initial commit of ebook 3269HEADmain

1 files changed, 4441 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/3269-0.txt b/3269-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f91a83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/3269-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4441 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, by Mark
+Rutherford
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford
+
+
+Author: Mark Rutherford
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 1, 2014  [eBook #3269]
+[This file was first posted on March 6, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK
+RUTHERFORD***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                                   THE
+                             AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
+                             MARK RUTHERFORD
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           EDITED BY HIS FRIEND
+                             REUBEN SHAPCOTT
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                           HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+                        LONDON  NEW YORK  TORONTO
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                         [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                PAGE
+             CHAPTER I
+CHILDHOOD                         13
+             CHAPTER II
+PREPARATION                       33
+            CHAPTER III
+WATER LANE                        57
+             CHAPTER IV
+EDWARD GIBBON MARDON              84
+             CHAPTER V
+MISS ARBOUR                      107
+             CHAPTER VI
+ELLEN AND MARY                   138
+            CHAPTER VII
+EMANCIPATION                     173
+            CHAPTER VIII
+PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION         194
+             CHAPTER IX
+OXFORD STREET                    215
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+THE present edition is a reprint of the first, with corrections of
+several mistakes which had been overlooked.
+
+There is one observation which I may perhaps be permitted to make on
+re-reading after some years this autobiography.  Rutherford, at any rate
+in his earlier life, was an example of the danger and the folly of
+cultivating thoughts and reading books to which he was not equal, and
+which tend to make a man lonely.
+
+It is all very well that remarkable persons should occupy themselves with
+exalted subjects, which are out of the ordinary road which ordinary
+humanity treads; but we who are not remarkable make a very great mistake
+if we have anything to do with them.  If we wish to be happy, and have to
+live with average men and women, as most of us have to live, we must
+learn to take an interest in the topics which concern average men and
+women.  We think too much of ourselves.  We ought not to sacrifice a
+single moment’s pleasure in our attempt to do something which is too big
+for us, and as a rule, men and women are always attempting what is too
+big for them.  To ninety-nine young men out of a hundred, or perhaps
+ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a hundred
+thousand, the wholesome healthy doctrine is, “Don’t bother yourselves
+with what is beyond you; try to lead a sweet, clean, wholesome life, keep
+yourselves in health above everything, stick to your work, and when your
+day is done amuse and refresh yourselves.”
+
+It is not only a duty to ourselves, but it is a duty to others to take
+this course.  Great men do the world much good, but not without some
+harm, and we have no business to be troubling ourselves with their dreams
+if we have duties which lie nearer home amongst persons to whom these
+dreams are incomprehensible.  Many a man goes into his study, shuts
+himself up with his poetry or his psychology, comes out, half
+understanding what he has read, is miserable because he cannot find
+anybody with whom he can talk about it, and misses altogether the far
+more genuine joy which he could have obtained from a game with his
+children or listening to what his wife had to tell him about her
+neighbours.
+
+“Lor, miss, you haven’t looked at your new bonnet to-day,” said a servant
+girl to her young mistress.
+
+“No, why should I?  I did not want to go out.”
+
+“Oh, how can you? why, I get mine out and look at it every night.”
+
+She was happy for a whole fortnight with a happiness cheap at a very high
+price.
+
+That same young mistress was very caustic upon the women who block the
+pavement outside drapers’ shops, but surely she was unjust.  They always
+seem unconscious, to be enjoying themselves intensely and most
+innocently, more so probably than an audience at a Wagner concert.  Many
+persons with refined minds are apt to depreciate happiness, especially if
+it is of “a low type.”  Broadly speaking, it is the one thing worth
+having, and low or high, if it does no mischief, is better than the most
+spiritual misery.
+
+Metaphysics and theology, including all speculations on the why and the
+wherefore, optimism, pessimism, freedom, necessity, causality, and so
+forth, are not only for the most part loss of time, but frequently
+ruinous.  It is no answer to say that these things force themselves upon
+us, and that to every question we are bound to give or try to give an
+answer.  It is true, although strange, that there are multitudes of
+burning questions which we must do our best to ignore, to forget their
+existence; and it is not more strange, after all, than many other facts
+in this wonderfully mysterious and defective existence of ours.  One
+fourth of life is intelligible, the other three-fourths is unintelligible
+darkness; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the habit of not looking
+round the corner.
+
+“Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry
+heart; for God hath already accepted thy works.  Let thy garments be
+always white, and let not thy head lack ointment.  Live joyfully with the
+wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He
+hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is
+thy portion in life.”
+
+                                                                     R. S.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   _This is the night when I must die_,
+   _And great Orion walketh high_
+   _In silent glory overhead_:
+   _He’ll set just after I am dead_.
+
+   _A week this night_, _I’m in my grave_:
+   _Orion walketh o’er the wave_:
+   _Down in the dark damp earth I lie_,
+   _While he doth march in majesty_.
+
+   _A few weeks hence and spring will come_;
+   _The earth will bright array put on_
+   _Of daisy and of primrose bright_,
+   _And everything which loves the light_.
+
+   _And some one to my child will say_,
+   “_You’ll soon forget that you could play_
+   _Beethoven_; _let us hear a strain_
+   _From that slow movement once again_.”
+
+   _And so she’ll play that melody_,
+   _While I among the worms do lie_;
+   _Dead to them all_, _for ever dead_;
+   _The churchyard clay dense overhead_.
+
+   _I once did think there might be mine_
+   _One friendship perfect and divine_;
+   _Alas_! _that dream dissolved in tears_
+   _Before I’d counted twenty years_.
+
+   _For I was ever commonplace_;
+   _Of genius never had a trace_;
+   _My thoughts the world have never fed_,
+   _Mere echoes of the book last read_.
+
+   _Those whom I knew I cannot blame_:
+   _If they are cold_, _I am the same_:
+   _How could they ever show to me_
+   _More than a common courtesy_?
+
+   _There is no deed which I have done_;
+   _There is no love which I have won_,
+   _To make them for a moment grieve_
+   _That I this night their earth must leave_.
+
+   Thus, moaning at the break of day,
+   A man upon his deathbed lay;
+   A moment more and all was still;
+   The Morning Star came o’er the hill.
+
+   But when the dawn lay on his face,
+   It kindled an immortal grace;
+   As if in death that Life were shown
+   Which lives not in the great alone.
