleasure which he was kind enough to say
+he had derived from reading a little book of mine upon the relation of the
+mind of St. Paul to the gospel story. His name was Shepherd--a good name
+for a clergyman. In his case both Christian name and patronymic might
+remind him well of his duty. David Shepherd ought to be a good clergyman.
+
+As soon as I had read the letter, I went with it open in my hand to find my
+wife.
+
+"Here is Shepherd," I said, "with a clerical sore-throat, and forced to
+give up his duty for a whole summer. He writes to ask me whether, as he
+understands I have a curate as good as myself--that is what the old fellow
+says--it might not suit me to take my family to his place for the summer.
+He assures me I should like it, and that it would do us all good. His
+house, he says, is large enough to hold us, and he knows I should not like
+to be without duty wherever I was. And so on Read the letter for yourself,
+and turn it over in your mind. Weir will come back so fresh and active that
+it will be no oppression to him to take the whole of the duty here. I will
+run and ask Turner whether it would be safe to move Connie, and whether the
+sea-air would be good for her."
+
+"One would think you were only twenty, husband--you make up your mind so
+quickly, and are in such a hurry."
+
+The fact was, a vision of the sea had rushed in upon me. It was many years
+since I had seen the sea, and the thought of looking on it once more, in
+its most glorious show, the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and
+America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my wife's
+reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my usually
+quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie's pardon, and set off
+to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder Shepherd's
+letter.
+
+"What do you think, Turner?" I said, and told him the case. He looked
+rather grave.
+
+"When would you think of going?" he asked.
+
+"About the beginning of June."
+
+"Nearly two months," he said, thoughtfully. "And Miss Connie was not the
+worse for getting on the sofa yesterday?"
+
+"The better, I do think."
+
+"Has she had any increase of pain since?"
+
+"None, I quite believe; for I questioned her as to that."
+
+He thought again. He was a careful man, although young.
+
+"It is a long journey."
+
+"She could make it by easy stages."
+
+"It would certainly do her good to breathe the sea-air and have such a
+thorough change in every way--if only it could be managed without fatigue
+and suffering. I think, if you can get her up every day between this and
+that, we shall be justified in trying it at least. The sooner you get her
+out of doors the better too; but the weather is scarcely fit for that yet."
+
+"A good deal will depend on how she is inclined, I suppose."
+
+"Yes. But in her case you must not mind that too much. An invalid's
+instincts as to eating and drinking are more to be depended upon than those
+of a healthy person; but it is not so, I think with regard to anything
+involving effort. That she must sometimes be urged to. She must not judge
+that by inclination. I have had, in my short practice, two patients, who
+considered themselves _bedlars_, as you will find the common people in
+the part you are going to, call them--bedridden, that is. One of them I
+persuaded to make the attempt to rise, and although her sense of inability
+was anything but feigned, and she will be a sufferer to the end of her
+days, yet she goes about the house without much inconvenience, and I
+suspect is not only physically but morally the better for it. The other
+would not consent to try, and I believe lies there still."
+
+"The will has more to do with most things than people generally suppose,"
+I said. "Could you manage, now, do you think, supposing we resolve to make
+the experiment, to accompany us the first stage or two?"
+
+"It is very likely I could. Only you must not depend upon me. I cannot tell
+beforehand. You yourself would teach me that I must not be a respecter of
+persons, you know."
+
+I returned to my wife. She was in Connie's room.
+
+"Well, my dear," I said, "what do you think of it?"
+
+"Of what?" she asked.
+
+"Why, of Shepherd's letter, of course," I answered.
+
+"I've been ordering the dinner since, Harry."
+
+"The dinner!" I returned with some show of contempt, for I knew my wife was
+only teasing me. "What's the dinner to the Atlantic?"
+
+"What do you mean by the Atlantic, papa?" said Connie, from whose roguish
+eyes I could see that her mother had told her all about it, and that _she_
+was not disinclined to get up, if only she could.
+
+"The Atlantic, my dear, is the name given to that portion of the waters of
+the globe which divides Europe from America. I will fetch you the Universal
+Gazetteer, if you would like to consult it on the subject."
+
+"O papa!" laughed Connie; "you know what I mean."
+
+"Yes; and you know what I mean too, you squirrel!"
+
+"But do you really mean, papa," she said "that you will take me to the
+Atlantic?"
+
+"If you will only oblige me by getting Well enough to go as soon as
+possible."
+
+The poor child half rose on her elbow, but sank back again with a moan,
+which I took for a cry of pain. I was beside her in a moment.
+
+"My darling! You have hurt yourself!"
+
+"O no, papa. I felt for the moment as if I could get up if I liked. But I
+soon found that I hadn't any back or legs. O! what a plague I am to you!"
+
+"On the contrary, you are the nicest plaything in the world, Connie. One
+always knows where to find you."
+
+She half laughed and half cried, and the two halves made a very bewitching
+whole.
+
+"But," I went on, "I mean to try whether my dolly won't bear moving. One
+thing is clear, I can't go without it. Do you think you could be got on the
+sofa to-day without hurting you?"
+
+"I am sure I could, papa. I feel better today than I have felt yet. Mamma,
+do send for Susan, and get me up before dinner."
+
+When I went in after a couple of hours or so, I found her lying on the
+conch, propped up with pillows. She lay looking out of the window on the
+lawn at the back of the house. A smile hovered about her bloodless lips,
+and the blue of her eyes, though very gray, looked sunny. Her white face
+showed the whiter because her dark brown hair was all about it. We had had
+to cut her hair, but it had grown to her neck again.
+
+"I have been trying to count the daisies on the lawn," she said.
+
+"What a sharp sight you must have, child!"
+
+"I see them all as clear as if they were enamelled on that table before
+me."
+
+I was not so anxious to get rid of the daisies as some people are. Neither
+did I keep the grass quite so close shaved.
+
+"But," she went on, "I could not count them, for it gave me the fidgets in
+my feet."
+
+"You don't say so!" I exclaimed.
+
+She looked at me with some surprise, but concluding that I was only making
+a little of my mild fun at her expense, she laughed.
+
+"Yes. Isn't it a wonderful fact?" she said.
+
+"It is a fact, my dear, that I feel ready to go on my knees and thank God
+for. I may be wrong, but I take it as a sign that you are beginning to
+recover a little. But we mustn't make too much of it, lest I should be
+mistaken," I added, checking myself, for I feared exciting her too much.
+
+But she lay very still; only the tears rose slowly and lay shimmering in
+her eyes. After about five minutes, during which we were both silent,--
+
+"O papa!" she said, "to think of ever walking out with you again, and
+feeling the wind on my face! I can hardly believe it possible."
+
+"It is so mild, I think you might have half that pleasure at once," I
+answered..
+
+And I opened the window, let the spring air gently move her hair for one
+moment, and then shut it again. Connie breathed deep, and said after a
+little pause,--
+
+"I had no idea how delightful it was. To think that I have been in the way
+of breathing that every moment for so many years and never thought about
+it!"
+
+"It is not always just like that in this climate. But I ought not to have
+made that remark when I wanted to make this other: that I suspect we shall
+find some day that the loss of the human paradise consists chiefly in the
+closing of the human eyes; that at least far more of it than people think
+remains about us still, only we are so filled with foolish desires and evil
+cares, that we cannot see or hear, cannot even smell or taste the pleasant
+things round about us. We have need to pray in regard to the right
+receiving of the things of the senses even, 'Lord, open thou our hearts to
+understand thy word;' for each of these things is as certainly a word of
+God as Jesus is the Word of God. He has made nothing in vain. All is for
+our teaching. Shall I tell you what such a breath of fresh air makes me
+think of?"
+
+"It comes to me," said Connie, "like forgiveness when I was a little girl
+and was naughty. I used to feel just like that."
+
+"It is the same kind of thing I feel," I said--"as if life from the Spirit
+of God were coming into my soul: I think of the wind that bloweth where it
+listeth. Wind and spirit are the same word in the Greek; and the Latin word
+_spirit_ comes even nearer to what we are saying, for it is the wind as
+_breathed_. And now, Connie, I will tell you--and you will see how I am
+growing able to talk to you like quite an old friend--what put me in such a
+delight with Mr. Shepherd's letter and so exposed me to be teased by mamma
+and you. As I read it, there rose up before me a vision of one sight of the
+sea which I had when I was a young man, long before I saw your mamma. I had
+gone out for a walk along some high downs. But I ought to tell you that I
+had been working rather hard at Cambridge, and the life seemed to be all
+gone out of me. Though my holidays had come, they did not feel quite like
+holidays--not as holidays used to feel when I was a boy. Even when walking
+along those downs with the scents of sixteen grasses or so in my brain,
+like a melody with the odour of the earth for the accompaniment upon which
+it floated, and with just enough of wind to stir them up and set them in
+motion, I could not feel at all. I remembered something of what I had used
+to feel in such places, but instead of believing in that, I doubted now
+whether it had not been all a trick that I played myself--a fancied
+pleasure only. I was walking along, then, with the sea behind me. It was
+a warm, cloudy day--I had had no sunshine since I came out. All at once I
+turned--I don't know why. There lay the gray sea, but not as I had seen
+it last, not all gray. It was dotted, spotted, and splashed all over with
+drops, pools, and lakes of light, of all shades of depth, from a light
+shimmer of tremulous gray, through a half light that turned the prevailing
+lead colour into translucent green that seemed to grow out of its depths--
+through this, I say, to brilliant light, deepening and deepening till my
+very soul was stung by the triumph of the intensity of its molten silver.
+There was no sun upon me. But there were breaks in the clouds over the sea,
+through which, the air being filled with vapour, I could see the long lines
+of the sun-rays descending on the waters like rain--so like a rain of light
+that the water seemed to plash up in light under their fall. I questioned
+the past no more; the present seized upon me, and I knew that the past was
+true, and that nature was more lovely, more awful in her loveliness than I
+could grasp. It was a lonely place: I fell on my knees, and worshipped the
+God that made the glory and my soul."
+
+While I spoke Connie's tears had been flowing quietly.
+
+"And mamma and I were making fun while you were seeing such things as
+those!" she said pitifully.
+
+"You didn't hurt them one bit, my darling--neither mamma nor you. If I had
+been the least cross about it, as I should have been when I was as young
+as at the time of which I was thinking, that would have ruined the vision
+entirely. But your merriment only made me enjoy it more. And, my Connie, I
+hope you will see the Atlantic before long; and if one vision should come
+as brilliant as that, we shall be fortunate indeed, if we went all the way
+to the west to see that only."
+
+"O papa! I dare hardly think of it--it is too delightful. But do you think
+we shall really go?"
+
+"I do. Here comes your mamma--I am going to say to Shepherd, my dear, that
+I will take his parish in hand, and if I cannot, after all, go myself, will
+find some one, so that he need be in no anxiety from the uncertainty which
+must hang over our movements even till the experiment itself is made."
+
+"Very well, husband. I am quite satisfied."
+
+And as I watched Connie, I saw that hope and expectation did much to
+prepare her.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONNIE'S DREAM.
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Turner, being a good mechanic as well as surgeon, proceeded to invent,
+and with his own hands in a great measure construct, a kind of litter,
+which, with a water-bed laid upon it, could be placed in our own carriage
+for Connie to lie upon, and from that lifted, without disturbing her, and
+placed in a similar manner in the railway carriage. He had laid Connie
+repeatedly upon it before he was satisfied that the arrangement of the
+springs, &c., was successful. But at length she declared that it was
+perfect, and that she would not mind being carried across the Arabian
+desert on a camel's back with that under her.
+
+As the season advanced, she continued to improve. I shall never forget the
+first time she was carried out upon the lawn. If you can imagine an infant
+coming into the world capable of the observation and delight of a child
+of eight or ten, you will have some idea of how Connie received the new
+impressions of everything around her. They were almost too much for her at
+first, however. She who had been used to scamper about like a wild thing on
+a pony, found the delight of a breath of wind almost more than she could
+bear. After she was laid down she closed her eyes, and the smile that
+flickered about her mouth was of a sort that harmonised entirely with the
+two great tears that crept softly out from under her eyelids, and sank,
+rather than ran, down her cheeks. She lay so that she faced a rich tract
+of gently receding upland, plentifully wooded to the horizon's edge, and
+through the wood peeped the white and red houses of a little hamlet, with
+the square tower of its church just rising above the trees. A kind of frame
+was made to the whole picture by the nearer trees of our own woods, through
+an opening in which, evidently made or left for its sake, the distant
+prospect was visible. It was a morning in early summer, when the leaves
+were not quite full-grown but almost, and their green was shining and pure
+as the blue of the sky, when the air had no touch of bitterness or of
+lassitude, but was thoroughly warm, and yet filled the lungs with the
+reviving as of a draught of cold water. We had fastened the carriage
+umbrella to the sofa, so that it should shade her perfectly without
+obscuring her prospect; and behind this we all crept, leaving her to come
+to herself without being looked at, for emotion is a shy and sacred thing
+and should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very
+_beesy_ all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones
+with pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all
+bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence--to see him, I say, down in a little
+tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness,
+yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of the whole
+creation--was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that they
+seemed to tumble up into the air, and get down again with difficulty. They
+bewildered me with their inscrutable variations of purpose. "If I could but
+see once, for an hour, into the mind of a butterfly," I thought, "it would
+be to me worth all the natural history I ever read. If I could but see why
+he changes his mind so often and so suddenly--what he saw about that flower
+to make him seek it--then why, on a nearer approach, he should decline
+further acquaintance with it, and go rocking away through the air, to do
+the same fifty times over again--it would give me an insight into all
+animal and vegetable life that ages of study could not bring me up to." I
+was thinking all this behind my daughter's umbrella, while a lark, whose
+body had melted quite away in the heavenly spaces, was scattering bright
+beads of ringing melody straight down upon our heads; while a cock was
+crowing like a clarion from the home-farm, as if in defiance of the golden
+glitter of his silent brother on the roof of the stable; while a little
+stream that scampered down the same slope as the lawn lay upon, from a well
+in the stable-yard, mingled its sweet undertone of contentment with the
+jubilation of the lark and the business-like hum of the bees; and while
+white clouds floated in the majesty of silence across the blue deeps of the
+heavens. The air was so full of life and reviving, that it seemed like the
+crude substance that God might take to make babies' souls of--only the very
+simile smells of materialism, and therefore I do not like it.
+
+"Papa," said Connie at length, and I was beside her in a moment. Her face
+looked almost glorified with delight: there was a hush of that awe upon it
+which is perhaps one of the deepest kinds of delight. She put out her thin
+white hand, took hold of a button of my coat, drew me down towards her, and
+said in a whisper:
+
+"Don't you think God is here, papa?"
+
+"Yes, I do, my darling," I answered.
+
+"Doesn't _he_ enjoy this?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. He wouldn't make us enjoy it if he did not enjoy it. It
+would be to deceive us to make us glad and blessed, while our Father did
+not care about it, or how it came to us. At least it would amount to making
+us no longer his children."
+
+"I am so glad you think so. I do. And I shall enjoy it so much more now."
+
+She could hardly finish her sentence, but burst out sobbing so that I was
+afraid she would hurt herself. I saw, however, that it was best to leave
+her to quiet herself, and motioned to the rest to keep back and let her
+recover as she could. The emotion passed off in a summer shower, and when I
+went round once more, her face was shining just like a wet landscape after
+the sun has come out and Nature has begun to make gentle game of her own
+past sorrows. In a little while, she was merry--merrier, notwithstanding
+her weakness, than I think I had ever seen her before.
+
+"Look at that comical sparrow," she said. "Look how he cocks his head
+first on one side and then on the other. Does he want us to see him? Is he
+bumptious, or what?"
+
+"I hardly know, my dear. I think sparrows are very like schoolboys; and
+I suspect that if we understood the one class thoroughly, we should
+understand the other. But I confess I do not yet understand either."
+
+"Perhaps you will when Charlie and Harry are old enough to go to school,"
+said Connie.
+
+"It is my only chance of making any true acquaintance with the sparrows,"
+I answered. "Look at them now," I exclaimed, as a little crowd of them
+suddenly appeared where only one had stood a moment before, and exploded
+in objurgation and general unintelligible excitement. After some obscure
+fluttering of wings and pecking, they all vanished except two, which walked
+about in a dignified manner, trying apparently to seem quite unconscious
+each of the other's presence.
+
+"I think it was a political meeting of some sort," said Connie, laughing
+merrily.
+
+"Well, they have this advantage over us," I answered, "that they get
+through their business whatever it may be, with considerably greater
+expedition than we get through ours."