+
+   Orion sank down in the west
+   Just as he sank into his rest;
+   I closed in solitude his eyes,
+   And watched him till the sun’s uprise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+CHILDHOOD
+
+
+NOW that I have completed my autobiography up to the present year, I
+sometimes doubt whether it is right to publish it.  Of what use is it,
+many persons will say, to present to the world what is mainly a record of
+weaknesses and failures?  If I had any triumphs to tell; if I could show
+how I had risen superior to poverty and suffering; if, in short, I were a
+hero of any kind whatever, I might perhaps be justified in communicating
+my success to mankind, and stimulating them to do as I have done.  But
+mine is the tale of a commonplace life, perplexed by many problems I have
+never solved; disturbed by many difficulties I have never surmounted; and
+blotted by ignoble concessions which are a constant regret.
+
+I have decided, however, to let the manuscript remain.  I will not
+destroy it, although I will not take the responsibility of printing it.
+Somebody may think it worth preserving; and there are two reasons why
+they may think so, if there are no others.  In the first place it has
+some little historic value, for I feel increasingly that the race to
+which I belonged is fast passing away, and that the Dissenting minister
+of the present day is a different being altogether from the Dissenting
+minister of forty years ago.
+
+In the next place, I have observed that the mere knowing that other
+people have been tried as we have been tried is a consolation to us, and
+that we are relieved by the assurance that our sufferings are not special
+and peculiar, but common to us with many others.  Death has always been a
+terror to me, and at times, nay generally, religion and philosophy have
+been altogether unavailing to mitigate the terror in any way.  But it has
+been a comfort to me to reflect that whatever death may be, it is the
+inheritance of the whole human race; that I am not singled out, but shall
+merely have to pass through what the weakest have had to pass through
+before me.  In the worst of maladies, worst at least to me, those which
+are hypochondriacal, the healing effect which is produced by the visit of
+a friend who can simply say, “I have endured all that,” is most marked.
+So it is not impossible that some few whose experience has been like mine
+may, by my example, be freed from that sense of solitude which they find
+so depressing.
+
+I was born, just before the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened,
+in a small country town in one of the Midland shires.  It is now
+semi-manufacturing, at the junction of three or four lines of railway,
+with hardly a trace left of what it was fifty years ago.  It then
+consisted of one long main street, with a few other streets branching
+from it at right-angles.  Through this street the mail-coach rattled at
+night, and the huge waggon rolled through it, drawn by four horses, which
+twice a week travelled to and from London and brought us what we wanted
+from the great and unknown city.
+
+My father and mother belonged to the ordinary English middle class of
+well-to-do shop-keepers.  My mother’s family came from a little distance,
+but my father’s had lived in those parts for centuries.  I remember
+perfectly well how business used to be carried on in those days.  There
+was absolutely no competition, and although nobody in the town who was in
+trade got rich, except the banker and the brewer, nearly everybody was
+tolerably well off, and certainly not pressed with care as their
+successors are now.  The draper, who lived a little way above us, was a
+deacon in our chapel, and every morning, soon after breakfast, he would
+start off for his walk of about four miles, stopping by the way to talk
+to his neighbours about the events of the day.  At eleven o’clock or
+thereabouts he would return and would begin work.  Everybody took an hour
+for dinner—between one and two—and at that time, especially on a hot July
+afternoon, the High Street was empty from end to end, and the profoundest
+peace reigned.
+
+My life as a child falls into two portions, sharply divided—week-day and
+Sunday.  During the week-day I went to the public school, where I learned
+little or nothing that did me much good.  The discipline of the school
+was admirable, and the headmaster was penetrated with a most lofty sense
+of duty, but the methods of teaching were very imperfect.  In Latin we
+had to learn the Eton Latin Grammar till we knew every word of it by
+heart, but we did scarcely any retranslation from English into Latin.
+Much of our time was wasted on the merest trifles, such as learning to
+write, for example, like copperplate, and, still more extraordinary, in
+copying the letters of the alphabet as they are used in printing.
+
+But we had two half-holidays in the week, which seem to me now to have
+been the happiest part of my life.  A river ran through the town, and on
+summer Wednesdays and Saturdays we wandered along its banks for miles,
+alternately fishing and bathing.  I remember whole afternoons in June,
+July, and August, passed half-naked or altogether naked in the solitary
+meadows and in the water; I remember the tumbling weir with the deep pool
+at the bottom in which we dived; I remember, too, the place where we used
+to swim across the river with our clothes on our heads, because there was
+no bridge near, and the frequent disaster of a slip of the braces in the
+middle of the water, so that shirt, jacket, and trousers were soaked, and
+we had to lie on the grass in the broiling sun without a rag on us till
+everything was dry again.
+
+In winter our joys were of a different kind but none the less delightful.
+If it was a frost, we had skating; not like skating on a London pond, but
+over long reaches, and if the locks had not intervened, we might have
+gone a day’s journey on the ice without a stoppage.  If there was no ice,
+we had football, and what was still better, we could get up a
+steeplechase—on foot straight across hedge and ditch.
+
+In after-years, when I lived in London, I came to know children who went
+to school in Gower Street, and travelled backwards and forwards by
+omnibus—children who had no other recreation than an occasional visit to
+the Zoological Gardens, or a somewhat sombre walk up to Hampstead to see
+their aunt; and I have often regretted that they never had any experience
+of those perfect poetic pleasures which the boy enjoys whose childhood is
+spent in the country, and whose home is there.  A country boarding-school
+is something altogether different.
+
+On the Sundays, however, the compensation came.  It was a season of
+unmixed gloom.  My father and mother were rigid Calvinistic Independents,
+and on that day no newspaper nor any book more secular than the
+Evangelical Magazine was tolerated.  Every preparation for the Sabbath
+had been made on the Saturday, to avoid as much as possible any work.
+The meat was cooked beforehand, so that we never had a hot dinner even in
+the coldest weather; the only thing hot which was permitted was a boiled
+suet pudding, which cooked itself while we were at chapel, and some
+potatoes which were prepared after we came home.  Not a letter was opened
+unless it was clearly evident that it was not on business, and for
+opening these an apology was always offered that it was possible they
+might contain some announcement of sickness.  If on cursory inspection
+they appeared to be ordinary letters, although they might be from
+relations or friends, they were put away.
+
+After family prayer and breakfast the business of the day began with the
+Sunday-school at nine o’clock.  We were taught our Catechism and Bible
+there till a quarter past ten.  We were then marched across the road into
+the chapel, a large old-fashioned building dating from the time of
+Charles II.  The floor was covered with high pews.  The roof was
+supported by three or four tall wooden pillars which ran from the ground
+to the ceiling, and the galleries by shorter pillars.  There was a large
+oak pulpit on one side against the wall, and down below, immediately
+under the minister, was the “singing pew,” where the singers and
+musicians sat, the musicians being performers on the clarionet, flute,
+violin, and violoncello.  Right in front was a long enclosure, called the
+communion pew, which was usually occupied by a number of the poorer
+members of the congregation.