+
+A short silence followed, during which Connie lay contemplating everything.
+
+"What do you think we girls are like, then, papa?" she asked at length.
+"Don't say you don't know, now."
+
+"I ought to know something more about you than I do about schoolboys. And
+I think I do know a little about girls--not much though. They puzzle me a
+good deal sometimes. I know what a great-hearted woman is, Connie."
+
+"You can't help doing that, papa," interrupted Connie, adding with her old
+roguishness, "You mustn't pass yourself off for very knowing for that. By
+the time Wynnie is quite grown up, your skill will be tried."
+
+"I hope I shall understand her then, and you too, Connie."
+
+A shadow, just like the shadow of one of those white clouds above us,
+passed over her face, and she said, trying to smile:
+
+"I shall never grow up, papa. If I live, I shall only be a girl at best--a
+creature you can't understand."
+
+"On the contrary, Connie, I think I understand you almost as well as mamma.
+But there isn't so much to understand yet, you know, as there will be."
+
+Her merriment returned.
+
+"Tell me what girls are like, then, or I shall sulk all day because you say
+there isn't so much in me as in mamma."
+
+"Well, I think, if the boys are like sparrows, the girls are like swallows.
+Did you ever watch them before rain, Connie, skimming about over the lawn
+as if it were water, low towards its surface, but never alighting? You
+never see them grubbing after worms. Nothing less than things with wings
+like themselves will satisfy them. They will be obliged to the earth only
+for a little mud to build themselves nests with. For the rest, they live in
+the air, and on the creatures of the air. And then, when they fancy the
+air begins to be uncivil, sending little shoots of cold through their
+warm feathers, they vanish. They won't stand it. They're off to a warmer
+climate, and you never know till you find they're not there any more.
+There, Connie!"
+
+"I don't know, papa, whether you are making game of us or not. If you are
+not, then I wish all you say were quite true of us. If you are then I think
+it is not quite like you to be satirical."
+
+"I am no believer in satire, Connie. And I didn't mean any. The swallows
+are lovely creatures, and there would be no harm if the girls were a little
+steadier than the swallows. Further satire than that I am innocent of."
+
+"I don't mind that much, papa. Only I'm steady enough, and no thanks to me
+for it," she added with a sigh.
+
+"Connie," I said, "it's all for the sake of your wings that you're kept in
+your nest."
+
+She did not stay out long this first day, for the life the air gave her
+soon tired her weak body. But the next morning she was brighter and better,
+and longing to get up and go out again. When she was once more laid on her
+couch on the lawn, in the midst of the world of light and busy-ness, in
+which the light was the busiest of all, she said to me:
+
+"Papa, I had such a strange dream last night: shall I tell it you?"
+
+"If you please, my dear. I am very fond of dreams that have any sense in
+them--or even of any that have good nonsense in them. I woke this morning,
+saying to myself, 'Dante, the poet, must have been a respectable man, for
+he was permitted by the council of Florence to carry the Nicene Creed and
+the Multiplication Table in his coat of arms.' Now tell me your dream."
+
+Connie laughed. All the household tried to make Connie laugh, and generally
+succeeded. It was quite a triumph to Charlie or Harry, and was sure to be
+recounted with glee at the next meal, when he succeeded in making Connie
+laugh.
+
+"Mine wasn't a dream to make me laugh. It was too dreadful at first, and
+too delightful afterwards. I suppose it was getting out for the first time
+yesterday that made me dream it. I thought I was lying quite still, without
+breathing even, with my hands straight down by my sides and my eyes closed.
+I did not choose to open them, for I knew that if I did I should see
+nothing but the inside of the lid of my coffin. I did not mind it much
+at first, for I was very quiet, and not uncomfortable. Everything was as
+silent as it should be, for I was ten feet and a half under the surface of
+the earth in the churchyard. Old Sogers was not far from me on one side,
+and that was a comfort; only there was a thick wall of earth between.
+But as the time went on, I began to get uncomfortable. I could not help
+thinking how long I should have to wait for the resurrection. Somehow I
+had forgotten all that you teach us about that. Perhaps it was a
+punishment--the dream--for forgetting it."
+
+"Silly child! Your dream is far better than your reflections."
+
+"Well, I'll go on with my dream. I lay a long time till I got very tired,
+and wanted to get up, O, so much! But still I lay, and although I tried, I
+could not move hand or foot. At last I burst out crying. I was ashamed of
+crying in my coffin, but I couldn't bear it any longer. I thought I was
+quite disgraced, for everybody was expected to be perfectly quiet and
+patient down there. But the moment I began to cry, I heard a sound. And
+when I listened it was the sound of spades and pickaxes. It went on and on,
+and came nearer and nearer. And then--it was so strange--I was dreadfully
+frightened at the idea of the light and the wind, and of the people seeing
+me in my coffin and my night-dress, and tried to persuade myself that it
+was somebody else they were digging for, or that they were only going to
+lay another coffin over mine. And I thought that if it was you, papa, I
+shouldn't mind how long I lay there, for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely,
+even though we could not speak a word to each other all the time. But the
+sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last a pickaxe struck, with a
+blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of the coffin, right over my
+head.
+
+"'Here she is, poor thing!' I heard a sweet voice say.
+
+"'I'm so glad we've found her,' said another voice.
+
+"'She couldn't bear it any longer,' said a third more pitiful voice than
+either of the others. 'I heard her first,' it went on. 'I was away up in
+Orion, when I thought I heard a woman crying that oughtn't to be crying.
+And I stopped and listened. And I heard her again. Then I knew that it was
+one of the buried ones, and that she had been buried long enough, and was
+ready for the resurrection. So as any business can wait except that, I flew
+here and there till I fell in with the rest of you.'
+
+"I think, papa, that this must have been because of what you were saying
+the other evening about the mysticism of St. Paul; that while he defended
+with all his might the actual resurrection of Christ and the resurrection
+of those he came to save, he used it as meaning something more yet, as a
+symbol for our coming out of the death of sin into the life of truth. Isn't
+that right, papa?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; I believe so. But I want to hear your dream first, and then
+your way of accounting for it."
+
+"There isn't much more of it now."
+
+"There must be the best of it."
+
+"Yes; I allow that. Well, while they spoke--it was a wonderfully clear
+and connected dream: I never had one like it for that, or for anything
+else--they were clearing away the earth and stones from the top of my
+coffin. And I lay trembling and expecting to be looked at, like a thing in
+a box as I was, every moment. But they lifted me, coffin and all, out of
+the grave, for I felt the motion of it up. Then they set it down, and I
+heard them taking the lid off. But after the lid was off, it did not seem
+to make much difference to me. I could not open my eyes. I saw no light,
+and felt no wind blowing upon me. But I heard whispering about me. Then I
+felt warm, soft hands washing my face, and then I felt wafts of wind coming
+on my face, and thought they came from the waving of wings. And when they
+had washed my eyes, the air came upon them so sweet and cool! and I opened
+them, I thought, and here I was lying on this couch, with butterflies and
+bees flitting and buzzing about me, the brook singing somewhere near me,
+and a lark up in the sky. But there were no angels--only plenty of light
+and wind and living creatures. And I don't think I ever knew before what
+happiness meant. Wasn't it a resurrection, papa, to come out of the grave
+into such a world as this?"
+
+"Indeed it was, my darling--and a very beautiful and true dream. There is
+no need for me to moralise it to you, for you have done so for yourself
+already. But not only do I think that the coming out of sin into goodness,
+out of unbelief into faith in God, is like your dream; but I do expect that
+no dream of such delight can come up to the sense of fresh life and being
+that we shall have when we get on the higher body after this one won't
+serve our purpose any longer, and is worn out and cast aside. The very
+ability of the mind, whether of itself, or by some inspiration of the
+Almighty, to dream such things, is a proof of our capacity for such things,
+a proof, I think, that for such things we were made. Here comes in the
+chance for faith in God--the confidence in his being and perfection that he
+would not have made us capable without meaning to fill that capacity. If he
+is able to make us capable, that is the harder half done already. The other
+he can easily do. And if he is love he will do it. You should thank God for
+that dream, Connie."
+
+"I was afraid to do that, papa."
+
+"That is as much as to fear that there is one place to which David
+might have fled, where God would not find him--the most terrible of all
+thoughts."
+
+"Where do you mean, papa?"
+
+"Dreamland, my dear. If it is right to thank God for a beautiful thought--I
+mean a thought of strength and grace giving you fresh life and hope--why
+should you be less bold to thank him when such thoughts arise in plainer
+shape--take such vivid forms to your mind that they seem to come through
+the doors of the eyes into the vestibule of the brain, and thence into the
+inner chambers of the soul?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE JOURNEY.
+
+
+
+
+
+For more than two months Charlie and Harry had been preparing for the
+journey. The moment they heard of the prospect of it, they began to
+prepare, accumulate, and pack stores both for the transit and the sojourn.
+First of all there was an extensive preparation of ginger-beer, consisting,
+as I was informed in confidence, of brown sugar, ground ginger, and cold
+water. This store was, however, as near as I can judge, exhausted and
+renewed about twelve times before the day of departure arrived; and when at
+last the auspicious morning dawned, they remembered with dismay that they
+had drunk the last drop two days before, and there was none in stock. Then
+there was a wonderful and more successful hoarding of marbles, of a variety
+so great that my memory refuses to bear the names of the different kinds,
+which, I think, must have greatly increased since the time when I too was
+a boy, when some marbles--one of real, white marble with red veins
+especially--produced in my mind something of the delight that a work of art
+produces now. These were carefully deposited in one of the many divisions
+of a huge old hair-trunk, which they had got their uncle Weir, who could
+use his father's tools with pleasure if not to profit, to fit up for them
+with a multiplicity of boxes, and cupboards, and drawers, and trays, and
+slides, that was quite bewildering. In this same box was stowed also a
+quantity of hair, the gleanings of all the horse-tails upon the premises.
+This was for making fishing-tackle, with a vague notion on the part of
+Harry that it was to be employed in catching whales and crocodiles. Then
+all their favourite books were stowed away in the same chest, in especial
+a packet of a dozen penny books, of which I think I could give a complete
+list now. For one afternoon as I searched about in the lumber-room after a
+set of old library steps, which I wanted to get repaired, I came upon the
+chest, and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of
+books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from
+Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and this in
+the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the
+rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair
+with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those stories, not to say
+the names of them, over yet. Only I knew every one of them before; finding
+now that they had fared like good vintages, for if they had lost something
+in potency, they had gained much in flavour. Harry could not read these,
+and Charlie not very well, but they put confidence in them notwithstanding,
+in virtue of the red, blue, and yellow prints. Then there was a box of
+sawdust, the design of which I have not yet discovered; a huge ball of
+string; a rabbit's skin; a Noah's ark; an American clock, that refused to
+go for all the variety of treatment they gave it; a box of lead-soldiers,
+and twenty other things, amongst which was a huge gilt ball having an eagle
+of brass with outspread wings on the top of it.
+
+Great was their consternation and dismay when they found that this magazine
+could not be taken in the post-chaise in which they were to follow us to
+the station. A good part of our luggage had been sent on before us, but the
+boys had intended the precious box to go with themselves. Knowing well,
+however, how little they would miss it, and with what shouts of south-sea
+discovery they would greet the forgotten treasure when they returned, I
+insisted on the lumbering article being left in peace. So that, as man
+goeth treasureless to his grave, whatever he may have accumulated before
+the fatal moment, they had to set off for the far country without chest or
+ginger-beer--not therefore altogether so desolate and unprovided for as
+they imagined. The abandoned treasure was forgotten the moment the few
+tears it had occasioned were wiped away.
+
+It was the loveliest of mornings when we started upon our journey. The
+sun shone, the wind was quiet, and everything was glad. The swallows were
+twittering from the corbels they had added to the adornment of the dear old
+house.
+
+"I'm sorry to leave the swallows behind," said Wynnie, as she stepped into
+the carriage after her mother. Connie, of course, was already there, eager
+and strong-hearted for the journey.
+
+We set off. Connie was in delight with everything, especially with all
+forms of animal life and enjoyment that we saw on the road. She seemed to
+enter into the spirit of the cows feeding on the rich green grass of the
+meadows, of the donkeys eating by the roadside, of the horses we met
+bravely diligent at their day's work, as they trudged along the road with
+wagon or cart behind them. I sat by the coachman, but so that I could see
+her face by the slightest turning of my head. I knew by its expression
+that she gave a silent blessing to the little troop of a brown-faced gipsy
+family, which came out of a dingy tent to look at the passing carriage. A
+fleet of ducklings in a pool, paddling along under the convoy of the parent
+duck, next attracted her.
+
+"Look; look. Isn't that delicious?" she cried.
+
+"I don't think I should like it though," said Wynnie.
+
+"What shouldn't you like, Wynnie?" asked her mother.
+
+"To be in the water and not feel it wet. Those feathers!"
+
+"They feel it with their legs and their webby toes," said Connie.
+
+"Yes, that is some consolation," answered Wynnie.
+
+"And if you were a duck, you would feel the good of your feathers in
+winter, when you got into your cold bath of a morning."
+
+I give all this chat for the sake of showing how Connie's illness had not
+in the least withdrawn her from nature and her sympathies--had rather, as
+it were, made all the fibres of her being more delicate and sympathetic,
+so that the things around her could enter her soul even more easily than
+before, and what had seemed to shut her out had in reality brought her into
+closer contact with the movements of all vitality.
+
+We had to pass through the village to reach the railway station. Everybody
+almost was out to bid us good-bye. I did not want, for Connie's sake
+chiefly, to have any scene, but recalling something I had forgotten to
+say to one of my people, I stopped the carriage to speak to him. The same
+instant there was a crowd of women about us. But Connie was the centre of
+all their regards. They hardly looked at her mother or sister. Had she been
+a martyr who had stood the test and received her aureole, she could hardly
+have been more regarded. The common use of the word martyr is a curious
+instance of how words get degraded. The sufferings involved in martyrdom,
+and not the pure will giving occasion to that suffering, is fixed upon by
+the common mind as the martyrdom. The witness-bearing is lost sight of,
+except we can suppose that "a martyr to the toothache" means a witness of
+the fact of the toothache and its tortures. But while _martyrdom_ really
+means a bearing for the sake of the truth, yet there is a way in which any
+suffering, even that we have brought upon ourselves, may become martyrdom.
+When it is so borne that the sufferer therein bears witness to the presence
+and fatherhood of God, in quiet, hopeful submission to his will, in gentle
+endurance, and that effort after cheerfulness which is not seldom to be
+seen where the effort is hardest to make; more than all, perhaps, and
+rarest of all, when it is accepted as the just and merciful consequence
+of wrong-doing, and is endured humbly, and with righteous shame, as the
+cleansing of the Father's hand, indicating that repentance unto life which
+lifts the sinner out of his sins, and makes him such that the holiest men
+of old would talk to him with gladness and respect, then indeed it may be
+called a martyrdom. This latter could not be Connie's case, but the former
+was hers, and so far she might be called a martyr, even as the old women of
+the village designated her.
+
+After we had again started, our ears were invaded with shouts from the
+post-chaise behind us, in which Charlie and Harry, their grief at the
+abandoned chest forgotten as if it had never been, were yelling in the
+exuberance of their gladness. Dora, more staid as became her years, was
+trying to act the matron with them in vain, and old nursie had enough to
+do with Miss Connie's baby to heed what the young gentlemen were about, so
+long as explosions of noise was all the mischief. Walter, the man-servant,
+who had been with us ten years, and was the main prop of the establishment,
+looking after everything and putting his hand to everything, with an
+indefinite charge ranging from the nursery to the wine-cellar, and from
+the corn-bin to the pig-trough, and who, as we could not possibly get on
+without him, sat on the box of the post-chaise beside the driver from
+the Griffin, rather connived, I fear, than otherwise at the noise of the
+youngsters.
+
+"Good-bye, Marshmallows," they were shouting at the top of their voices,
+as if they had just been released from a prison, where they had spent a
+wretched childhood; and, as it could hardly offend anybody's ears on the
+open country road I allowed them to shout till they were tired, which
+condition fortunately arrived before we reached the station, so that there
+was no occasion for me to interfere. I always sought to give them as much
+liberty as could be afforded them.