+
+There were three services every Sunday, besides intermitting
+prayer-meetings, but these I did not as yet attend.  Each service
+consisted of a hymn, reading the Bible, another hymn, a prayer, the
+sermon, a third hymn, and a short final prayer.  The reading of the Bible
+was unaccompanied with any observations or explanations, and I do not
+remember that I ever once heard a mistranslation corrected.
+
+The first, or long prayer, as it was called, was a horrible hypocrisy,
+and it was a sore tax on the preacher to get through it.  Anything more
+totally unlike the model recommended to us in the New Testament cannot
+well be imagined.  It generally began with a confession that we were all
+sinners, but no individual sins were ever confessed, and then ensued a
+kind of dialogue with God, very much resembling the speeches which in
+later years I have heard in the House of Commons from the movers and
+seconders of addresses to the Crown at the opening of Parliament.
+
+In all the religion of that day nothing was falser than the long prayer.
+Direct appeal to God can only be justified when it is passionate.  To
+come maundering into His presence when we have nothing particular to say
+is an insult, upon which we should never presume if we had a petition to
+offer to any earthly personage.  We should not venture to take up His
+time with commonplaces or platitudes; but our minister seemed to consider
+that the Almighty, who had the universe to govern, had more leisure at
+His command that the idlest lounger at a club.  Nobody ever listened to
+this performance.  I was a good child on the whole, but I am sure I did
+not; and if the chapel were now in existence, there might be traced on
+the flap of the pew in which we sat many curious designs due to these
+dreary performances.
+
+The sermon was not much better.  It generally consisted of a text, which
+was a mere peg for a discourse, that was pretty much the same from
+January to December.  The minister invariably began with the fall of man;
+propounded the scheme of redemption, and ended by depicting in the
+morning the blessedness of the saints, and in the evening the doom of the
+lost.  There was a tradition that in the morning there should be
+“experience”—that is to say, comfort for the elect, and that the evening
+should be appropriated to their less fortunate brethren.
+
+The evening service was the most trying to me of all these.  I never
+could keep awake, and knew that to sleep under the Gospel was a sin.  The
+chapel was lighted in winter by immense chandeliers with tiers of candles
+all round.  These required perpetual snuffing, and I can see the old man
+going round the chandeliers in the middle of the service with a mighty
+pair of snuffers which opened and shut with a loud click.  How I envied
+him because he had semi-secular occupation which prevented that terrible
+drowsiness!  How I envied the pew-opener, who was allowed to stand at the
+vestry door, and could slip into the vestry every now and then, or even
+into the burial-ground if he heard irreverent boys playing there!  The
+atmosphere of the chapel on hot nights was most foul, and this added to
+my discomfort.  Oftentimes in winter, when no doors or windows were open,
+I have seen the glass panes streaming with wet inside, and women carried
+out fainting.
+
+On rare occasions I was allowed to go with my father when he went into
+the villages to preach.  As a deacon he was also a lay-preacher, and I
+had the ride in the gig out and home, and tea at a farm-house.
+
+Perhaps I shall not have a better opportunity to say that, with all these
+drawbacks, my religious education did confer upon me some positive
+advantages.  The first was a rigid regard for truthfulness.  My parents
+never would endure a lie or the least equivocation.  The second was
+purity of life, and I look upon this as a simply incalculable gain.
+Impurity was not an excusable weakness in the society in which I lived;
+it was a sin for which dreadful punishment was reserved.  The reason for
+my virtue may have been a wrong reason, but, anyhow, I was saved, and
+being saved, much more was saved than health and peace of mind.
+
+To this day I do not know where to find a weapon strong enough to subdue
+the tendency to impurity in young men; and although I cannot tell them
+what I do not believe, I hanker sometimes after the old prohibitions and
+penalties.  Physiological penalties are too remote, and the subtler
+penalties—the degradation, the growth of callousness to finer pleasures,
+the loss of sensitiveness to all that is most nobly attractive in
+woman—are too feeble to withstand temptation when it lies in ambush like
+a garrotter, and has the reason stunned in a moment.
+
+The only thing that can be done is to make the conscience of a boy
+generally tender, so that he shrinks instinctively from the monstrous
+injustice of contributing for the sake of his own pleasure to the ruin of
+another.  As soon as manhood dawns, he must also have his attention
+absorbed on some object which will divert his thoughts intellectually or
+ideally; and by slight yet constant pressure, exercised not by fits and
+starts, but day after day, directly and indirectly, his father must form
+an antipathy in him to brutish, selfish sensuality.  Above all, there
+must be no toying with passion, and no books permitted, without
+condemnation and warning, which are not of a heroic turn.  When the boy
+becomes a man he may read Byron without danger.  To a youth he is fatal.
+
+Before leaving this subject I may observe, that parents greatly err by
+not telling their children a good many things which they ought to know.
+Had I been taught when I was young a few facts about myself, which I only
+learned accidentally long afterwards, a good deal of misery might have
+been spared me.
+
+Nothing particular happened to me till I was about fourteen, when I was
+told it was time I became converted.  Conversion, amongst the
+Independents and other Puritan sects, is supposed to be a kind of miracle
+wrought in the heart by the influence of the Holy Spirit, by which the
+man becomes something altogether different to what he was previously.  It
+affects, or should affect, his character; that is to say, he ought after
+conversion to be better in every way than he was before; but this is not
+considered as its main consequence.  In its essence it is a change in the
+emotions and increased vividness of belief.  It is now altogether untrue.
+Yet it is an undoubted fact that in earlier days, and, indeed, in rare
+cases, as late as the time of my childhood, it was occasionally a
+reality.
+
+It is possible to imagine that under the preaching of Paul sudden
+conviction of a life misspent may have been produced with sudden personal
+attachment to the Galilean who, until then, had been despised.  There may
+have been prompt release of unsuspected powers, and as prompt an
+imprisonment for ever of meaner weaknesses and tendencies; the result
+being literally a putting off of the old, and a putting on of the new
+man.  Love has always been potent to produce such a transformation, and
+the exact counterpart of conversion, as it was understood by the
+apostles, may be seen whenever a man is redeemed from vice by attachment
+to some woman whom he worships, or when a girl is reclaimed from idleness
+and vanity by becoming a mother.
+
+But conversion, as it was understood by me and as it is now understood,
+is altogether unmeaning.  I knew that I had to be “a child of God,” and
+after a time professed myself to be one, but I cannot call to mind that I
+was anything else than I always had been, save that I was perhaps a
+little more hypocritical; not in the sense that I professed to others
+what I knew I did not believe, but in the sense that I professed it to
+myself.  I was obliged to declare myself convinced of sin; convinced of
+the efficacy of the atonement; convinced that I was forgiven; convinced
+that the Holy Ghost was shed abroad in my heart; and convinced of a great
+many other things which were the merest phrases.
+
+However, the end of it was, that I was proposed for acceptance, and two
+deacons were deputed, in accordance with the usual custom, to wait upon
+me and ascertain my fitness for membership.  What they said and what I
+said has now altogether vanished; but I remember with perfect
+distinctness the day on which I was admitted.  It was the custom to
+demand of each candidate a statement of his or her experience.  I had no
+experience to give; and I was excused on the grounds that I had been the
+child of pious parents, and consequently had not undergone that
+convulsion which those, not favoured like myself, necessarily underwent
+when they were called.
+
+I was now expected to attend all those extra services which were
+specially for the church.  I stayed to the late prayer-meeting on Sunday;
+I went to the prayer-meeting on week-days, and also to private
+prayer-meetings.  These services were not interesting to me for their own
+sake.  I thought they were, but what I really liked was clanship and the
+satisfaction of belonging to a society marked off from the great world.
+
+It must also be added that the evening meetings afforded us many
+opportunities for walking home with certain young women, who, I am sorry
+to say, were a more powerful attraction, not to me only, but to others,
+than the prospect of hearing brother Holderness, the travelling draper,
+confess crimes which, to say the truth, although they were many according
+to his own account, were never given in that detail which would have made
+his confession of some value.  He never prayed without telling all of us
+that there was no health in him, and that his soul was a mass of
+putrefying sores; but everybody thought the better of him for his
+self-humiliation.  One actual indiscretion, however, brought home to him
+would have been visited by suspension or expulsion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+PREPARATION
+
+
+IT was necessary that an occupation should be found for me, and after
+much deliberation it was settled that I should “go into the ministry.”  I
+had joined the church, I had “engaged in prayer” publicly, and although I
+had not set up for being extraordinarily pious, I was thought to be as
+good as most of the young men who professed to have a mission to
+regenerate mankind.
+
+Accordingly, after some months of preparation, I was taken to a
+Dissenting College not very far from where we lived.  It was a large
+old-fashioned house with a newer building annexed, and was surrounded
+with a garden and with meadows.  Each student had a separate room, and
+all had their meals together in a common hall.  Altogether there were
+about forty of us.  The establishment consisted of a President, an
+elderly gentleman who had an American degree of doctor of divinity, and
+who taught the various branches of theology.  He was assisted by three
+professors, who imparted to us as much Greek, Latin, and mathematics as
+it was considered that we ought to know.  Behold me, then, beginning a
+course of training which was to prepare me to meet the doubts of the
+nineteenth century; to be the guide of men; to advise them in their
+perplexities; to suppress their tempestuous lusts; to lift them above
+their petty cares, and to lead them heavenward!
+
+About the Greek and Latin and the secular part of the college discipline
+I will say nothing, except that it was generally inefficient.  The
+theological and Biblical teaching was a sham.  We had come to the college
+in the first place to learn the Bible.  Our whole existence was in future
+to be based upon that book; our lives were to be passed in preaching it.
+I will venture to say that there was no book less understood either by
+students or professors.  The President had a course of lectures,
+delivered year after year to successive generations of his pupils, upon
+its authenticity and inspiration.  They were altogether remote from the
+subject; and afterwards, when I came to know what the difficulties of
+belief really were, I found that these essays, which were supposed to be
+a triumphant confutation of the sceptic, were a mere sword of lath.  They
+never touched the question, and if any doubts suggested themselves to the
+audience, nobody dared to give them tongue, lest the expression of them
+should beget a suspicion of heresy.
+
+I remember also some lectures on the proof of the existence of God and on
+the argument from design; all of which, when my mind was once awakened,
+were as irrelevant as the chattering of sparrows.  When I did not even
+know who or what this God was, and could not bring my lips to use the
+word with any mental honesty, of what service was the “watch argument” to
+me?  Very lightly did the President pass over all these initial
+difficulties of his religion.  I see him now, a gentleman with lightish
+hair, with a most mellifluous voice and a most pastoral manner, reading
+his prim little tracts to us directed against the “shallow infidel” who
+seemed to deny conclusions so obvious that we were certain he could not
+be sincere, and those of us who had never seen an infidel might well be
+pardoned for supposing that he must always be wickedly blind.
+
+About a dozen of these tracts settled the infidel and the whole mass of
+unbelief from the time of Celsus downwards.  The President’s task was all
+the easier because he knew nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the
+word “German” was a term of reproach signifying something very awful,
+although nobody knew exactly what it was.
+
+Systematic theology was the next science to which the President directed
+us.  We used a sort of Calvinistic manual which began by setting forth
+that mankind was absolutely in God’s power.  He was our maker, and we had
+no legal claim whatever to any consideration from Him.  The author then
+mechanically built up the Calvinistic creed, step by step, like a house
+of cards.  Systematic theology was the great business of our academical
+life.  We had to read sermons to the President in class, and no sermon
+was considered complete and proper unless it unfolded what was called the
+scheme of redemption from beginning to end.
+
+So it came to pass that about the Bible, as I have already said, we were
+in darkness.  It was a magazine of texts, and those portions of it which
+contributed nothing in the shape of texts, or formed no part of the
+scheme, were neglected.  Worse still, not a word was ever spoken to us
+telling us in what manner to strengthen the reason, to subdue the senses,
+or in what way to deal with all the varied diseases of that soul of man
+which we were to set ourselves to save.  All its failings, infinitely
+more complicated than those of the body, were grouped as “sin,” and for
+these there was one quack remedy.  If the patient did not like the
+remedy, or got no good from it, the fault was his.
+
+It is remarkable that the scheme was never of the slightest service to me
+in repressing one solitary evil inclination; at no point did it come into
+contact with me.  At the time it seemed right and proper that I should
+learn it, and I had no doubt of its efficacy; but when the stress of
+temptation was upon me, it never occurred to me, nor when I became a
+minister did I find it sufficiently powerful to mend the most trifling
+fault.  In after years, but not till I had strayed far away from the
+President and his creed, the Bible was really opened to me, and became to
+me, what it now is, the most precious of books.