+
+At the station we found Weir waiting to see us off, with my sister, now in
+wonderful health. Turner was likewise there, and ready to accompany us a
+good part of the way. But beyond the valuable assistance he lent us in
+moving Connie, no occasion arose for the exercise of his professional
+skill. She bore the journey wonderfully, slept not unfrequently, and only
+at the end showed herself at length wearied. We stopped three times on the
+way: first at Salisbury, where the streams running through the streets
+delighted her. There we remained one whole day, but sent the children and
+servants, all but my wife's maid, on before us, under the charge of Walter.
+This left us more at our ease. At Exeter, we stopped only the night, for
+Connie found herself quite able to go on the next morning. Here Turner left
+us, and we missed him very much. Connie looked a little out of spirits
+after his departure, but soon recovered herself. The next night we spent
+at a small town on the borders of Devonshire, which was the limit of our
+railway travelling. Here we remained for another whole day, for the remnant
+of the journey across part of Devonshire and Cornwall to the shore must be
+posted, and was a good five hours' work. We started about eleven o'clock,
+full of spirits at the thought that we had all but accomplished the only
+part of the undertaking about which we had had any uneasiness. Connie was
+quite merry. The air was thoroughly warm. We had an open carriage with
+a hood. Wynnie sat opposite her mother, Dora and Eliza the maid in the
+rumble, and I by the coachman. The road being very hilly, we had
+four horses; and with four horses, sunshine, a gentle wind, hope and
+thankfulness, who would not be happy?
+
+There is a strange delight in motion, which I am not sure that I altogether
+understand. The hope of the end as bringing fresh enjoyment has something
+to do with it, no doubt; the accompaniments of the motion, the change of
+scene, the mystery that lies beyond the next hill or the next turn in
+the road, the breath of the summer wind, the scent of the pine-trees
+especially, and of all the earth, the tinkling jangle of the harness as you
+pass the trees on the roadside, the life of the horses, the glitter and the
+shadow, the cottages and the roses and the rosy faces, the scent of burning
+wood or peat from the chimneys, these and a thousand other things combine
+to make such a journey delightful. But I believe it needs something more
+than this--something even closer to the human life--to account for the
+pleasure that motion gives us. I suspect it is its living symbolism; the
+hidden relations which it bears to the eternal soul in its aspirations and
+longings--ever following after, ever attaining, never satisfied. Do not
+misunderstand me, my reader. A man, you will allow, perhaps, may be content
+although he is not and cannot be happy: I feel inclined to turn all this
+the other way, saying that a man ought always to be happy, never to be
+content. You will see I do not say _contented_; I say _content_. Here comes
+in his faith: his life is hid with Christ in God, measureless, unbounded.
+All things are his, to become his by blessed lovely gradations of gift, as
+his being enlarges to receive; and if ever the shadow of his own necessary
+incompleteness falls upon the man, he has only to remember that in God's
+idea he is complete, only his life is hid from himself with Christ in God
+the Infinite. If anyone accuses me here of mysticism, I plead guilty with
+gladness: I only hope it may be of that true mysticism which, inasmuch as
+he makes constant use of it, St. Paul would understand at once. I leave it,
+however.
+
+I think I must have been the very happiest of the party myself. No doubt I
+was younger much than I am now, but then I was quite middle-aged, with full
+confession thereof in gray hairs and wrinkles. Why should not a man be
+happy when he is growing old, so long as his faith strengthens the feeble
+knees which chiefly suffer in the process of going down the hill? True, the
+fever heat is over, and the oil burns more slowly in the lamp of life; but
+if there is less fervour, there is more pervading warmth; if less of fire,
+more of sunshine; there is less smoke and more light. Verily, youth is
+good, but old age is better--to the man who forsakes not his youth when his
+youth forsakes him. The sweet visitings of nature do not depend upon youth
+or romance, but upon that quiet spirit whose meekness inherits the earth.
+The smell of that field of beans gives me more delight now than ever it
+could have given me when I was a youth. And if I ask myself why I find it
+is simply because I have more faith now than I had then. It came to me then
+as an accident of nature--a passing pleasure flung to me only as the dogs'
+share of the crumbs. Now I believe that God _means_ that odour of the
+bean-field; that when Jesus smelled such a scent about Jerusalem or in
+Galilee, he thought of his Father. And if God means it, it is mine, even if
+I should never smell it again. The music of the spheres is mine if old age
+should make me deaf as the adder. Am I mystical again, reader? Then I hope
+you are too, or will be before you have done with this same beautiful
+mystical life of ours. More and more nature becomes to me one of God's
+books of poetry--not his grandest--that is history--but his loveliest,
+perhaps.
+
+And ought I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy?
+I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by
+describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the
+countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a
+word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness
+of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, a little weary,
+lifts herself again into the deeper heavens from stooping towards the
+earth. Wynnie's face was bright with the brightness of the morning star,
+ever growing pale and faint over the amber ocean that brightens at the
+sun's approach; for life looked to Wynnie severe in its light, and somewhat
+sad because severe. Connie's face was bright with the brightness of a lake
+in the rosy evening, the sound of the river flowing in and the sound of the
+river flowing forth just audible, but itself still, and content to be still
+and mirror the sunset. Dora's was bright with the brightness of a marigold
+that follows the sun without knowing it; and Eliza's was bright with the
+brightness of a half-blown cabbage rose, radiating good-humour. This last
+is not a good simile, but I cannot find a better. I confess failure, and go
+on.
+
+After stopping once to bait, during which operation Connie begged to be
+carried into the parlour of the little inn that she might see the china
+figures that were certain to be on the chimney-piece, as indeed they were,
+where she drank a whole tumbler of new milk before we lifted her to carry
+her back, we came upon a wide high moorland country the roads through which
+were lined with gorse in full golden bloom, while patches of heather all
+about were showing their bells, though not yet in their autumnal outburst
+of purple fire. Here I began to be reminded of Scotland, in which I had
+travelled a good deal between the ages of twenty and five-and-twenty. The
+further I went the stronger I felt the resemblance. The look of the fields,
+the stone fences that divided them, the shape and colour and materials of
+the houses, the aspect of the people, the feeling of the air, and of the
+earth and sky generally, made me imagine myself in a milder and more
+favoured Scotland. The west wind was fresh, but had none of that sharp edge
+which one can so often detect in otherwise warm winds blowing under a hot
+sun. Though she had already travelled so many miles, Connie brightened up
+within a few minutes after we got on this moor; and we had not gone much
+farther before a shout from the rumble informed us that keen-eyed little
+Dora had discovered the Atlantic: a dip in the high coast revealed it blue
+and bright. We soon lost sight of it again, but in Connie's eyes it seemed
+to linger still. As often as I looked round, the blue of them seemed the
+reflection of the sea in their little convex mirrors. Ethelwyn's eyes, too,
+were full of it, and a flush on her generally pale cheek showed that she
+too expected the ocean. After a few miles along this breezy expanse, we
+began to descend towards the sea-level. Down the winding of a gradual
+slope, interrupted by steep descents, we approached this new chapter in our
+history. We came again upon a few trees here and there, all with their tops
+cut off in a plane inclined upwards away from the sea. For the sea-winds,
+like a sweeping scythe, bend the trees all away towards the land, and keep
+their tops mown with their sharp rushing, keen with salt spray off the
+crests of the broken waves. Then we passed through some ancient villages,
+with streets narrow, and steep and sharp-angled, that needed careful
+driving and the frequent pressure of the break upon the wheel. And now the
+sea shone upon us with nearer greeting, and we began to fancy we could hear
+its talk with the shore. At length we descended a sharp hill, reached the
+last level, drove over a bridge and down the line of the stream, saw
+the land vanish in the sea--a wide bay; then drove over another wooden
+drawbridge, and along the side of a canal in which lay half-a-dozen sloops
+and schooners. Then came a row of pretty cottages; then a gate, and an
+ascent, and ere we reached the rectory, we were aware of its proximity by
+loud shouts, and the sight of Charlie and Harry scampering along the top
+of a stone wall to meet us. This made their mother nervous, but she kept
+quiet, knowing that unrestrained anxiety is always in danger of bringing
+about the evil it fears. A moment after, we drew up at a long porch,
+leading through the segment of a circle to the door of the house. The
+journey was over. We got down in the little village of Kilkhaven, in the
+county of Cornwall.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+WHAT WE DID WHEN WE ARRIVED.
+
+
+
+
+
+We carried Connie in first of all, of course, and into the room which nurse
+had fixed upon for her--the best in the house, of course, again. She did
+seem tired now, and no wonder. She had a cup of tea at once, and in half an
+hour dinner was ready, of which we were all very glad. After dinner I went
+up to Connie's room. There I found her fast asleep on the sofa, and Wynnie
+as fast asleep on the floor beside her. The drive and the sea air had
+had the same effect on both of them. But pleased as I was to see Connie
+sleeping so sweetly, I was even more pleased to see Wynnie asleep on the
+floor. What a wonderful satisfaction it may give to a father and mother to
+see this or that child asleep! It is when her kittens are asleep that the
+cat creeps away to look after her own comforts. Our cat chose to have her
+kittens in my study once, and as I would not have her further disturbed
+than to give them another cushion to lie on in place of that which belonged
+to my sofa, I had many opportunities of watching them as I wrote, or
+prepared my sermons. But I must not talk about the cat and her kittens
+now. When parents see their children asleep, especially if they have been
+suffering in any way, they breathe more freely; a load is lifted off their
+minds; their responsibility seems over; the children have gone back to
+their Father, and he alone is looking after them for a while. Now, I had
+not been comfortable about Wynnie for some time, and especially during our
+journey, and still more especially during the last part of our journey.
+There was something amiss with her. She seemed constantly more or less
+dejected, as if she had something to think about that was too much for her,
+although, to tell the truth, I really believe now that she had not quite
+enough to think about. Some people can thrive tolerably without much
+thought: at least, they both live comfortably without it, and do not seem
+to be capable of effecting it if it were required of them; while for others
+a large amount of mental and spiritual operation is necessary for the
+health of both body and mind, and when the matter or occasion for so much
+is not afforded them, the consequence is analogous to what follows when a
+healthy physical system is not supplied with sufficient food: the oxygen,
+the source of life, begins to consume the life itself; it tears up the
+timbers of the house to burn against the cold. Or, to use a different
+simile, when the Moses-rod of circumstance does not strike the rock and
+make the waters flow, such a mind--one that must think to live--will go
+digging into itself, and is in danger of injuring the very fountain of
+thought, by drawing away its living water into ditches and stagnant pools.
+This was, I say, the case in part with my Wynnie, although I did not
+understand it at that moment. She did not look quite happy, did not always
+meet a smile with a smile, looked almost reprovingly upon the frolics of
+the little brother-imps, and though kindness itself when any real hurt or
+grief befell them, had reverted to her old, somewhat dictatorial manner,
+of which I have already spoken as interrupted by Connie's accident. To her
+mother and me she was service itself, only service without the smile which
+is as the flame of the sacrifice and makes it holy. So we were both a
+little uneasy about her, for we did not understand her. On the journey she
+had seemed almost annoyed at Connie's ecstasies, and said to Dora many
+times: "Do be quiet, Dora;" although there was not a single creature but
+ourselves within hearing, and poor Connie seemed only delighted with the
+child's explosions. So I was--but although I say _so_, I hardly know why
+I was pleased to see her thus, except it was from a vague belief in the
+anodyne of slumber. But this pleasure did not last long; for as I stood
+regarding my two treasures, even as if my eyes had made her uncomfortable,
+she suddenly opened hers, and started to her feet, with the words, "I beg
+your pardon, papa," looking almost guiltily round her, and putting up her
+hair hurriedly, as if she had committed an impropriety in being caught
+untidy. This was fresh sign of a condition of mind that was not healthy.
+
+"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see
+you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you."
+
+"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must be
+very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or
+rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there
+must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know what
+it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something, and you
+had come to find fault with me. _Is_ there anything, papa?"
+
+"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like
+that."
+
+"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why
+shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa."
+
+Here Connie woke up.
+
+"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing something
+I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take that sin off
+my poor conscience."
+
+"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.
+
+"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."
+
+"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't
+_feel_ wicked."
+
+"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and
+then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say to
+himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one man to
+say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to do as
+St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing--to judge our own selves,
+which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what our Lord
+has told us expressly we are not to do--to judge other people. You get
+your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to explore a little
+of this desert island upon which we have been cast away. And you, Connie,
+just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again."
+
+Wynnie ran for her bonnet, a little afraid perhaps that I was going to talk
+seriously to her, but showing no reluctance anyhow to accompany me.
+
+Now I wonder whether it will be better to tell what we saw, or only what we
+talked about, and give what we saw in the shape in which we reported it to
+Connie, when we came back into her room, bearing, like the spies who went
+to search the land, our bunch of grapes, that is, of sweet news of nature,
+to her who could not go to gather them for herself. It think it will be the
+best plan to take part of both plans.
+
+When we left the door of the house, we went up the few steps of a stair
+leading on to the downs, against and amidst, and indeed _in_, the rocks,
+buttressing the sea-edge of which our new abode was built. A life for a
+big-winged angel seemed waiting us upon those downs. The wind still blew
+from the west, both warm and strong--I mean strength-giving--and the wind
+was the first thing we were aware of. The ground underfoot was green and
+soft and springy, and sprinkled all over with the bright flowers, chiefly
+yellow, that live amidst the short grasses of the downs, the shadows of
+whose unequal surface were now beginning to be thrown east, for the sun was
+going seawards. I stood up, stretched out my arms, threw back my shoulders
+and my head, and filled my chest with a draught of the delicious wind,
+feeling thereafter like a giant refreshed with wine. Wynnie stood
+apparently unmoved amidst the life-nectar, thoughtful, and turning her eyes
+hither and thither.
+
+"That makes me feel young again," I said.
+
+"I wish it would make me feel old then," said Wynnie.
+
+"What do you mean, my child?"
+
+"Because then I should have a chance of knowing what it is like to feel
+young," she answered rather enigmatically. I did not reply. We were walking
+up the brow which hid the sea from us. The smell of the down-turf was
+indescribable in its homely delicacy; and by the time we had reached the
+top, almost every sense was filled with its own delight. The top of the
+hill was the edge of the great shore-cliff; and the sun was hanging on the
+face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for visible
+miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue mantle
+fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped into
+all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which had
+formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising tide up
+on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye, touch and
+smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept this to
+give my reader in Connie's room; but he shall share with her presently. The
+sense of space--of mighty room for life and growth--filled my soul, and I
+thanked God in my heart. The wind seemed to bear that growth into my soul,
+even as the wind of God first breathed into man's nostrils the breath of
+life, and the sun was the pledge of the fulfilment of every aspiration. I
+turned and looked at Wynnie. She stood pleased but listless amidst that
+which lifted me into the heaven of the Presence.
+
+"Don't you enjoy all this grandeur, Wynnie?"
+
+"I told you I was very wicked, papa."
+
+"And I told you not to say so, Wynnie."
+
+"You see I cannot enjoy it, papa. I wonder why it is."
+
+"I suspect it is because you haven't room, Wynnie."
+
+"I know you mean something more than I know, papa."
+
+"I mean, my dear, that it is not because you are wicked, but because you do
+not know God well enough, and therefore your being, which can only live in
+him, is 'cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.' It is only in him that the
+soul has room. In knowing him is life and its gladness. The secret of your
+own heart you can never know; but you can know Him who knows its secret.
+Look up, my darling; see the heavens and the earth. You do not feel them,
+and I do not call upon you to feel them. It would be both useless and
+absurd to do so. But just let them look at you for a moment, and then tell
+me whether it must not be a blessed life that creates such a glory as this
+All."
+
+She stood silent for a moment, looked up at the sky, looked round on the
+earth, looked far across the sea to the setting sun, and then turned her
+eyes upon me. They were filled with tears, but whether from feeling, or
+sorrow that she could not feel, I would not inquire. I made haste to speak
+again.
+
+"As this world of delight surrounds and enters your bodily frame, so does
+God surround your soul and live in it. To be at home with the awful source
+of your being, through the child-like faith which he not only permits, but
+requires, and is ever teaching you, or rather seeking to rouse up in you,
+is the only cure for such feelings as those that trouble you. Do not say it
+is too high for you. God made you in his own image, therefore capable of
+understanding him. For this final end he sent his Son, that the Father
+might with him come into you, and dwell with you. Till he does so, the
+temple of your soul is vacant; there is no light behind the veil, no cloudy
+pillar over it; and the priests, your thoughts, feelings, loves, and
+desires, moan, and are troubled--for where is the work of the priest when
+the God is not there? When He comes to you, no mystery, no unknown feeling,
+will any longer distress you. You will say, 'He knows, though I do not.'