+
+There were several small chapels scattered in the villages near the
+college, and these chapels were “supplied,” as the phrase is, by the
+students.  Those who were near the end of their course were also employed
+as substitutes for regular ministers when they were temporarily absent.
+Sometimes a senior was even sent up to London to take the place, on a
+sudden emergency, of a great London minister, and when he came back he
+was an object almost of adoration.  The congregation, on the other hand,
+consisting in some part of country people spending a Sunday in town and
+anxious to hear a celebrated preacher, were not at all disposed to adore,
+when, instead of the great man, they saw “only a student.”
+
+By the time I was nineteen I took my turn in “supplying” the villages,
+and set forth with the utmost confidence what appeared to me to be the
+indubitable gospel.  No shadow of a suspicion of its truth ever crossed
+my mind, and yet I had not spent an hour in comprehending, much less in
+answering, one objection to it.  The objections, in fact, had never met
+me; they were over my horizon altogether.  It is wonderful to think how I
+could take so much for granted; and not merely take it to myself and for
+myself, but proclaim it as a message to other people.  It would be a
+mistake, however, to suppose that theological youths are the only class
+who are guilty of such presumption.  Our gregarious instinct is so strong
+that it is the most difficult thing for us to be satisfied with suspended
+judgment.  Men must join a party, and have a cry, and they generally take
+up their party and their cry from the most indifferent motives.
+
+For my own part I cannot be enthusiastic about politics, except on rare
+occasions when the issue is a very narrow one.  There is so much that
+requires profound examination, and it disgusts me to get upon a platform
+and dispute with ardent Radicals or Conservatives who know nothing about
+even the rudiments of history, political economy, or political
+philosophy, without which it is as absurd to have an opinion upon what
+are called politics as it would be to have an opinion upon an
+astronomical problem without having learned Euclid.
+
+The more incapable we are of thorough investigations, the wider and
+deeper are the subjects upon which we busy ourselves, and still more
+strange, the more bigoted do we become in our conclusions about them; and
+yet it is not strange, for he who by painful processes has found yes and
+no alternate for so long that he is not sure which is final, is the last
+man in the world, if he for the present is resting in yes, to crucify
+another who can get no further than no.  The bigot is he to whom no such
+painful processes have ever been permitted.
+
+The society amongst the students was very poor.  Not a single friendship
+formed then has remained with me.  They were mostly young men of no
+education, who had been taken from the counter, and their spiritual life
+was not very deep.  In many of them it did not even exist, and their
+whole attention was absorbed upon their chances of getting wealthy
+congregations or of making desirable matches.  It was a time in which the
+world outside was seething with the ferment which had been cast into it
+by Germany and by those in England whom Germany had influenced, but not a
+fragment of it had dropped within our walls.  I cannot call to mind a
+single conversation upon any but the most trivial topics, nor did our
+talk ever turn even upon our religion, so far as it was a thing affecting
+the soul, but upon it as something subsidiary to chapels, “causes,”
+deacons, and the like.
+
+The emptiness of some of my colleagues, and their worldliness, too, were
+almost incredible.  There was one who was particularly silly.  He was a
+blond youth with greyish eyes, a mouth not quite shut, and an eternal
+simper upon his face.  He never had an idea in his head, and never read
+anything except the denominational newspapers and a few well-known aids
+to sermonising.  He was a great man at all tea-meetings, anniversaries,
+and parties.  He was facile in public speaking, and he dwelt much upon
+the joys of heaven and upon such topics as the possibility of our
+recognising one another there.  I have known him describe for twenty
+minutes, in a kind of watery rhetoric, the passage of the soul to bliss
+through death, and its meeting in the next world with those who had gone
+before.
+
+With all his weakness he was close and mean in money matters, and when he
+left college, the first thing he did was to marry a widow with a fortune.
+Before long he became one of the most popular of ministers in a town much
+visited by sick persons, with whom he was an especial favourite.  I
+disliked him—and specially disliked his unpleasant behaviour to women.
+If I had been a woman, I should have spurned him for his perpetual insult
+of inane compliments.  He was always dawdling after “the sex,” which was
+one of his sweet phrases, and yet he was not passionate.  Passion does
+not dawdle and compliment, nor is it nasty, as this fellow was.  Passion
+may burn like a devouring flame; and in a few moments, like flame, may
+bring down a temple to dust and ashes, but it is earnest as flame, and
+essentially pure.
+
+During the first two years at college my life was entirely external.  My
+heart was altogether untouched by anything I heard, read, or did,
+although I myself supposed that I took an interest in them.  But one day
+in my third year, a day I remember as well as Paul must have remembered
+afterwards the day on which he went to Damascus, I happened to find
+amongst a parcel of books a volume of poems in paper boards.  It was
+called _Lyrical Ballads_, and I read first one and then the whole book.
+It conveyed to me no new doctrine, and yet the change it wrought in me
+could only be compared with that which is said to have been wrought on
+Paul himself by the Divine apparition.
+
+Looking over the _Lyrical Ballads_ again, as I have looked over it a
+dozen times since then, I can hardly see what it was which stirred me so
+powerfully, nor do I believe that it communicated much to me which could
+be put in words.  But it excited a movement and a growth which went on
+till, by degrees, all the systems which enveloped me like a body
+gradually decayed from me and fell away into nothing.  Of more
+importance, too, than the decay of systems was the birth of a habit of
+inner reference and a dislike to occupy myself with anything which did
+not in some way or other touch the soul, or was not the illustration or
+embodiment of some spiritual law.
+
+There is, of course, a definite explanation to be given of one effect
+produced by the _Lyrical Ballads_.  God is nowhere formally deposed, and
+Wordsworth would have been the last man to say that he had lost his faith
+in the God of his fathers.  But his real God is not the God of the
+Church, but the God of the hills, the abstraction Nature, and to this my
+reverence was transferred.  Instead of an object of worship which was
+altogether artificial, remote, never coming into genuine contact with me,
+I had now one which I thought to be real, one in which literally I could
+live and move and have my being, an actual fact present before my eyes.
+God was brought from that heaven of the books, and dwelt on the downs in
+the far-away distances, and in every cloud-shadow which wandered across
+the valley.  Wordsworth unconsciously did for me what every religious
+reformer has done—he re-created my Supreme Divinity; substituting a new
+and living spirit for the old deity, once alive, but gradually hardened
+into an idol.
+
+What days were those of the next few years before increasing age had
+presented preciser problems and demanded preciser answers; before all joy
+was darkened by the shadow of on-coming death, and when life seemed
+infinite!  Those were the days when through the whole long summer’s
+morning I wanted no companion but myself, provided only I was in the
+country, and when books were read with tears in the eyes.  Those were the
+days when mere life, apart from anything which it brings, was exquisite.