+And you will be at the secret of the things he has made. You will feel what
+they are, and that which his will created in gladness you will receive
+in joy. One glimmer of the present God in this glory would send you home
+singing. But do not think I blame you, Wynnie, for feeling sad. I take it
+rather as the sign of a large life in you, that will not be satisfied with
+little things. I do not know when or how it may please God to give you the
+quiet of mind that you need; but I tell you that I believe it is to be had;
+and in the mean time, you must go on doing your work, trusting in God even
+for this. Tell him to look at your sorrow, ask him to come and set it
+right, making the joy go up in your heart by his presence. I do not know
+when this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his
+hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears.
+Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and from
+going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for the sake
+of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful teaching of
+God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand. Trust, my daughter,
+and let that give you courage and strength."
+
+Now the sky and the sea and the earth must have made me able to say these
+things to her; but I knew that, whatever the immediate occasion of her
+sadness, such was its only real cure. Other things might, in virtue of the
+will of God that was in them, give her occupation and interest enough for a
+time, but nothing would do finally, but God himself. Here I was sure I was
+safe; here I knew lay the hunger of humanity. Humanity may, like other
+vital forms, diseased systems, fix on this or that as the object not merely
+of its desire but of its need: it can never be stilled by less than the
+bread of life--the very presence in the innermost nature of the Father and
+the Son.
+
+We walked on together. Wynnie made me no reply, but, weeping silently,
+clung to my arm. We walked a long way by the edge of the cliffs, beheld
+the sun go down, and then turned and went home. When we reached the house,
+Wynnie left me, saying only, "Thank you, papa. I think it is all true. I
+will try to be a better girl."
+
+I went straight to Connie's room: she was lying as I saw her last, looking
+out of her window.
+
+"Connie," I said, "Wynnie and I have had such a treat--such a sunset!"
+
+"I've seen a little of the light of it on the waves in the bay there, but
+the high ground kept me from seeing the sunset itself. Did it set in the
+sea?"
+
+"You do want the General Gazetteer, after all, Connie. Is that water the
+Atlantic, or is it not? And if it be, where on earth could the sun set but
+in it?"
+
+"Of course, papa. What a goose I am! But don't make game of me--_please_. I
+am too deliciously happy to be made game of to-night."
+
+"I won't make game of you, my darling. I will tell you about the
+sunset--the colours of it, at least. This must be one of the best places in
+the whole world to see sunsets."
+
+"But you have had no tea, papa. I thought you would come and have your
+tea with me. But you were so long, that mamma would not let me wait any
+longer."
+
+"O, never mind the tea, my dear. But Wynnie has had none. You've got a
+tea-caddy of your own, haven't you?"
+
+"Yes, and a teapot; and there's the kettle on the hob--for I can't do
+without a little fire in the evenings."
+
+"Then I'll make some tea for Wynnie and myself, and tell you at the same
+time about the sunset. I never saw such colours. I cannot tell you what it
+was like while the sun was yet going down, for the glory of it has burned
+the memory of it out of me. But after the sun was down, the sky remained
+thinking about him; and the thought of the sky was in delicate translucent
+green on the horizon, just the colour of the earth etherealised and
+glorified--a broad band; then came another broad band of pale rose-colour;
+and above that came the sky's own eternal blue, pale likewise, but so sure
+and changeless. I never saw the green and the blue divided and harmonised
+by the rose-colour before. It was a wonderful sight. If it is warm enough
+to-morrow, we will carry you out on the height, that you may see what the
+evening will bring."
+
+"There is one thing about sunsets," returned Connie--"two things, that make
+me rather sad--about themselves, not about anything else. Shall I tell you
+them?"
+
+"Do, my love. There are few things more precious to learn than the effects
+of Nature upon individual minds. And there is not a feeling of yours, my
+child, that is not of value to me."
+
+"You are so kind, papa! I am so glad of my accident. I think I should never
+have known how good you are but for that. But my thoughts seem so little
+worth after you say so much about them."
+
+"Let me be judge of that, my dear."
+
+"Well, one thing is, that we shall never, never, never, see the same sunset
+again."
+
+"That is true. But why should we? God does not care to do the same thing
+over again. When it is once done, it is done, and he goes on doing
+something new. For, to all eternity, he never will have done showing
+himself by new, fresh things. It would be a loss to do the same thing
+again."
+
+"But that just brings me to my second trouble. The thing is lost. I forget
+it. Do what I can, I cannot remember sunsets. I try to fix them fast in my
+memory, that I may recall them when I want them; but just as they fade out
+of the sky, all into blue or gray, so they fade out of my mind and leave it
+as if they had never been there--except perhaps two or three. Now, though
+I did not see this one, yet, after you have talked about it, I shall never
+forget _it_."
+
+"It is not, and never will be, as if they had never been. They have their
+influence, and leave that far deeper than your memory--in your very being,
+Connie. But I have more to say about it, although it is only an idea,
+hardly an assurance. Our brain is necessarily an imperfect instrument. For
+its right work, perhaps it is needful that it should forget in part. But
+there are grounds for believing that nothing is ever really forgotten. I
+think that, when we have a higher existence than we have now, when we are
+clothed with that spiritual body of which St. Paul speaks, you will be able
+to recall any sunset you have ever seen with an intensity proportioned to
+the degree of regard and attention you gave it when it was present to you.
+But here comes Wynnie to see how you are.--I've been making some tea for
+you, Wynnie, my love."
+
+"O, thank you, papa--I shall be so glad of some tea!" said Wynnie, the
+paleness of whose face showed the red rims of her eyes the more plainly.
+She had had what girls call a good cry, and was clearly the better for it.
+
+The same moment my wife came in. "Why didn't you send for me, Harry, to get
+your tea?" she said.
+
+"I did not deserve any, seeing I had disregarded proper times and seasons.
+But I knew you must be busy."
+
+"I have been superintending the arrangement of bedrooms, and the unpacking,
+and twenty different things," said Ethelwyn. "We shall be so comfortable!
+It is such a curious house! Have you had a nice walk?"
+
+"Mamma, I never had such a walk in my life," returned Wynnie. "You would
+think the shore had been built for the sake of the show--just for a
+platform to see sunsets from. And the sea! Only the cliffs will be rather
+dangerous for the children."
+
+"I have just been telling Connie about the sunset. She could see something
+of the colours on the water, but not much more."
+
+"O, Connie, it will be so delightful to get you out here! Everything is
+so big! There is such room everywhere! But it must be awfully windy in
+winter," said Wynnie, whose nature was always a little prospective, if not
+apprehensive.
+
+But I must not keep my reader longer upon mere family chat.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+MORE ABOUT KILKHAVEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+Our dining-room was one story below the level at which we had entered the
+parsonage; for, as I have said, the house was built into the face of the
+cliff, just where it sunk nearly to the level of the shores of the bay.
+While at dinner, on the evening of our arrival, I kept looking from the
+window, of course, and I saw before me, first a little bit of garden,
+mostly in turf, then a low stone wall; beyond, over the top of the wall,
+the blue water of the bay; then beyond the water, all alive with light and
+motion, the rocks and sand-hills of the opposite side of the little bay,
+not a quarter of a mile across. I could likewise see where the shore went
+sweeping out and away to the north, with rock after rock standing far into
+the water, as if gazing over the awful wild, where there was nothing to
+break the deathly waste between Cornwall and Newfoundland. But for the
+moment I did not regard the huge power lying outside so much as the merry
+blue bay between me and those rocks and sand-hills. If I moved my head a
+little to the right, I saw, over the top of the low wall already mentioned,
+and apparently quite close to it the slender yellow masts of a schooner,
+her mainsail hanging loose from the gaff, whose peak was lowered. We must,
+I thought, be on the very harbour-quay. When I went out for my walk with
+Wynnie, I had turned from the bay, and gone to the brow of the cliffs
+overhanging the open sea on our own side of it.
+
+When I came down to breakfast in the same room next morning, I stared. The
+blue had changed to yellow. The life of the water was gone. Nothing met my
+eyes but a wide expanse of dead sand. You could walk straight across
+the bay to the hills opposite. From the look of the rocks, from the
+perpendicular cliffs on the coast, I had almost, without thinking,
+concluded that we were on the shore of a deep-water bay. It was high-water,
+or nearly so, then; and now, when I looked westward, it was over a long
+reach of sands, on the far border of which the white fringe of the waves
+was visible, as if there was their _hitherto_, and further towards us they
+could not come. Beyond the fringe lay the low hill of the Atlantic. To add
+to my confusion, when I looked to the right, that is, up the bay towards
+the land, there was no schooner there. I went out at the window, which
+opened from the room upon the little lawn, to look, and then saw in a
+moment how it was.
+
+"Do you know, my dear," I said to my wife, "we are just at the mouth of
+that canal we saw as we came along? There are gates and a lock just outside
+there. The schooner that was under this window last night must have gone in
+with the tide. She is lying in the basin above now."
+
+"O, yes, papa," Charlie and Harry broke in together. "We saw it go up
+this morning. We've been out ever so long. It was so funny," Charlie
+went on--everything was _funny_ with Charlie--"to see it rise up like a
+Jack-in-the-box, and then slip into the quiet water through the other
+gates!"
+
+And when I thought about the waves tumbling and breaking away out there,
+and the wide yellow sands between, it was wonderful--which was what Charlie
+meant by funny--to see the little vessel lying so many feet above it all,
+in a still plenty of repose, gathering strength, one might fancy to rush
+out again, when its time was come, into the turmoil beyond, and dash its
+way through the breasts of the billows.
+
+After breakfast we had prayers, as usual, and after a visit to Connie, whom
+I found tired, but wonderfully well, I went out for a walk by myself, to
+explore the neighbourhood, find the church, and, in a word, do something to
+shake myself into my new garments. The day was glorious. I wandered along
+a green path, in the opposite direction from our walk the evening before,
+with a fir-wood on my right hand, and a belt of feathery tamarisks on my
+left, behind which lay gardens sloping steeply to a lower road, where stood
+a few pretty cottages. Turning a corner, I came suddenly in sight of the
+church, on the green down above me--a sheltered yet commanding situation;
+for, while the hill rose above it, protecting it from the east, it looked
+down the bay, and the Atlantic lay open before it. All the earth seemed to
+lie behind it, and all its gaze to be fixed on the symbol of the infinite.
+It stood as the church ought to stand, leading men up the mount of vision,
+to the verge of the eternal, to send them back with their hearts full of
+the strength that springs from hope, by which alone the true work of the
+world can be done. And when I saw it I rejoiced to think that once more
+I was favoured with a church that had a history. Of course it is a happy
+thing to see new churches built wherever there is need of such; but to the
+full idea of the building it is necessary that it should be one in which
+the hopes and fears, the cares and consolations, the loves and desires of
+our forefathers should have been roofed; where the hearts of those through
+whom our country has become that which it is--from whom not merely the
+life-blood of our bodies, but the life-blood of our spirits, has come down
+to us, whose existence and whose efforts have made it possible for us to
+be that which we are--have before us worshipped that Spirit from whose
+fountain the whole torrent of being flows, who ever pours fresh streams
+into the wearying waters of humanity, so ready to settle down into a
+stagnant repose. Therefore I would far rather, when I may, worship in an
+old church, whose very stones are a history of how men strove to realise
+the infinite, compelling even the powers of nature into the task--as I
+soon found on the very doorway of this church, where the ripples of the
+outspread ocean, and grotesque imaginations of the monsters of its deeps,
+fixed, as it might seem, for ever in stone, gave a distorted reflex, from
+the little mirror of the artist's mind, of that mighty water, so awful, so
+significant to the human eye, which yet lies in the hollow of the Father's
+palm, like the handful that the weary traveller lifts from the brook by the
+way. It is in virtue of the truth that went forth in such and such like
+attempts that we are able to hold our portion of the infinite reality which
+God only knows. They have founded our Church for us, and such a church as
+this will stand for the symbol of it; for here we too can worship the
+God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob--the God of Sidney, of Hooker, of
+Herbert. This church of Kilkhaven, old and worn, rose before me a history
+in stone--so beaten and swept about by the "wild west wind,"
+
+  "For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
+  Cleave themselves into chasms,"
+
+and so streamed upon, and washed, and dissolved, by the waters lifted from
+the sea and borne against it on the upper tide of the wind, that you could
+almost fancy it one of those churches that have been buried for ages
+beneath the encroaching waters, lifted again, by some mighty revulsion of
+nature's heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to stand marked
+for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world--scooped, and hollowed,
+and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for ever, responded to
+the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from the most troublous of
+times, will the Church of our land arise, in virtue of what truth she
+holds, and in spite, if she rises at all, of the worldliness of those who,
+instead of seeking her service, have sought and gained the dignities which,
+if it be good that she have it in her power to bestow them, need the
+corrective of a sharply wholesome persecution which of late times she has
+not known. But God knows, and the fire will come in its course--first in
+the form of just indignation, it may be, against her professed servants,
+and then in the form of the furnace seven times heated, in which the true
+builders shall yet walk unhurt save as to their mortal part.
+
+I looked about for some cottage where the sexton might be supposed to live,
+and spied a slated roof, nearly on a level with the road, at a little
+distance in front of me. I could at least inquire there. Before I reached
+it, however, an elderly woman came out and approached me. She was dressed
+in a white cap and a dark-coloured gown. On her face lay a certain repose
+which attracted me. She looked as if she had suffered but had consented to
+it, and therefore could smile. Her smile lay near the surface. A kind word
+was enough to draw it up from the well where it lay shimmering: you could
+always see the smile there, whether it was born or not. But even when she
+smiled, in the very glimmering of that moonbeam, you could see the deep,
+still, perhaps dark, waters under. O! if one could but understand what
+goes on in the souls that have no words, perhaps no inclination, to set it
+forth! What had she endured? How had she learned to have that smile always
+near? What had consoled her, and yet left her her grief--turned it,
+perhaps, into hope? Should I ever know?
+
+She drew near me, as if she would have passed me, as she would have done,
+had I not spoken. I think she came towards me to give me the opportunity of
+speaking if I wished, but she would not address me.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "Can you tell me where to find the sexton?"
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a gleam of the smile brightening underneath
+her old skin, as it were, "I be all the sexton you be likely to find this
+mornin', sir. My husband, he be gone out to see one o' Squire Tregarva's
+hounds as was took ill last night. So if you want to see the old church,
+sir, you'll have to be content with an old woman to show you, sir."
+
+"I shall be quite content, I assure you," I answered. "Will you go and get
+the key?"
+
+"I have the key in my pocket, sir; for I thought that would be what you'd
+be after, sir. And by the time you come to my age, sir, you'll learn to
+think of your old bones, sir. I beg your pardon for making so free. For
+mayhap, says I to myself, he be the gentleman as be come to take Mr.
+Shepherd's duty for him. Be ye now, sir?"
+
+All this was said in a slow sweet subdued tone, nearly of one pitch. You
+would have felt that she claimed the privilege of age with a kind of
+mournful gaiety, but was careful, and anxious even, not to presume upon it,
+and, therefore, gentle as a young girl.
+
+"Yes," I answered. "My name is Walton I have come to take the place of my
+friend Mr. Shepherd; and, of course, I want to see the church."
+
+"Well, she be a bee-utiful old church. Some things, I think, sir, grows
+more beautiful the older they grows. But it ain't us, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, sir, there's my little grandson in the cottage there: he'll never be
+so beautiful again. Them children du be the loves. But we all grows uglier
+as we grows older. Churches don't seem to, sir."
+
+"I'm not so sure about all that," I said again.
+
+"They did say, sir, that I was a pretty girl once. I'm not much to look at
+now."
+
+And she smiled with such a gracious amusement, that I felt at once that if
+there was any vanity left in this memory of her past loveliness, it was
+sweet as the memory of their old fragrance left in the withered leaves of
+the roses.
+
+"But it du not matter, du it, sir? Beauty is only skin-deep."
+
+"I don't believe that," I answered. "Beauty is as deep as the heart at
+least."
+
+"Well to be sure, my old husband du say I be as handsome in his eyes as
+ever I be. But I beg your pardon, sir, for talkin' about myself. I believe
+it was the old church--she set us on to it."
+
+"The old church didn't lead you into any harm then," I answered. "The
+beauty that is in the heart will shine out of the face again some day--be
+sure of that. And after all, there is just the same kind of beauty in a
+good old face that there is in an old church. You can't say the church is
+so trim and neat as it was the day that the first blast of the organ filled
+it as with, a living soul. The carving is not quite so sharp, the timbers
+are not quite so clean. There is a good deal of mould and worm-eating and
+cobwebs about the old place. Yet both you and I think it more beautiful now
+than it was then. Well, I believe it is, as nearly as possible, the same
+with an old face. It has got stained, and weather-beaten, and worn; but if
+the organ of truth has been playing on inside the temple of the Lord, which
+St. Paul says our bodies are, there is in the old face, though both form
+and complexion are gone, just the beauty of the music inside. The wrinkles
+and the brownness can't spoil it. A light shines through it all--that of
+the indwelling spirit. I wish we all grew old like the old churches."
+
+She did not reply, but I thought I saw in her face that she understood my
+mysticism. We had been walking very slowly, had passed through the quaint
+lych-gate, and now the old woman had got the key in the lock of the door,
+whose archway was figured and fashioned as I have described above, with a
+dozen mouldings or more, most of them "carved so curiously."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE OLD CHURCH.
+
+
+
+
+
+The awe that dwells in churches fell upon me as I crossed the threshold--an
+awe I never fail to feel--heightened in many cases, no doubt, by the sense
+of antiquity and of art, but an awe which I have felt all the same in
+crossing the threshold of an old Puritan conventicle, as the place where
+men worship and have worshipped the God of their fathers, although for art
+there was only the science of common bricklaying, and for beauty staring
+ugliness. To the involuntary fancy, the air of petition and of holy need
+seems to linger in the place, and the uncovered head acknowledges the
+sacred symbols of human inspiration and divine revealing. But this was no
+ordinary church into which I followed the gentlewoman who was my guide. As
+entering I turned my eyes eastward, a flush of subdued glory invaded them
+from the chancel, all the windows of which were of richly stained glass,
+and the roof of carved oak lavishly gilded. I had my thoughts about this
+chancel, and thence about chancels generally which may appear in another
+part of my story. Now I have to do only with the church, not with the
+cogitations to which it gave rise. But I will not trouble my reader with
+even what I could tell him of the blending and contradicting of styles
+and modes of architectural thought in the edifice. Age is to the work of
+contesting human hands a wonderful harmoniser of differences. As nature
+brings into harmony all fractures of her frame, and even positive
+intrusions upon her realm, clothes and discolours them, in the old sense of
+the word, so that at length there is no immediate shock at sight of that
+which in itself was crude, and is yet coarse, so the various architecture
+of this building had been gone over after the builders by the musical hand
+of Eld, with wonder of delicate transition and change of key, that one
+could almost fancy the music of its exquisite organ had been at work
+_informing_ the building, half melting the sutures, wearing the sharpness,
+and blending the angles, until in some parts there was but the gentle
+flickering of the original conception left, all its self-assertion vanished
+under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of
+the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and
+wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their
+effects were invisible, were already at work--of the many making one. I
+will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description,
+which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty
+dissociated from human feeling, would only weary him, even if it were not
+unintelligible. When we are reading a poem, we do not first of all examine
+the construction and dwell on the rhymes and rhythms; all that comes after,
+if we find that the poem itself is so good that its parts are therefore
+worth examining, as being probably good in themselves, and elucidatory of
+the main work. There were carvings on the ends of the benches all along
+the aisle on both sides, well worth examination, and some of them even
+of description; but I shall not linger on these. A word only about the
+columns: they supported arches of different fashion on the opposite
+sides, but they were themselves similar in matter and construction, both
+remarkable. They were of coarse granite of the country, chiselled, but very
+far from smooth, not to say polished. Each pillar was a single stone with
+chamfered sides.
+
+Walking softly through the ancient house, forgetting in the many thoughts
+that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the
+tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the
+church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for
+bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd. And
+as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful it would be if
+in these days as in those of Samuel, the word of God was precious; so that
+when it came to the minister of his people--a fresh vision of his glory, a
+discovery of his meaning--he might make haste to the church, and into the
+tower, lay hold of the rope that hung from the deepest-toned bell of all,
+and constrain it by the force of strong arms to utter its voice of call,
+"Come hither, come hear, my people, for God hath spoken;" and from the
+streets or the lanes would troop the eager folk; the plough be left in the
+furrow, the cream in the churn; and the crowding people bring faces into
+the church, all with one question upon them--"What hath the Lord spoken?"
+But now it would be answer sufficient to such a call to say, "But what will
+become of the butter?" or, "An hour's ploughing will be lost." And the
+clergy--how would they bring about such a time? They do not even believe
+that God has a word to his people through them. They think that his word is
+petrified for use in the Bible and Prayer-book; that the wise men of old
+heard so much of the word of God, and have so set it down, that there is
+no need for any more words of the Lord coming to the prophets of a land;
+therefore they look down upon the prophesying--that is, the preaching
+of the word--make light of it, the best of them, say these prayers are
+everything, or all but everything: _their_ hearts are not set upon hearing
+what God the Lord will speak that they may speak it abroad to his people
+again. Therefore it is no wonder if the church bells are obedient only to
+the clock, are no longer subject to the spirit of the minister, and have
+nothing to do in telegraphing between heaven and earth. They make little of
+this part of their duty; and no wonder, if what is to be spoken must remain
+such as they speak. They put the Church for God, and the prayers which are
+the word of man to God, for the word of God to man. But when the prophets
+see no vision, how should they have any word to speak?
+
+These thoughts were passing through my mind when my eye fell upon my guide.
+She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I thought,
+or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had taken her
+stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting busily. How her
+needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however, but, fixed on the
+slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her feet, seemed to be
+gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite objectless outlook. To try
+her, I took for the moment the position of an accuser.
+
+"So you don't mind working in church?" I said.
+
+When I spoke she instantly rose, her eyes turned as from the far sea-waves
+to my face, and light came out of them. With a smile she answered--
+
+"The church knows me, sir."
+
+"But what has that to do with it?"
+
+"I don't think she minds it. We are told to be diligent in business, you
+know, sir."
+
+"Yes, but it does not say in church and out of church. You could be
+diligent somewhere else, couldn't you?"
+
+As soon as I said this, I began to fear she would think I meant it. But she
+only smiled and said, "It won't hurt she, sir; and my good man, who does
+all he can to keep her tidy, is out at toes and heels, and if I don't keep
+he warm he'll be laid up, and then the church won't be kep' nice, sir, till
+he's up again."
+
+I was tempted to go on.
+
+"But you could have sat down outside--there are some nice gravestones
+near--and waited till I came out."
+
+"But what's the church for, sir? The sun's werry hot to-day, sir; and Mr.
+Shepherd, he say, sir, that the church is like the shadow of a great rock
+in a weary land. So, you see, if I was to sit out in the sun, instead of
+comin' in here to the cool o' the shadow, I wouldn't be takin' the church
+at her word. It does my heart good to sit in the old church, sir. There's
+a something do seem to come out o' the old walls and settle down like the
+cool o' the day upon my old heart that's nearly tired o' crying, and would
+fain keep its eyes dry for the rest o' the journey. My old man's stockin'
+won't hurt the church, sir, and, bein' a good deed as I suppose it is, it's
+none the worse for the place. I think, if He was to come by wi' the whip o'
+small cords, I wouldn't be afeared of his layin' it upo' my old back. Do
+you think he would, sir?"
+
+Thus driven to speak as I thought, I made haste to reply, more delighted
+with the result of my experiment than I cared to let her know.
+
+"Indeed I do not. I was only talking. It is but selfish, cheating, or
+ill-done work that the church's Master drives away. All our work ought to
+be done in the shadow of the church."
+
+"I thought you be only having a talk about it, sir," she said, smiling her
+sweet old smile. "Nobody knows what this old church is to me."
+
+Now the old woman had a good husband, apparently: the sorrows which had
+left their mark even upon her smile, must have come from her family, I
+thought.
+
+"You have had a family?" I said, interrogatively.
+
+"I've had thirteen," she answered. "Six bys and seven maidens."
+
+"Why, you are rich!" I returned. "And where are they all?"
+
+"Four maidens be lying in the churchyard, sir; two be married, and one be
+down in the mill, there."
+
+"And your boys?"
+
+"One of them be lyin' beside his sisters--drownded afore my eyes, sir.
+Three o' them be at sea, and two o' them in it, sir."
+
+At sea! I thought. What a wide _where_! As vague to the imagination,
+almost, as _in the other world_. How a mother's thoughts must go roaming
+about the waste, like birds that have lost their nest, to find them!
+
+As this thought kept me silent for a few moments, she resumed.
+
+"It be no wonder, be it, sir? that I like to creep into the church with my
+knitting. Many's the stormy night, when my husband couldn't keep still, but
+would be out on the cliffs or on the breakwater, for no good in life, but
+just to hear the roar of the waves that he could only see by the white of
+them, with the balls o' foam flying in his face in the dark--many's the
+such a night that I have left the house after he was gone, with this
+blessed key in my hand, and crept into the old church here, and sat down
+where I'm sittin' now--leastways where I was sittin' when your reverence
+spoke to me--and hearkened to the wind howling about the place. The church
+windows never rattle, sir--like the cottage windows, as I suppose you know,
+sir. Somehow, I feel safe in the church."
+
+"But if you had sons at sea," said I, again wishing to draw her out, "it
+would not he of much good to you to feel safe yourself, so long as they
+were in danger."
+
+"O! yes, it be, sir. What's the good of feeling safe yourself but it let
+you know other people be safe too? It's when you don't feel safe yourself
+that you feel other people ben't safe."
+
+"But," I said--and such confidence I had from what she had already uttered,
+that I was sure the experiment was not a cruel one--"some of your sons
+_were_ drowned for all that you say about their safety."
+
+"Well, sir," she answered, with a sigh, "I trust they're none the less safe
+for that. It would be a strange thing for an old woman like me, well-nigh
+threescore and ten, to suppose that safety lay in not being drownded. Why,
+they might ha' been cast on a desert island, and wasted to skin an' bone,
+and got home again wi' the loss of half the wits they set out with.
+Wouldn't that ha' been worse than being drownded right off? And that
+wouldn't ha' been the worst, either. The church she seem to tell me all the
+time, that for all the roaring outside, there be really no danger after
+all. What matter if they go to the bottom? What is the bottom of the sea,
+sir? You bein' a clergyman can tell that, sir. I shouldn't ha' known it if
+I hadn't had bys o' my own at sea, sir. But you can tell, sir, though you
+ain't got none there."
+
+And though she was putting her parson to his catechism, the smile that
+returned on her face was as modest as if she had only been listening to his
+instruction. I had not long to look for my answer.
+
+"The hollow of his hand," I said, and said no more.
+
+"I thought you would know it, sir," she returned, with a little glow of
+triumph in her tone. "Well, then, that's just what the church tells me when
+I come in here in the stormy nights. I bring my knitting then too, sir, for
+I can knit in the dark as well as in the light almost; and when they come
+home, if they do come home, they're none the worse that I went to the old
+church to pray for them. There it goes roaring about them poor dears, all
+out there; and their old mother sitting still as a stone almost in the
+quiet old church, a caring for them. And then it do come across me, sir,
+that God be a sitting in his own house at home, hearing all the noise
+and all the roaring in which his children are tossed about in the world,
+watching it all, letting it drown some o' them and take them back to him,
+and keeping it from going too far with others of them that are not quite
+ready for that same. I have my thoughts, you see, sir, though I be an old
+woman; and not nice to look at."
+
+I had come upon a genius. How nature laughs at our schools sometimes!
+Education, so-called, is a fine thing, and might be a better thing; but
+there is an education, that of life, which, when seconded by a pure will
+to learn, leaves the schools behind, even as the horse of the desert would
+leave behind the slow pomposity of the common-fed goose. For life is God's
+school, and they that will listen to the Master there will learn at God's
+speed. For one moment, I am ashamed to say, I was envious of Shepherd,
+and repined that, now old Rogers was gone, I had no such glorious
+old stained-glass window in my church to let in the eternal upon my
+light-thirsty soul. I must say for myself that the feeling lasted but for a
+moment, and that no sooner had the shadow of it passed and the true light
+shined after it, than I was heartily ashamed of it. Why should not Shepherd
+have the old woman as well as I? True, Shepherd was more of what would
+now be called a ritualist than I; true, I thought my doctrine simpler and
+therefore better than his; but was this any reason why I should have all
+the grand people to minister to in my parish! Recovering myself, I found
+her last words still in my ears.
+
+"You are very nice to look at," I said. "You must not find fault with the
+work of God, because you would like better to be young and pretty than to
+be as you now are. Time and time's rents and furrows are all his making and
+his doing. God makes nothing ugly."
+
+"Are you quite sure of that, sir?"
+
+I paused. Such a question from such a woman "must give us pause." And, as I
+paused, the thought of certain animals flashed into my mind and I could not
+insist that God had never made anything ugly.
+
+"No. I am not sure of it," I answered. For of all things my soul recoiled
+from, any professional pretence of knowing more than I did know seemed to
+me the most repugnant to the spirit and mind of the Master, whose servants
+we are, or but the servants of mere priestly delusion and self-seeking.
+"But if he does," I went on to say, "it must be that we may see what it is
+like, and therefore not like it."
+
+Then, unwilling all at once to plunge with her into such an abyss as the
+question opened, I turned the conversation to an object on which my eyes
+had been for some time resting half-unconsciously. It was the sort of stool
+or bench on which my guide had been sitting. I now thought it was some kind
+of box or chest. It was curiously carved in old oak, very much like the
+ends of the benches and book-boards.
+
+"What is that you were sitting on?" I asked. "A chest or what?"
+
+"It be there when we come to this place, and that be nigh fifty years
+agone, sir. But what it be, you'll be better able to tell than I be, sir."
+
+"Perhaps a chest for holding the communion-plate in old time," I said. "But
+how should it then come to be banished to the tower?"
+
+"No, sir; it can't be that. It be some sort of ancient musical piano, I be
+thinking."
+
+I stooped and saw that its lid was shaped like the cover of an organ. With
+some difficulty I opened it; and there, to be sure, was a row of huge keys,
+fit for the fingers of a Cyclops. I pressed upon them, one after another,
+but no sound followed. They were stiff to the touch; and once down, so they
+mostly remained until lifted again. I looked if there was any sign of a
+bellows, thinking it must have been some primitive kind of reed-instrument,
+like what we call a seraphine or harmonium now-a-days. But there was no
+hole through which there could have been any communication with or from a
+bellows, although there might have been a small one inside. There were,
+however, a dozen little round holes in the fixed part of the top, which
+might afford some clue to the mystery of its former life. I could not find
+any way of reaching the inside of it, so strongly was it put together;
+therefore I was left, I thought, to the efforts of my imagination alone
+for any hope of discovery with regard to the instrument, seeing further
+observation was impossible. But here I found that I was mistaken in two
+important conclusions, the latter of which depended on the former. The
+first of these was that it was an instrument: it was only one end of an
+instrument; therefore, secondly, there might be room for observation
+still. But I found this out by accident, which has had a share in most
+discoveries, and which, meaning a something that falls into our hands
+unlocked for, is so far an unobjectionable word even to the man who
+does not believe in chance. I had for the time given up the question as
+insoluble, and was gazing about the place, when, glancing up at the holes
+in the ceiling through which the bell-ropes went, I spied two or three
+thick wires hanging through the same ceiling close to the wall, and right
+over the box with the keys. The vague suspicion of a discovery dawned upon
+me.
+
+"Have you got the key of the tower?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir. But I'll run home for it at once," she answered. And rising, she
+went out in haste.
+
+"Run!" thought I, looking after her. "It is a word of the will and the
+feeling, not of the body." But I was mistaken. The dear old creature had no
+sooner got outside of the church-yard, within which, I presume, she felt
+that she must be decorous, than she did run, and ran well too. I was on
+the point of starting after her at full speed, to prevent her from hurting
+herself, but reflecting that her own judgment ought to be as good as mine
+in such a case, I returned, and sitting down on her seat, awaited her
+reappearance, gazing at the ceiling. There I either saw or imagined I saw
+signs of openings corresponding in number and position with those in the
+lid under me. In about three minutes the old woman returned, panting but
+not distressed, with a great crooked old key in her hand. Why are all the
+keys of a church so crooked? I did not ask her that question, though. What
+I said to her, was--
+
+"You shouldn't run like that. I am in no hurry."
+
+"Be you not, sir? I thought, by the way you spoke, you be taken with a
+longing to get a-top o' the tower, and see all about you like. For you
+see, sir, fond as I be of the old church, I du feel sometimes as if she'd
+smother me; and then nothing will do but I must get at the top of the old
+tower. And then, what with the sun, if there be any sun, and what with the
+fresh air which there always be up there, sir,--it du always be fresh up
+there, sir," she repeated, "I come back down again blessing the old church
+for its tower."