+
+In my own college I found no sympathy, but we were in the habit of
+meeting occasionally the students from other colleges, and amongst them I
+met with one or two, especially one who had undergone experiences similar
+to my own.  The friendships formed with these young men have lasted till
+now, and have been the most permanent of all the relationships of my
+existence.  I wish not to judge others, but the persons who to me have
+proved themselves most attractive, have been those who have passed
+through such a process as that through which I myself passed; those who
+have had in some form or other an enthusiastic stage in their history,
+when the story of Genesis and of the Gospels has been rewritten, when God
+has visibly walked in the garden, and the Son of God has drawn men away
+from their daily occupations into the divinest of dreams.
+
+I have known men—most interesting men with far greater powers than any
+which I have possessed, men who have never been trammelled by a false
+creed, who have devoted themselves to science and acquired a great
+reputation, who have somehow never laid hold upon me like the man I have
+just mentioned.  He failed altogether as a minister, and went back to his
+shop, but the old glow of his youth burns, and will burn, for ever.  When
+I am with him our conversation naturally turns on matters which are of
+profoundest importance: with others it may be instructive, but I leave
+them unmoved, and I trace the difference distinctly to that visitation,
+for it was nothing else, which came to him in his youth.
+
+The effect which was produced upon my preaching and daily conversation by
+this change was immediate.  It became gradually impossible for me to talk
+about subjects which had not some genuine connection with me, or to
+desire to hear others talk about them.  The artificial, the merely
+miraculous, the event which had no inner meaning, no matter how large
+externally it might be, I did not care for.  A little Greek mythological
+story was of more importance to me than a war which filled the
+newspapers.  What, then, could I do with my theological treatises?
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that I immediately became
+formally heretical.  Nearly every doctrine in the college creed had once
+had a natural origin in the necessities of human nature, and might
+therefore be so interpreted as to become a necessity again.  To reach
+through to that original necessity; to explain the atonement as I
+believed it appeared to Paul, and the sinfulness of man as it appeared to
+the prophets, was my object.  But it was precisely this reaching after a
+meaning which constituted heresy.  The distinctive essence of our
+orthodoxy was not this or that dogma, but the acceptance of dogmas as
+communications from without, and not as born from within.
+
+Heresy began, and in fact was altogether present, when I said to myself
+that a mere statement of the atonement as taught in class was impossible
+for me, and that I must go back to Paul and his century, place myself in
+his position, and connect the atonement through him with something which
+I felt.  I thus continued to use all the terms which I had hitherto used;
+but an uneasy feeling began to develop itself about me in the minds of
+the professors, because I did not rest in the “simplicity” of the gospel.
+To me this meant its unintelligibility.
+
+I remember, for example, discoursing about the death of Christ.  There
+was not a single word which was ordinarily used in the pulpit which I did
+not use—satisfaction for sin, penalty, redeeming blood, they were all
+there—but I began by saying that in this world there was no redemption
+for man but by blood; furthermore, the innocent had everywhere and in all
+time to suffer for the guilty.  It had been objected that it was contrary
+to our notion of an all-loving Being that He should demand such a
+sacrifice; but, contrary or not, in this world it was true, quite apart
+from Jesus, that virtue was martyred every day, unknown and unconsoled,
+in order that the wicked might somehow be saved.  This was part of the
+scheme of the world, and we might dislike it or not, we could not get rid
+of it.  The consequences of my sin, moreover, are rendered less terrible
+by virtues not my own.  I am literally saved from penalties because
+another pays the penalty for me.  The atonement, and what it accomplished
+for man, were therefore a sublime summing up as it were of what sublime
+men have to do for their race; an exemplification, rather than a
+contradiction, of Nature herself, as we know her in our own experience.
+
+Now, all this was really intended as a defence of the atonement; but the
+President heard me that Sunday, and on the Monday he called me into his
+room.  He said that my sermon was marked by considerable ability, but he
+should have been better satisfied if I had confined myself to setting
+forth as plainly as I could the “way of salvation” as revealed in Christ
+Jesus.  What I had urged might perhaps have possessed some interest for
+cultivated people; in fact, he had himself urged pretty much the same
+thing many years ago, when he was a young man, in a sermon he had
+preached at the Union meeting; but I must recollect that in all
+probability my sphere of usefulness would lie amongst humble hearers,
+perhaps in an agricultural village or a small town, and that he did not
+think people of this sort would understand me if I talked over their
+heads as I had done the day before.  What they wanted on a Sunday, after
+all the cares of the week, was not anything to perplex and disturb them;
+not anything which demanded any exercise of thought; but a repetition of
+the “old story of which, Mr. Rutherford, you know, we never ought to get
+weary; an exhibition of our exceeding sinfulness; of our safety in the
+Rock of Ages, and there only; of the joys of the saints and the
+sufferings of those who do not believe.”
+
+His words fell on me like the hand of a corpse, and I went away much
+depressed.  My sermon had excited me, and the man who of all men ought to
+have welcomed me, had not a word of warmth or encouragement for me,
+nothing but the coldest indifference, and even repulse.
+
+It occurs to me here to offer an explanation of a failing of which I have
+been accused in later years, and that is secrecy and reserve.  The real
+truth is, that nobody more than myself could desire self-revelation; but
+owing to peculiar tendencies in me, and peculiarity of education, I was
+always prone to say things in conversation which I found produced blank
+silence in the majority of those who listened to me, and immediate
+opportunity was taken by my hearers to turn to something trivial.  Hence
+it came to pass that only when tempted by unmistakable sympathy could I
+be induced to express my real self on any topic of importance.
+
+It is a curious instance of the difficulty of diagnosing (to use a
+doctor’s word) any spiritual disease, if disease this shyness may be
+called.  People would ordinarily set it down to self-reliance, with no
+healthy need of intercourse.  It was nothing of the kind.  It was an
+excess of communicativeness, an eagerness to show what was most at my
+heart, and to ascertain what was at the heart of those to whom I talked,
+which made me incapable of mere fencing and trifling, and so often caused
+me to retreat into myself when I found absolute absense of response.
+
+I am also reminded here of a dream which I had in these years of a
+perfect friendship.  I always felt that, talk with whom I would, I left
+something unsaid which was precisely what I most wished to say.  I wanted
+a friend who would sacrifice himself to me utterly, and to whom I might
+offer a similar sacrifice.  I found companions for whom I cared, and who
+professed to care for me; but I was thirsting for deeper draughts of love
+than any which they had to offer; and I said to myself that if I were to
+die, not one of them would remember me for more than a week.  This was
+not selfishness, for I longed to prove my devotion as well as to receive
+that of another.  How this ideal haunted me!  It made me restless and
+anxious at the sight of every new face, wondering whether at last I had
+found that for which I searched as if for the kingdom of heaven.