+
+As she spoke she was toiling up the winding staircase after me, where there
+was just room enough for my shoulders to get through by turning themselves
+a little across the lie of the steps. They were very high, but she kept
+up with me bravely, bearing out her statement that she was no stranger to
+them. As I ascended, however, I was not thinking of her, but of what she
+had said. Strange to tell, the significance of the towers or spires of our
+churches had never been clear to me before. True, I was quite awake to
+their significance, at least to that of the spires, as fingers pointing
+ever upwards to
+
+  "regions mild of calm and serene air,
+  Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot,
+  Which men call Earth;"
+
+but I had not thought of their symbolism as lifting one up above the
+church itself into a region where no church is wanted because the Lord God
+almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
+
+Happy church indeed, if it destroys the need of itself by lifting men up
+into the eternal kingdom! Would that I and all her servants lived pervaded
+with the sense of this her high end, her one high calling! We need the
+church towers to remind us that the mephitic airs in the church below
+are from the churchyard at its feet, which so many take for the church,
+worshipping over the graves and believing in death--or at least in the
+material substance over which alone death hath power. Thus the church, even
+in her corruption, lifts us out of her corruption, sending us up her towers
+and her spires to admonish us that she too lives in the air of truth: that
+her form too must pass away, while the truth that is embodied in her lives
+beyond forms and customs and prejudices, shining as the stars for ever and
+ever. He whom the church does not lift up above the church is not worthy to
+be a doorkeeper therein.
+
+Such thoughts passed through me, satisfied me, and left me peaceful, so
+that before I had reached the top, I was thanking the Lord--not for his
+church-tower, but for his sexton's wife. The old woman was a jewel. If her
+husband was like her, which was too much to expect--if he believed in her,
+it would be enough, quite--then indeed the little child, who answered on
+being questioned thereanent, as the Scotch would say, that the three orders
+of ministers in the church were the parson, clerk, and sexton, might not be
+so far wrong in respect of this individual case. So in the ascent, and the
+thinking associated therewith, I forgot all about the special object for
+which I had requested the key of the tower, and led the way myself up to
+the summit, where stepping out of a little door, which being turned only
+heavenwards had no pretence for, or claim upon a curiously crooked key,
+but opened to the hand laid upon the latch, I thought of the words of the
+judicious Hooker, that "the assembling of the church to learn" was "the
+receiving of angels descended from above;" and in such a whimsical turn as
+our thoughts will often take when we are not heeding them, I wondered for
+a moment whether that was why the upper door was left on the latch,
+forgetting that that could not be of much use, if the door in the basement
+was kept locked with the crooked key. But the whole suggested something
+true about my own heart and that of my fellows, if not about the church:
+Revelation is not enough, the open trap-door is not enough, if the door of
+the heart is not open likewise.
+
+As soon, however, as I stepped out upon the roof of the tower, I forgot
+again all that had thus passed through my mind, swift as a dream. For,
+filling the west, lay the ocean beneath, with a dark curtain of storm
+hanging in perpendicular lines over part of its horizon, and on the other
+side was the peaceful solid land, with its numberless shades of green,
+its heights and hollows, its farms and wooded vales--there was not much
+wood--its scattered villages and country dwellings, lighted and shadowed by
+the sun and the clouds. Beyond lay the blue heights of Dartmoor. And over
+all, bathing us as it passed, moved the wind, the life-bearing spirit of
+the whole, the servant of the sun. The old woman stood beside me, silently
+enjoying my enjoyment, with a still smile that seemed to say in kindly
+triumph, "Was I not right about the tower and the wind that dwells among
+its pinnacles?" I drank deep of the universal flood, the outspread peace,
+the glory of the sun, and the haunting shadow of the sea that lay beyond
+like the visual image of the eternal silence--as it looks to us--that
+rounds our little earthly life.
+
+There were a good many trees in the church-yard, and as I looked down, the
+tops of them in their richest foliage hid all the graves directly below me,
+except a single flat stone looking up through an opening in the leaves,
+which seemed to have been just made for it to let it see the top of the
+tower. Upon the stone a child was seated playing with a few flowers she had
+gathered, not once looking up to the gilded vanes that rose from the four
+pinnacles at the corners of the tower. I turned to the eastern side, and
+looked over upon the church roof. It lay far below--looking very narrow and
+small, but long, with the four ridges of four steep roofs stretching away
+to the eastern end. It was in excellent repair, for the parish was almost
+all in one lord's possession, and he was proud of his church: between them
+he and Mr. Shepherd had made it beautiful to behold and strong to endure.
+
+When I turned to look again, the little child was gone. Some butterfly
+fancy had seized her, and she was away. A little lamb was in her place,
+nibbling at the grass that grew on the side of the next mound. And when I
+looked seaward there was a sloop, like a white-winged sea-bird, rounding
+the end of a high projecting rock from the south, to bear up the little
+channel that led to the gates of the harbour canal. Out of the circling
+waters it had flown home, not from a long voyage, but hardly the less
+welcome therefore to those that waited and looked for her signal from the
+barrier rock.
+
+Reentering by the angels' door to descend the narrow cork-screw stair, so
+dark and cool, I caught a glimpse, one turn down, by the feeble light that
+came through its chinks after it was shut behind us, of a tiny maiden-hair
+fern growing out of the wall. I stopped, and said to the old woman--
+
+"I have a sick daughter at home, or I wouldn't rob your tower of this
+lovely little thing."
+
+"Well, sir, what eyes you have! I never saw the thing before. Do take it
+home to miss. It'll do her good to see it. I be main sorry to hear you've
+got a sick maiden. She ben't a bedlar, be she, sir?"
+
+I was busy with my knife getting out all the roots I could without hurting
+them, and before I had succeeded I had remembered Turner's using the word.
+
+"Not quite that," I answered, "but she can't even sit up, and must be
+carried everywhere."
+
+"Poor dear! Everyone has their troubles, sir. The sea's been mine."
+
+She continued talking and asking kind questions about Connie as we went
+down the stair. Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
+observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
+the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent power
+in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there were
+only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet from going through
+the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture
+about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from
+beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them hanging shorter
+above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism remaining to prove
+that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in
+connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck
+the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed
+instrument. This was the first contrivance of the kind I had ever seen,
+though I have heard of it in other churches since.
+
+"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I said to
+myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
+with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
+could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased." For
+Shepherd was a very fair musician, and gave a good deal of time to the
+organ. "It's a grand notion, to think of him sitting here in the gloom,
+with that great musical instrument towering above him, whence he sends
+forth the voice of gladness, almost of song to his people, while they are
+mowing the grass, binding the sheaves, or gazing abroad over the stormy
+ocean in doubt, anxiety, and fear. 'There's the parson at his bells,' they
+would say, and stop and listen; and some phrase might sink into their
+hearts, waking some memory, or giving birth to some hope or faint
+aspiration. I will see what can be done." Having come to this conclusion, I
+left the abode of the bells, descended to the church, bade my conductress
+good morning, saying I would visit her soon in her own house, and bore home
+to my child the spoil which, without kirk-rapine, I had torn from the wall
+of the sanctuary. By this time the stormy veil had lifted from the horizon,
+and the sun was shining in full power without one darkening cloud.
+
+Ere I left the churchyard I would have a glance at the stone which ever
+seemed to lie gazing up at the tower. I soon found it, because it was the
+only one in that quarter from which I could see the top of the tower. It
+recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
+years, concluding with the couplet--
+
+"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."
+
+The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
+good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
+without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
+daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
+dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
+poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
+his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart, I
+went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora that
+might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long before
+I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was the
+thorough "puzzle-headedness" of its construction. I quite reckoned on
+seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
+excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
+rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.
+
+  "If you could view the heavenly shore,
+  Where heart's content you hope to find,
+  You would not murmur were you gone before,
+  But grieve that you are left behind."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CONNIE'S WATCH-TOWER.
+
+
+
+
+
+As I walked home, the rush of the rising tide was in my ears. To my fancy,
+the ocean, awaking from a swoon in which its life had ebbed to its heart,
+was sending that life abroad to its extremities, and waves breaking in
+white were the beats of its reviving pulse, the flashes of returning light.
+But so gentle was its motion, and so lovely its hue, that I could not help
+contrasting it with its reflex in the mind of her who took refuge from the
+tumult of its noises in the hollow of the old church. To her, let it look
+as blue as the sky, as peaceful and as moveless, it was a wild, reckless,
+false, devouring creature, a prey to its own moods, and to that of the
+blind winds which, careless of consequences, urged it to raving fury. Only,
+while the sea took this form to her imagination, she believed in that which
+held the sea, and knew that, when it pleased God to part his confining
+fingers, there would he no more sea.
+
+When I reached home, I went straight to Connie's room. Now the house was
+one of a class to every individual of which, whatever be its style or
+shape, I instantly become attached almost as if it possessed a measure of
+the life which it has sheltered. This class of human dwellings consists
+of the houses that have _grown_. They have not been, built after a
+straight-up-and-down model of uninteresting convenience or money-loving
+pinchedness. They must have had some plan, good, bad, or indifferent, as
+the case may be, at first, I suppose; but that plan they have left far
+behind, having grown with the necessities or ambitions of succeeding
+possessors, until the fact that they have a history is as plainly written
+on their aspect as on that of any you or daughter of Adam. These are the
+houses which the fairies used to haunt, and if there is any truth in
+ghost-stories, the houses which ghosts will yet haunt; and hence perhaps
+the sense of soothing comfort which pervades us when we cross their
+thresholds. You do not know, the moment you have cast a glance about the
+hall, where the dining-room, drawing-room, and best bedroom are. You have
+got it all to find out, just as the character of a man; and thus had I to
+find out this house of my friend Shepherd. It had formerly been a kind of
+manor-house, though altogether unlike any other manor-house I ever saw; for
+after exercising all my constructive ingenuity reversed in pulling it to
+pieces in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the germ-cell of it was
+a cottage of the simplest sort which had grown by the addition of other
+cells, till it had reached the development in which we found it.
+
+I have said that the dining-room was almost on the level of the shore.
+Certainly some of the flat stones that coped the low wall in front of
+it were thrown into the garden before the next winter by the waves. But
+Connie's room looked out on a little flower-garden almost on the downs,
+only sheltered a little by the rise of a short grassy slope above it. This,
+however, left the prospect, from her window down the bay and out to sea,
+almost open. To reach this room I had now to go up but one simple cottage
+stair; for the door of the house entered on the first floor, that is, as
+regards the building, midway between heaven and earth. It had a large
+bay-window; and in this window Connie was lying on her couch, with the
+lower sash wide open, through which the breeze entered, smelling of
+sea-weed tempered with sweet grasses and the wall-flowers and stocks that
+were in the little plot under it. I thought I could see an improvement in
+her already. Certainly she looked very happy.
+
+"O, papa!" she said, "isn't it delightful?"
+
+"What is, my dear?"
+
+"O, everything. The wind, and the sky, and the sea, and the smell of
+the flowers. Do look at that sea-bird. His wings are like the barb of a
+terrible arrow. How he goes undulating, neck and body, up and down as he
+flies. I never felt before that a bird moves his wings. It always looked as
+if the wings flew with the bird. But I see the effort in him."
+
+"An easy effort, though, I should certainly think."
+
+"No doubt. But I see that he chooses and means to fly, and so does it. It
+makes one almost reconciled to the idea of wings. Do angels really have
+wings, papa?"
+
+"It is generally so represented, I think, in the Bible. But whether it is
+meant as a natural fact about them, is more than I take upon me to decide.
+For one thing, I should have to examine whether in simple narrative they
+are ever represented with them, as, I think, in records of visions they are
+never represented without them. But wings are very beautiful things, and I
+do not exactly see why you should need reconciling to them."
+
+Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
+
+"I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
+however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
+they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if
+you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them.
+You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear
+to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up
+bits of them."
+
+I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
+
+"You want to fly, I suppose?" I said.
+
+"O, yes; I should like that."
+
+"And you don't want to have wings?"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able to
+keep them nice?"
+
+"There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
+already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from your
+new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch
+of the lilac!"
+
+"O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times."
+
+"And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you either,
+you puss?"
+
+I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
+always thought she had gone too far. She looked troubled. I hastened to
+relieve her.
+
+"When women have wings," I said, "their logic will be good."
+
+"How do you make that out, papa?" she asked, a little re-assured.
+
+"Because then every shadow of feeling that turns your speech aside from the
+straight course will be recognised in that speech; the whole utterance will
+be instinct not only with the meaning of what you are thinking, but with
+the reflex of the forces in you that make the utterance take this or that
+shape; just as to a perfect palate, the source and course of a stream would
+be revealed in every draught of its water.
+
+"I have just a glimmering of your meaning, papa. Would you like to have
+wings?"
+
+"I should like to fly like a bird, to swim like a fish, to gallop like a
+horse, to creep like a serpent, but I suspect the good of all these is to
+be got without doing any of them."
+
+"I know what you mean now, but I can't put it in words."
+
+"I mean by a perfect sympathy with the creatures that do these things: what
+it may please God to give to ourselves, we can quite comfortably leave to
+him. A higher stratum of the same kind is the need we feel of knowing our
+fellow-creatures through and through, of walking into and out of their
+worlds as if we were, because we are, perfectly at home in them.--But I am
+talking what the people who do not understand such things lump all together
+as mysticism, which is their name for a kind of spiritual ash-pit, whither
+they consign dust and stones, never asking whether they may not be
+gold-dust and rubies, all in a heap.--You had better begin to think about
+getting out, Connie."
+
+"Think about it, papa! I have been thinking about it ever since daylight."
+
+"I will go and see what your mother is doing then, and if she is ready to
+go out with us."
+
+In a few moments all was arranged. Without killing more than a snail or
+two, which we could not take time to beware of, Walter and I--finding that
+the window did not open down to the ground in French fashion, for which
+there were two good reasons, one the fierceness of the winds in winter, the
+other, the fact that the means of egress were elsewise provided--lifted the
+sofa, Connie and all, out over the window-sill, and then there was only a
+little door in the garden-wall to get her through before we found ourselves
+upon the down. I think the ascent of this hill was the first experience
+I had--a little to my humiliation, nothing to my sorrow--that I was
+descending another hill. I had to set down the precious burden rather
+oftener before we reached the brow of the cliffs than would have
+been necessary ten years before. But this was all right, and the
+newly-discovered weakness then was strength to the power which carries me
+about on my two legs now. It is all right still. I shall be stronger by and
+by.
+
+We carried her high enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many
+feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their
+undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a chance
+of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the marvel of
+flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up, as far as
+eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone. This Connie,
+quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already observed. Seated
+on the warm grass by her side, while neither talked, but both regarded the
+blue spaces, I saw one of those same barb-winged birds rest over my head,
+regarding me from above, as if doubtful whether I did not afford some claim
+to his theory of treasure-trove. I knew at once that what Connie had been
+saying to me just before was true.
+
+She lay silent a long time. I too was silent. At length I spoke.
+
+"Are you longing to be running about amongst the rocks, my Connie?"
+
+"No, papa; not a bit. I don't know how it is, but I don't think I ever
+wished much for anything I knew I could not have. I am enjoying everything
+more than I can tell you. I wish Wynnie were as happy as I am."
+
+"Why? Do you think she's not happy, my dear?"
+
+"That doesn't want any thinking, papa. You can see that."
+
+"I am afraid you're right, Connie. What do you think is the cause of it?"
+
+"I think it is because she can't wait. She's always going out to meet
+things; and then when they're not there waiting for her, she thinks they're
+nowhere. But I always think her way is finer than mine. If everybody were
+like me, there wouldn't be much done in the world, would there, papa?"
+
+"At all events, my dear, your way is wise for you, and I am glad you do not
+judge your sister."
+
+"Judge Wynnie, papa! That would be cool impudence. She's worth ten of me.
+Don't you think, papa," she added, after a pause, "that if Mary had said
+the smallest word against Martha, as Martha did against Mary, Jesus would
+have had a word to say on Martha's side next?"
+
+"Indeed I do, my dear. And I think that did not sit very long without
+asking Jesus if she mightn't go and help her sister. There is but one
+thing needful--that is, the will of God; and when people love that above
+everything, they soon come to see that to everything else there are two
+sides, and that only the will of God gives fair play, as we call it, to
+both of them."