+
+It is superfluous to say that a friend of the kind I wanted never
+appeared, and disappointment after disappointment at last produced in me
+a cynicism which repelled people from me, and brought upon me a good deal
+of suffering.  I tried men by my standard, and if they did not come up to
+it I rejected them; thus I prodigally wasted a good deal of the affection
+which the world would have given me.  Only when I got much older did I
+discern the duty of accepting life as God has made it, and thankfully
+receiving any scrap of love offered to me, however imperfect it might be.
+
+I don’t know any mistake which I have made which has cost me more than
+this; but at the same time I must record that it was a mistake for which,
+considering everything, I cannot much blame myself.  I hope it is amended
+now.  Now when it is getting late I recognise a higher obligation,
+brought home to me by a closer study of the New Testament.  Sympathy or
+no sympathy, a man’s love should no more fail towards his fellows than
+that love which spent itself on disciples who altogether misunderstood
+it, like the rain which falls on just and unjust alike.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+WATER LANE
+
+
+I HAD now reached the end of my fourth year at college, and it was time
+for me to leave.  I was sent down into the eastern counties to a
+congregation which had lost its minister, and was there “on probation”
+for a month.  I was naturally a good speaker, and as the “cause” had got
+very low, the attendance at the chapel increased during the month I was
+there.  The deacons thought they had a prospect of returning prosperity,
+and in the end I received a nearly unanimous invitation, which, after
+some hesitation, I accepted.  One of the deacons, a Mr. Snale, was
+against me; he thought I was not “quite sound”; but he was overruled.  We
+shall hear more of him presently.  After a short holiday I entered on my
+new duties.
+
+The town was one of those which are not uncommon in that part of the
+world.  It had a population of about seven or eight thousand, and was a
+sort of condensation of the agricultural country round.  There was one
+main street, consisting principally of very decent, respectable shops.
+Generally speaking, there were two shops of each trade; one which was
+patronised by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and
+Whigs.  The inhabitants were divided into two distinct camps—of the
+Church and Tory camp the other camp knew nothing.  On the other hand, the
+knowledge which each member of the Dissenting camp had of every other
+member was most intimate.
+
+The Dissenters were further split up into two or three different sects,
+but the main sect was that of the Independents.  They, in fact, dominated
+every other.  There was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans had
+a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some reason or other the
+Independents were really the Dissenters, and until the “cause” had
+dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to be
+found on Sunday in their meeting-house in Water Lane.
+
+My predecessor had died in harness at the age of seventy-five.  I never
+knew him, but from all I could hear he must have been a man of some
+power.  As he got older, however, he became feeble; and after a course of
+three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, what he had to say was so
+entirely anticipated by his congregation, that although they all
+maintained that the gospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the fall,
+the atonement, and so forth, should continually be presented, and their
+minister also believed and acted implicitly upon the same theory, they
+fell away—some to the Baptists, some to the neighbouring Independents
+about two miles off, and some to the Church, while a few “went nowhere.”
+
+When I came I found that the deacons still remained true.  They were the
+skeleton; but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my first
+Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a building which would hold
+seven hundred.  These deacons were four in number.  One was an old farmer
+who lived in a village three miles distant.  Ever since he was a boy he
+had driven over to Water Lane on Sunday.  He and his family brought their
+dinner with them, and ate it in the vestry; but they never stopped till
+the evening, because of the difficulty of getting home on dark nights,
+and because they all went to bed in winter-time at eight o’clock.
+
+Morning and afternoon Mr. Catfield—for that was his name—gave out the
+hymns.  He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very ignorant, never
+reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save _Bell’s
+Weekly Messenger_.  Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond
+a few favourite chapters; and I am bound to say that, so far as my
+experience goes, the character so frequently drawn in romances of intense
+Bible students in Dissenting congregations is very rare.  At the same
+time Mr. Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and in his way
+was very pious.  I could never call him a hypocrite.  He was as sincere
+as he could be, and yet no religious expression of his was ever so
+sincere as the most ordinary expression of the most trifling pleasure or
+pain.
+
+The second deacon, Mr. Weeley, was, as he described himself, a builder
+and undertaker; more properly an undertaker and carpenter.  He was a
+thin, tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes.  He was
+entirely without energy of any kind, and always seemed oppressed by a
+world which was too much for him.  He had depended a good deal for custom
+upon his chapel connection; and when the attendance at the chapel fell
+off, his trade fell off likewise, so that he had to compound with his
+creditors.  He was a mere shadow, a man of whom nothing could be said
+either good or evil.
+
+The third deacon was Mr. Snale, the draper.  When I first knew him he was
+about thirty-five.  He was slim, small, and small-faced, closely shaven,
+excepting a pair of little curly whiskers, and he was extremely neat.  He
+had a little voice too, rather squeaky, and the marked peculiarity that
+he hardly ever said anything, no matter how disagreeable it might be,
+without stretching as if in a smile his thin little lips.  He kept the
+principal draper’s shop in the town, and even Church people spent their
+money with him, because he was so very genteel compared with the other
+draper, who was a great red man, and hung things outside his window.  Mr.
+Snale was married, had children, and was strictly proper.  But his way of
+talking to women and about them was more odious than the way of a
+debauchee.  He invariably called them “the ladies,” or more exactly, “the
+leedies”; and he hardly ever spoke to a “leedy” without a smirk and some
+faint attempt at a joke.
+
+One of the customs of the chapel was what were called Dorcas meetings.
+Once a month the wives and daughters drank tea with each other; the
+evening being ostensibly devoted to making clothes for the poor.  The
+husband of the lady who gave the entertainment for the month had to wait
+upon the company, and the minister was expected to read to them while
+they worked.
+
+It was my lot to be Mr. Snale’s guest two or three times when Mrs. Snale
+was the Dorcas hostess.  We met in the drawing-room, which was over the
+shop, and looked out into the town market-place.  There was a round table
+in the middle of the room, at which Mrs. Snale sat and made the tea.
+Abundance of hot buttered toast and muffins were provided, which Mr.
+Snale and a maid handed round to the party.