+
+Another silence followed. Then Connie spoke.
+
+"Is it not strange, papa, that the only thine here that makes me want to
+get up to look, is nothing of all the grand things round about me? I am
+just lying like the convex mirror in the school-room at home, letting them
+all paint themselves in me."
+
+"What is it then that makes you wish to get up and go and see?" I asked
+with real curiosity.
+
+"Do you see down there--away across the bay--amongst the rocks at the
+other side, a man sitting sketching?"
+
+I looked for some time before I could discover him.
+
+"Your sight is good, Connie: I see the man, but I could not tell what he
+was doing."
+
+"Don't you see him lifting his head every now and then for a moment, and
+then keeping it down for a longer while?"
+
+"I cannot distinguish that. But then I am shortsighted rather, you know."
+
+"I wonder how you see so many little things that nobody else seems to
+notice, then, papa."
+
+"That is because I have trained myself to observe. The degree of power in
+the sight is of less consequence than the habit of seeing. But you have not
+yet told me what it is that makes you desirous of getting up."
+
+"I want to look over his shoulder, and see what he is doing. Is it not
+strange that in the midst of all this plenty of beautifulness, I should
+want to rise to look at a few lines and scratches, or smears of colour,
+upon a bit of paper?"
+
+"No, my dear; I don't think it is strange. There a new element of interest
+is introduced--the human. No doubt there is deep humanity in all this
+around us. No doubt all the world, in all its moods, is human, as those for
+whose abode and instruction it was made. No doubt, it would be void of both
+beauty and significance to our eyes, were it not that it is one crowd of
+pictures of the human mind, blended in one living fluctuating whole. But
+these meanings are there in solution as it were. The individual is a centre
+of crystallisation to this solution. Around him meanings gather, are
+separated from other meanings; and if he be an artist, by which I mean true
+painter, true poet, or true musician, as the case may be he so isolates and
+represents them, that we see them--not what nature shows to us, but what
+nature has shown, to him, determined by his nature and choice. With it is
+mingled therefore so much of his own individuality, manifested both in this
+choice and certain modifications determined by his way of working, that you
+have not only a representation of an aspect of nature, as far as that may
+be with limited powers and materials, but a revelation of the man's own
+mind and nature. Consequently there is a human interest in every true
+attempt to reproduce nature, an interest of individuality which does not
+belong to nature herself, who is for all and every man. You have just been
+saying that you were lying there like a convex mirror reflecting all nature
+around you. Every man is such a convex mirror; and his drawing, if he can
+make one, is an attempt to show what is in this little mirror of his,
+kindled there by the grand world outside. And the human mirrors being all
+differently formed, vary infinitely in what they would thus represent of
+the same scene. I have been greatly interested in looking alternately over
+the shoulders of two artists, both sketching in colour the same, absolutely
+the same scene, both trying to represent it with all the truth in their
+power. How different, notwithstanding, the two representations came out!"
+
+"I think I understand you, papa. But look a little farther off. Don't you
+see over the top of another rock a lady's bonnet. I do believe that's
+Wynnie. I know she took her box of water-colours out with her this morning,
+just before you came home. Dora went with her."
+
+"Can't you tell by her ribbons, Connie? You seem sharp-sighted enough to
+see her face if she would show it. I don't even see the bonnet. If I were
+like some people I know, I should feel justified in denying its presence,
+attributing the whole to your fancy, and refusing anything to superiority
+of vision."
+
+"That wouldn't be like you, papa."
+
+"I hope not; for I have no fancy for being shut up in my own blindness,
+when other people offer me their eyes to eke out the defects of my own
+with. But here comes mamma at last."
+
+Connie's face brightened as if she had not seen her mother for a fortnight.
+My Ethelwyn always brought the home gladness that her name signified with
+her. She was a centre of radiating peace.
+
+"Mamma, don't you think that's Wynnie's bonnet over that black rock there,
+just beyond where you see that man drawing?"
+
+"You absurd child! How should I know Wynnie's bonnet at this distance?"
+
+"Can't you see the little white feather you gave her out of your wardrobe
+just before we left? She put it in this morning before she went out."
+
+"I think I do see something white. But I want you to look out there,
+towards what they call the Chapel Rock, at the other end of that long mound
+they call the breakwater. You will soon see a boat appear full of the
+coast-guard. I saw them going on board just as I left the house to come up
+to you. Their officer came down with his sword, and each of the men had a
+cutlass. I wonder what it can mean."
+
+We looked. But before the boat made its appearance, Connie cried out--
+
+"Look there! What a big boat that is rowing for the land, away northwards
+there!"
+
+I turned my eyes in the direction she indicated, and saw a long boat with
+some half-dozen oars, full of men, rowing hard, apparently for some spot on
+the shore at a considerable distance to the north of our bay.
+
+"Ah!" I said, "that boat has something to do with the coast-guard and their
+cutlasses. You'll see that, as soon as they get out of the bay, they will
+row in the same direction."
+
+So it was. Our boat appeared presently from under the concealment of the
+heights on which we were, and made at full speed after the other boat.
+
+"Surely they can't be smugglers," I said. "I thought all that was over and
+done with."
+
+In the course of another twenty minutes, during which we watched their
+progress, both boats had disappeared behind the headland to the northward.
+Then, thinking Connie had had nearly enough of the sea air for her first
+experience of its influences, I went and fetched Walter, and we carried her
+back as we had brought her. She had not been in the shadow of her own room
+for five minutes before she was fast asleep.
+
+It was now nearly time for our early dinner. We always dined early when we
+could, that we might eat along with our children. We were both convinced
+that the only way to make them behave like ladies and gentlemen was to have
+them always with us at meals. We had seen very unpleasant results in the
+children of those who allowed them to dine with no other supervision than
+the nursery afforded: they were a constant anxiety and occasional horror
+to those whom they visited--snatching like monkeys, and devouring like
+jackals, as selfishly as if they were mere animals.
+
+"O! we've seen such a nice gentleman!" said Dora, becoming lively under the
+influence of her soup.
+
+"Have you, Dora? Where?"
+
+"Sitting on the rocks, taking a portrait of the sea."
+
+"What makes you say he was a nice gentleman?"
+
+"He had such beautiful boots!" answered Dora, at which there was a great
+laugh about the table.
+
+"O! we must run and tell Connie that," said Harry. "It will make her
+laugh."
+
+"What will you tell Connie, then, Harry?"
+
+"O! what was it, Charlie? I've forgotten."
+
+Another laugh followed at Harry's expense now, and we were all very merry,
+when Dora, who sat opposite to the window, called out, clapping her hands--
+
+"There's Niceboots again! There's Niceboots again!"
+
+The same moment the head of a young man appeared over the wall that
+separated the garden from the little beach that lay by the entrance of the
+canal. I saw at once that he must be more than ordinarily tall to show his
+face, for he was not close to the wall. It was a dark countenance, with
+a long beard, which few at that time wore, though now it is getting not
+uncommon, even in my own profession--a noble, handsome face, a little sad,
+with downbent eyes, which, released from their more immediate duty towards
+nature, had now bent themselves upon the earth.
+
+"Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought."
+
+"I suppose he's contemplating his boots," said Wynnie, with apparent
+maliciousness.
+
+"That's too bad of you, Wynnie," I said, and the child blushed.
+
+"I didn't mean anything, papa. It was only following up Dora's wise
+discrimination," said Wynnie.
+
+"He is a fine-looking fellow," said I, "and ought, with that face and head,
+to be able to paint good pictures."
+
+"I should like to see what he has done," said Wynnie; "for, by the way we
+were sitting, I should think we were attempting the same thing."
+
+"And what was that then, Wynnie?" I asked.
+
+"A rock," she answered, "that you could not see from where you were
+sitting. I saw you on the top of the cliff."
+
+"Connie said it was you, by your bonnet. She, too, was wishing she could
+look over the shoulder of the artist at work beside you."
+
+"Not beside me. There were yards and yards of solid rock between us."
+
+"Space, you see, in removing things from the beholder, seems always to
+bring them nearer to each other, and the most differing things are classed
+under one name by the man who knows nothing about them. But what sort of a
+rock was it you were trying to draw?"
+
+"A strange-looking, conical rock, that stands alone in front of one of the
+ridges that project from the shore into the water. Three sea-birds, with
+long white wings, were flying about it, and the little waves of the rising
+tide were beating themselves against it and breaking in white plashes. So
+the rock stood between the blue and white below and the blue and white
+above; for, though there were no clouds, the birds gave the touches of
+white to the upper sea."
+
+"Now, Dora," I said, "I don't know if you are old enough to understand me;
+but sometimes little people are long in understanding, just because the
+older people think they can't, and don't try them.--Do you see, Dora, why I
+want you to learn to draw? Look how Wynnie sees things. That is, in a great
+measure, because she draws things, and has, by that, learned to watch in
+order to find out. It is a great thing to have your eyes open."
+
+Dora's eyes were large, and she opened them to their full width, as if she
+would take in the universe at their little doors. Whether that indicated
+that she did not in the least understand what I had been saying, or that
+she was in sympathy with it, I cannot tell.
+
+"Now let us go up to Connie, and tell her about the rock and everything
+else you have seen since you went out. We are all her messengers sent out
+to discover things, and bring back news of them."
+
+After a little talk with Connie, I retired to the study, which was on the
+same floor as her room completing, indeed, the whole of that part of the
+house, which, seen from without, looked like a separate building; for it
+had a roof of its own, and stood higher up the rock than the rest of the
+dwelling. Here I began to glance over the books. To have the run of another
+man's library, especially if it has all been gathered by himself, is like
+having a pass-key into the chambers of his thought. Only, one must be wary,
+when he opens them, what marks on the books he takes for those of the
+present owner. A mistake here would breed considerable confusion and
+falsehood in any judgment formed from the library. I found, however, one
+thing plain enough, that Shepherd had kept up that love for an older
+English literature, which had been one of the cords to draw us towards each
+other when we were students together. There had been one point on which we
+especially agreed--that a true knowledge of the present, in literature, as
+in everything else, could only be founded upon a knowledge of what had gone
+before; therefore, that any judgment, in regard to the literature of the
+present day, was of no value which was not guided and influenced by a real
+acquaintance with the best of what had gone before, being liable to be
+dazzled and misled by novelty of form and other qualities which, whatever
+might be the real worth of the substance, were, in themselves, purely
+ephemeral. I had taken down a last-century edition of the poems of the
+brothers Fletcher, and, having begun to read a lovely passage in "Christ's
+Victory and Triumph," had gone into what I can only call an intellectual
+rage, at the impudence of the editor, who had altered innumerable words and
+phrases to suit the degenerate taste of his own time,--when a knock came to
+the door, and Charlie entered, breathless with eagerness.
+
+"There's the boat with the men with the swords in it, and another boat
+behind them, twice as big."
+
+I hurried out upon the road, and there, close under our windows, were the
+two boats we had seen in the morning, landing their crews on the little
+beach. The second boat was full of weather-beaten men, in all kinds of
+attire, some in blue jerseys, some in red shirts, some in ragged coats. One
+man, who looked their superior, was dressed in blue from head to foot.
+
+"What's the matter?" I asked the officer of the coast-guard, a sedate,
+thoughtful-looking man.
+
+"Vessel foundered, sir," he answered. "Sprung a leak on Sunday morning. She
+was laden with iron, and in a heavy ground swell it shifted and knocked a
+hole in her. The poor fellows are worn out with the pump and rowing, upon
+little or nothing to eat."
+
+They were trooping past us by this time, looking rather dismal, though not
+by any means abject.
+
+"What are you going to do with them now?"
+
+"They'll be taken in by the people. We'll get up a little subscription for
+them, but they all belong to the society the sailors have for sending the
+shipwrecked to their homes, or where they want to go."
+
+"Well, here's something to help," I said.
+
+"Thank you, sir. They'll be very glad of it."
+
+"And if there's anything wanted that I can do for them, you must let me
+know."
+
+"I will, sir. But I don't think there will be any occasion to trouble you.
+You are our new clergyman, I believe."
+
+"Not exactly that. Only for a little while, till my friend Mr. Shepherd is
+able to come back to you."
+
+"We don't want to lose Mr. Shepherd, sir. He's what they call high in these
+parts, but he's a great favourite with all the poor people, because you
+see he understands them as if he was of the same flesh and blood with
+themselves--as, for that matter, I suppose we all are."
+
+"If we weren't there would be nothing to say at all. Will any of these men
+be at church to-morrow, do you suppose? I am afraid sailors are not much in
+the way of going to church?"
+
+"I am afraid not. You see they are all anxious to get home. Most likely
+they'll be all travelling to-morrow. It's a pity. It would be a good chance
+for saying something to them that they might think of again. But I often
+think that, perhaps--it's only my own fancy, and I don't set it up for
+anything--that sailors won't be judged exactly like other people. They're
+so knocked about, you see, sir."
+
+"Of course not. Nobody will be judged like any other body. To his own
+Master, who knows all about him, every man stands or falls. Depend upon it,
+God likes fair play, to use a homely phrase, far better than any sailor of
+them all. But that's not exactly the question. It seems to me the question
+is this: shall we, who know what a blessed thing life is because we know
+what God is like, who can trust in him with all our hearts because he is
+the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the friend of sinners, shall we not
+try all we can to let them, too, know the blessedness of trusting in their
+Father in heaven? If we could only get them to say the Lord's prayer,
+_meaning_ it, think what that would be! Look here! This can't be called
+bribery, for they are in want of it, and it will show them I am friendly.
+Here's another sovereign. Give them my compliments, and say that if any
+of them happen to be in Kilkhaven tomorrow, I shall be quite pleased to
+welcome them to church. Tell them I will give them of my best there if they
+will come. Make the invitation merrily, you know. No long faces and solemn
+speech. I will give them the solemn speech when they come to church. But
+even there I hope God will keep the long face far from me. That is fittest
+for fear and suffering. And the house of God is the casket that holds the
+antidote against all fear and most suffering. But I am preaching my sermon
+on Saturday instead of Sunday, and keeping you from your ministration to
+the poor fellows. Good-bye."
+
+"I will give them your message as near as I can," he said, and we shook
+hands and parted.
+
+This was the first experience we had of the might and battle of the ocean.
+To our eyes it lay quiet as a baby asleep. On that Sunday morning there had
+been no commotion here. Yet now at last, on the Saturday morning, home come
+the conquered and spoiled of the sea. As if with a mock she takes all they
+have, and flings them on shore again, with her weeds, and her shells, and
+her sand. Before the winter was over we had learned--how much more of that
+awful power that surrounds the habitable earth! By slow degrees the sense
+of its might grew upon us, first by the vision of its many aspects and
+moods, and then by more awful things that followed; for there are few
+coasts upon which the sea rages so wildly as upon this, the whole force of
+the Atlantic breaking upon it. Even when there is no storm within perhaps
+hundreds of miles, when all is still as a church on the land, the storm
+that raves somewhere out upon the vast waste, will drive the waves in
+upon the shore with such fury that not even a lifeboat could make its way
+through their yawning hollows, and their fierce, shattered, and tumbling
+crests.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MY FIRST SERMON IN THE SEABOARD PARISH.
+
+
+
+
+
+In the hope that some of the shipwrecked mariners might be present in the
+church the next day, I proceeded to consider my morning's sermon for the
+occasion. There was no difficulty in taking care at the same time that it
+should be suitable to the congregation, whether those sailors were there or
+not. I turned over in my mind several subjects. I thought, for instance,
+of showing them how this ocean that lay watchful and ready all about our
+island, all about the earth, was but a visible type or symbol of two other
+oceans, one very still, the other very awful and fierce; in fact, that
+three oceans surrounded us: one of the known world; one of the unseen
+world, that is, of death; one of the spirit--the devouring ocean of
+evil--and might I not have added yet another, encompassing and silencing
+all the rest--that of truth! The visible ocean seemed to make war upon the
+land, and the dwellers thereon. Restrained by the will of God and by him
+made subject more and more to the advancing knowledge of those who were
+created to rule over it, it was yet like a half-tamed beast ever ready to
+break loose and devour its masters. Of course this would have been but one
+aspect or appearance of it--for it was in truth all service; but this was
+the aspect I knew it must bear to those, seafaring themselves or not, to
+whom I had to speak. Then I thought I might show, that its power, like that
+of all things that man is ready to fear, had one barrier over which no
+commotion, no might of driving wind, could carry it, beyond which its
+loudest waves were dumb--the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further
+could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces the
+last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the man
+beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we call
+death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind can follow
+him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I
+thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying still in calm
+deceit, there lay about the life of man a far more fearful ocean than that
+which threatened his body; for this would cast, could it but get a hold of
+him, both body and soul into hell--the sea of evil, of vice, of sin, of
+wrong-doing--they might call it by what name they pleased. This made war
+against the very essence of life, against God who is the truth, against
+love, against fairness, against fatherhood, motherhood, sisterhood,
+brotherhood, manhood, womanhood, against tenderness and grace and beauty,
+gathering into one pulp of festering death all that is noble, lovely,
+worshipful in the human nature made so divine that the one fearless man,
+the Lord Jesus Christ, shared it with us. This, I thought I might make them
+understand, was the only terrible sea, the only hopeless ocean from whose
+awful shore we must shrink and flee, the end of every voyage upon whose
+bosom was the bottom of its filthy waters, beyond the reach of all that is
+thought or spoken in the light, beyond life itself, but for the hand that
+reaches down from the upper ocean of truth, the hand of the Redeemer of
+men. I thought, I say, for a while, that I could make this, not definite,
+but very real to them. But I did not feel quite confident about it. Might
+they not in the symbolism forget the thing symbolised? And would not the
+symbol itself be ready to fade quite from their memory, or to return
+only in the vaguest shadow? And with the thought I perceived a far more
+excellent way. For the power of the truth lies of course in its revelation
+to the mind, and while for this there are a thousand means, none are so
+mighty as its embodiment in human beings and human life. There it is itself
+alive and active. And amongst these, what embodiment comes near to that in
+him who was perfect man in virtue of being at the root of the secret of
+humanity, in virtue of being the eternal Son of God? We are his sons in
+time: he is his Son in eternity, of whose sea time is but the broken
+sparkle. Therefore, I would talk to them about--but I will treat my reader
+now as if he were not my reader, but one of my congregation on that bright
+Sunday, my first in the Seaboard Parish, with the sea outside the church,
+flashing in the sunlight.
+
+While I stood at the lectern, which was in front of the altar-screen, I
+could see little of my congregation, partly from my being on a level with
+them, partly from the necessity for keeping my eyes and thoughts upon that
+which I read. When, however, I rose from prayer in the pulpit; then I felt,
+as usual with me, that I was personally present for personal influence with
+my people, and then I saw, to my great pleasure, that one long bench nearly
+in the middle of the church was full of such sunburnt men as could not be
+mistaken for any but mariners, even if their torn and worn garments had
+not revealed that they must be the very men about whom we had been so much
+interested. Not only were they behaving with perfect decorum, but their
+rough faces wore an aspect of solemnity which I do not suppose was by any
+means their usual aspect.
+
+I gave them no text. I had one myself, which was the necessary thing. They
+should have it by and by.
+
+"Once upon a time," I said, "a man went up a mountain, and stayed there
+till it was dark, and stayed on. Now, a man who finds himself on a mountain
+as the sun is going down, especially if he is alone, makes haste to get
+down before it is dark. But this man went up when the sun was going down,
+and, as I say, continued there for a good long while after it was dark. You
+will want to know why. I will tell you. He wished to be alone. He hadn't a
+house of his own. He never had all the time he lived. He hadn't even a room
+of his own into which he could go, and bolt the door of it. True, he had
+kind friends, who gave him a bed: but they were all poor people, and their
+houses were small, and very likely they had large families, and he could
+not always find a quiet place to go into. And I dare say, if he had had a
+room, he would have been a little troubled with the children constantly
+coming to find him; for however much he loved them--and no man was ever so
+fond of children as he was--he needed to be left quiet sometimes. So, upon
+this occasion, he went up the mountain just to be quiet. He had been all
+day with a crowd of people, and he felt that it was time to be alone. For
+he had been talking with men all day, which tires and sometimes confuses a
+man's thoughts, and now he wanted to talk with God--for that makes a man
+strong, and puts all the confusion in order again, and lets a man know
+what he is about. So he went to the top of the hill. That was his secret
+chamber. It had no door; but that did not matter--no one could see him
+but God. There he stayed for hours--sometimes, I suppose, kneeling in his
+prayer to God; sometimes sitting, tired with his own thinking, on a stone;
+sometimes walking about, looking forward to what would come next--not
+anxious about it, but contemplating it. For just before he came up here,
+some of the people who had been with him wanted to make him a king; and
+this would not do--this was not what God wanted of him, and therefore he
+got rid of them, and came up here to talk to God. It was so quiet up here!
+The earth had almost vanished. He could see just the bare hilltop beneath
+him, a glimmer below, and the sky and the stars over his head. The people
+had all gone away to their own homes, and perhaps next day would hardly
+think about him at all, busy catching fish, or digging their gardens, or
+making things for their houses. But he knew that God would not forget him
+the next day any more than this day, and that God had sent him not to be
+the king that these people wanted him to be, but their servant. So, to make
+his heart strong, I say, he went up into the mountain alone to have a talk
+with his Father. How quiet it all was up here, I say, and how noisy it had
+been down there a little while ago! But God had been in the noise then as
+much as he was in the quiet now--the only difference being that he could
+not then be alone with him. I need not tell you who this man was--it was
+the king of men, the servant of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, the everlasting
+son of our Father in heaven.
+
+"Now this mountain on which he was praying had a small lake at the foot of
+it--that is, about thirteen miles long, and five miles broad. Not wanting
+even his usual companions to be with him this evening--partly, I presume,
+because they were of the same mind as those who desired to take him by
+force and make him a king--he had sent them away in their boat, to go
+across this water to the other side, where were their homes and their
+families. Now, it was not pitch dark either on the mountain-top or on the
+water down below; yet I doubt if any other man than he would have been
+keen-eyed enough to discover that little boat down in the middle of the
+lake, much distressed by the west wind that blew right in their teeth. But
+he loved every man in it so much, that I think even as he was talking
+to his Father, his eyes would now and then go looking for and finding
+it--watching it on its way across to the other side. You must remember that
+it was a little boat; and there are often tremendous storms upon these
+small lakes with great mountains about them. For the wind will come all
+at once, rushing down through the clefts in as sudden a squall as ever
+overtook a sailor at sea. And then, you know, there is no sea-room. If
+the wind get the better of them, they are on the shore in a few minutes,
+whichever way the wind may blow. He saw them worn out at the oar, toiling
+in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them. So the time for loneliness
+and prayer was over, and the time to go down out of his secret chamber and
+help his brethren was come. He did not need to turn and say good-bye to
+his Father, as if he dwelt on that mountain-top alone: his Father was down
+there on the lake as well. He went straight down. Could not his Father, if
+he too was down on the lake, help them without him? Yes. But he wanted him
+to do it, that they might see that he did it. Otherwise they would only
+have thought that the wind fell and the waves lay down, without supposing
+for a moment that their Master or his Father had had anything to do with
+it. They would have done just as people do now-a-days: they think that the
+help comes of itself, instead of by the will of him who determined from the
+first that men should be helped. So the Master went down the hill. When he
+reached the border of the lake, the wind being from the other side, he must
+have found the waves breaking furiously upon the rocks. But that made no
+difference to him. He looked out as he stood alone on the edge amidst the
+rushing wind and the noise of the water, out over the waves under the
+clear, starry sky, saw where the tiny boat was tossed about like a
+nutshell, and set out."
+
+The mariners had been staring at me up to this point, leaning forward on
+their benches, for sailors are nearly as fond of a good yarn as they are of
+tobacco; and I heard afterwards that they had voted parson's yarn a good
+one. Now, however, I saw one of them, probably more ignorant than the
+others, cast a questioning glance at his neighbour. It was not returned,
+and he fell again into a listening attitude. He had no idea of what was
+coming. He probably thought parson had forgotten to say how Jesus had come
+by a boat.
+
+"The companions of our Lord had not been willing to go away and leave him
+behind. Now, I dare say, they wished more than ever that he had been with
+them--not that they thought he could do anything with a storm, only that
+somehow they would have been less afraid with his face to look at. They had
+seen him cure men of dreadful diseases; they had seen him turn water into
+wine--some of them; they had seen him feed five thousand people the day
+before with five loaves and two small fishes; but had one of their number
+suggested that if he had been with them, they would have been safe from the
+storm, they would not have talked any nonsense about the laws of nature,
+not having learned that kind of nonsense, but they would have said that was
+quite a different thing--altogether too much to expect or believe: _nobody_
+could make the wind mind what it was about, or keep the water from
+drowning you if you fell into it and couldn't swim; or such-like.
+
+"At length, when they were nearly worn out, taking feebler and feebler
+strokes, sometimes missing the water altogether, at other times burying
+their oars in it up to the handles--as they rose on the crest of a huge
+wave, one of them gave a cry, and they all stopped rowing and stared,
+leaning forward to peer through the darkness. And through the spray which
+the wind tore from the tops of the waves and scattered before it like dust,
+they saw, perhaps a hundred yards or so from the boat, something standing
+up from the surface of the water. It seemed to move towards them. It was a
+shape like a man. They all cried out with fear, as was natural, for they
+thought it must be a ghost."
+
+How the faces of the sailors strained towards me at this part of the story!
+I was afraid one of them especially was on the point of getting up to
+speak, as we have heard of sailors doing in church. I went on.
+
+"But then, over the noise of the wind and the waters came the voice they
+knew so well. It said, 'Be of good cheer: it is I. Be not afraid.' I should
+think, between wonder and gladness, they hardly knew for some moments where
+they were or what they were about. Peter was the first to recover himself
+apparently. In the first flush of his delight he felt strong and full of
+courage. 'Lord, if it be thou,' he said, 'bid me come unto thee on the
+water.' Jesus just said, 'Come;' and Peter unshipped his oar, and scrambled
+over the gunwale on to the sea. But when he let go his hold of the boat,
+and began to look about him, and saw how the wind was tearing the water,
+and how it tossed and raved between him and Jesus, he began to be afraid.
+And as soon as he began to be afraid he began to sink; but he had,
+notwithstanding his fear, just sense enough to do the one sensible thing;
+he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' And Jesus put out his hand, and took hold of
+him, and lifted him up out of the water, and said to him, 'O thou of little
+faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And then they got into the boat, and the
+wind fell all at once, and altogether.
+
+"Now, you will not think that Peter was a coward, will you? It wasn't that
+he hadn't courage, but that he hadn't enough of it. And why was it that he
+hadn't enough of it? Because he hadn't faith enough. Peter was always very
+easily impressed with the look of things. It wasn't at all likely that
+a man should be able to walk on the water; and yet Peter found himself
+standing on the water: you would have thought that when once he found
+himself standing on the water, he need not be afraid of the wind and the
+waves that lay between him and Jesus. But they looked so ugly that the
+fearfulness of them took hold of his heart, and his courage went. You would
+have thought that the greatest trial of his courage was over when he got
+out of the boat, and that there was comparatively little more ahead of him.
+Yet the sight of the waves and the blast of the boisterous wind were too
+much for him. I will tell you how I fancy it was; and I think there are
+several instances of the same kind of thing in Peter's life. When he got
+out of the boat, and found himself standing on the water, he began to think
+much of himself for being able to do so, and fancy himself better and
+greater than his companions, and an especial favourite of God above them.
+Now, there is nothing that kills faith sooner than pride. The two are
+directly against each other. The moment that Peter grew proud, and began
+to think about himself instead of about his Master, he began to lose his
+faith, and then he grew afraid, and then he began to sink--and that brought
+him to his senses. Then he forgot himself and remembered his Master, and
+then the hand of the Lord caught him, and the voice of the Lord gently
+rebuked him for the smallness of his faith, asking, 'Wherefore didst thou
+doubt?' I wonder if Peter was able to read his own heart sufficiently well
+to answer that _wherefore_. I do not think it likely at this period of his
+history. But God has immeasurable patience, and before he had done teaching
+Peter, even in this life, he had made him know quite well that pride and
+conceit were at the root of all his failures. Jesus did not point it out to
+him now. Faith was the only thing that would reveal that to him, as well as
+cure him of it; and was, therefore, the only thing he required of him in
+his rebuke. I suspect Peter was helped back into the boat by the eager
+hands of his companions already in a humbler state of mind than when he
+left it; but before his pride would be quite overcome, it would need that
+same voice of loving-kindness to call him Satan, and the voice of the cock
+to bring to his mind his loud boast, and his sneaking denial; nay, even the
+voice of one who had never seen the Lord till after his death, but was yet
+a readier disciple than he--the voice of St. Paul, to rebuke him because he
+dissembled, and was not downright honest. But at the last even he gained
+the crown of martyrdom, enduring all extremes, nailed to the cross like
+his Master, rather than deny his name. This should teach us to distrust
+ourselves, and yet have great hope for ourselves, and endless patience with
+other people. But to return to the story and what the story itself teaches
+us.
+
+"If the disciples had known that Jesus saw them from the top of the
+mountain, and was watching them all the time, would they have been
+frightened at the storm, as I have little doubt they were, for they were
+only fresh-water fishermen, you know? Well, to answer my own question"--I
+went on in haste, for I saw one or two of the sailors with an audible
+answer hovering on their lips--"I don't know that, as they then were, it
+would have made so much difference to them; for none of them had risen much
+above the look of the things nearest them yet. But supposing you, who know
+something about him, were alone on the sea, and expecting your boat to be
+swamped every moment--if you found out all at once, that he was looking
+down at you from some lofty hilltop, and seeing all round about you in time
+and space too, would you be afraid? He might mean you to go to the bottom,
+you know. Would you mind going to the bottom with him looking at you? I do
+not think I should mind it myself. But I must take care lest I be boastful
+like Peter.
+
+"Why should we be afraid of anything with him looking at us who is the
+Saviour of men? But we are afraid of him instead, because we do not believe
+that he is what he says he is--the Saviour of men. We do not believe what
+he offers us is salvation. We think it is slavery, and therefore continue
+slaves. Friends, I will speak to you who think you do believe in him. I am
+not going to say that you do not believe in him; but I hope I am going to
+make you say to yourselves that you too deserve to have those words of the
+Saviour spoken to you that were spoken to Peter, 'O ye of little faith!'
+Floating on the sea of your troubles, all kinds of fears and anxieties
+assailing you, is He not on the mountain-top? Sees he not the little boat
+of your fortunes tossed with the waves and the contrary wind? Assuredly he
+will come to you walking on the waters. It may not be in the way you wish,
+but if not, you will say at last, 'This is better.' It may be that he will
+come in a form that will make you cry out for fear in the weakness of your
+faith, as the disciples cried out--not believing any more than they did,
+that it can be he. But will not each of you arouse his courage that to you
+also he may say, as to the woman with the sick daughter whose confidence he
+so sorely tried, 'Great is thy faith'? Will you not rouse yourself, I say,
+that you may do him justice, and cast off the slavery of your own dread?
+O ye of little faith, wherefore will ye doubt? Do not think that the Lord
+sees and will not come. Down the mountain assuredly he will come, and you
+are now as safe in your troubles as the disciples were in theirs with Jesus
+looking on. They did not know it, but it was so: the Lord was watching
+them. And when you look back upon your past lives, cannot you see some
+instances of the same kind--when you felt and acted as if the Lord had
+forgotten you, and found afterwards that he had been watching you all the
+time?
+
+"But the reason why you do not trust him more is that you obey him so
+little. If you would only, ask what God would have you to do, you would
+soon find your confidence growing. It is because you are proud, and
+envious, and greedy after gain, that you do not trust him more. Ah! trust
+him if it were only to get rid of these evil things, and be clean and
+beautiful in heart.
+
+"O sailors with me on the ocean of life, will you, knowing that he is
+watching you from his mountain-top, do and say the things that hurt, and
+wrong, and disappoint him? Sailors on the waters that surround this globe,
+though there be no great mountain that overlooks the little lake on which
+you float, not the less does he behold you, and care for you, and watch
+over you. Will you do that which is unpleasing, distressful to him? Will
+you be irreverent, cruel, coarse? Will you say evil things, lie, and
+delight in vile stories and reports, with his eye on you, watching your
+ship on its watery ways, ever ready to come over the waves to help you? It
+is a fine thing, sailors, to fear nothing; but it would be far finer to
+fear nothing _because_ he is above all, and over all, and in you all. For
+his sake and for his love, give up everything bad, and take him for your
+captain. He will be both captain and pilot to you, and steer you safe into
+the port of glory. Now to God the Father," &c.
+
+This is very nearly the sermon I preached that first Sunday morning. I
+followed it up with a short enforcement in the afternoon.
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seaboard Parish Volume 1, by George MacDonald
+
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