+
+Four pictures decorated the walls.  One hung over the mantelpiece.  It
+was a portrait in oils of Mr. Snale, and opposite to it, on the other
+side, was a portrait of Mrs. Snale.  Both were daubs, but curiously
+faithful in depicting what was most offensive in the character of both
+the originals, Mr. Snale’s simper being preserved; together with the
+peculiarly hard, heavy sensuality of the eye in Mrs. Snale, who was large
+and full-faced, correct like Mr. Snale, a member of the church, a woman
+whom I never saw moved to any generosity, and cruel not with the ferocity
+of the tiger, but with the dull insensibility of a cartwheel, which will
+roll over a man’s neck as easily as over a flint.  The third picture
+represented the descent of the Holy Ghost; a number of persons sitting in
+a chamber, and each one with the flame of a candle on his head.  The
+fourth represented the last day.  The Son of God was in a chair
+surrounded by clouds, and beside Him was a flying figure blowing a long
+mail-coach horn.  The dead were coming up out of their graves; some were
+half out of the earth, others three-parts out—the whole of the bottom
+part of the picture being filled with bodies emerging from the ground, a
+few looking happy, but most of them very wretched; all of them being
+naked.
+
+The first time I went to Mrs. Snale’s Dorcas gathering Mr. Snale was
+reader, on the ground that I was a novice; and I was very glad to resign
+the task to him.  As the business in hand was week-day and secular, it
+was not considered necessary that the selected subjects should be
+religious; but as it was distinctly connected with the chapel, it was
+also considered that they should have a religious flavour.  Consequently
+the Bible was excluded, and so were books on topics altogether worldly.
+Dorcas meetings were generally, therefore, shut up to the denominational
+journal and to magazines.  Towards the end of the evening Mr. Snale read
+the births, deaths, and marriages in this journal.  It would not have
+been thought right to read them from any other newspaper, but it was
+agreed, with a fineness of tact which was very remarkable, that it was
+quite right to read them in one which was “serious.”  During the whole
+time that the reading was going on conversation was not arrested, but was
+conducted in a kind of half whisper; and this was another reason why I
+exceedingly disliked to read, for I could never endure to speak if people
+did not listen.
+
+At half-past eight the work was put away, and Mrs. Snale went to the
+piano and played a hymn tune, the minister having first of all selected
+the hymn.  Singing over, he offered a short prayer, and the company
+separated.  Supper was not served, as it was found to be too great an
+expense.  The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort them home,
+but did not come upstairs.  Some of the gentlemen waited below in the
+dining-room, but most of them preferred the shop, for, although it was
+shut, the gas was burning to enable the assistants to put away the goods
+which had been got out during the day.
+
+When it first became my turn to read I proposed the _Vicar of Wakefield_;
+but although no objection was raised at the time, Mr. Snale took an
+opportunity of telling me, after I had got through a chapter or two, that
+he thought it would be better if it were discontinued.  “Because, you
+know, Mr. Rutherford,” he said, with his smirk, “the company is mixed;
+there are young leedies present, and perhaps, Mr. Rutherford, a book with
+a more requisite tone might be more suitable on such an occasion.”  What
+he meant I did not know, and how to find a book with a more requisite
+tone I did not know.
+
+However, the next time, in my folly, I tried a selection from George
+Fox’s Journal.  Mr. Snale objected to this too.  It was “hardly of a
+character adapted for social intercourse,” he thought; and furthermore,
+“although Mr. Fox might be a very good man, and was a converted
+character, yet he did not, you know, Mr. Rutherford, belong to us.”  So I
+was reduced to that class of literature which of all others I most
+abominated, and which always seemed to me the most profane—religious and
+sectarian gossip, religious novels designed to make religion attractive,
+and other slip-slop of this kind.  I could not endure it, and was
+frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings.
+
+The rest of the small congregation was of no particular note.  As I have
+said before, it had greatly fallen away, and all who remained clung to
+the chapel rather by force of habit than from any other reason.  The only
+exception was an old maiden lady and her sister, who lived in a little
+cottage about a mile out of the town.  They were pious in the purest
+sense of the word, suffering much from ill-health, but perfectly
+resigned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness always apparent on
+their faces, like the cheerfulness of a white sky with a sun veiled by
+light and lofty clouds.  They were the daughters of a carriage-builder,
+who had left them a small annuity.
+
+Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered.  The moment I
+found myself inside it, I became conscious of perfect repose.  Everything
+was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the same peace.
+Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been preserved with such
+care that nothing looked old.  Yet the owners were not what is called
+old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superstitious worshippers of
+order and neatness.
+
+I remember Mrs. Snale’s children coming in one afternoon when I was
+there.  They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of dirty
+footmarks all over the carpet, which the two ladies noticed at once.  But
+it made no difference to the treatment of the children, who had some cake
+and currant wine given to them, and were sent away rejoicing.  Directly
+they had gone, the elder of my friends asked me if I would excuse her;
+she would gather up the dirt before it was trodden about.  So she brought
+a dust-pan and brush (the little servant was out) and patiently swept the
+floor.  That was the way with them.  Did any mischief befall them or
+those whom they knew, without blaming anybody, they immediately and
+noiselessly set about repairing it with that silent promptitude of nature
+which rebels not against a wound, but the very next instant begins her
+work of protection and recovery.
+
+The Misses Arbour (for that was their name) mixed but little in the
+society of the town.  They explained to me that their health would not
+permit it.  They read books—a few—but they were not books about which I
+knew very much, and they belonged altogether to an age preceding mine.
+Of the names which had moved me, and of all the thoughts stirring in the
+time, they had heard nothing.  They greatly admired Cowper, a poet who
+then did not much attract me.
+
+The country near me was rather level, but towards the west it rose into
+soft swelling hills, between which were pleasant lanes.  At about ten
+miles distant eastward was the sea.  A small river ran across the High
+Street under a stone bridge; for about two miles below us it was locked
+up for the sake of the mills, but at the end of the two miles it became
+tidal and flowed between deep and muddy banks through marshes to the
+ocean.  Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to these marshes,
+and as far on as possible till the open water was visible.  Not that I
+did not like inland scenery: nobody could like it more, but the sea was a
+corrective to the littleness all round me.  With the ships on it sailing
+to the other end of the earth it seemed to connect me with the great
+world outside the parochialism of the society in which I lived.
+
+Such was the town of C-, and such the company amidst which I found
+myself.  After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new
+duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings—two rooms over the shop
+of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and sexton.  There
+was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and the rest
+of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time I took
+charge did not exceed another seventy.
+
+The first Sunday on which I preached after being accepted was a dull day
+in November, but there was no dullness in me.  The congregation had
+increased a good deal during the past four weeks, and I was stimulated by
+the prospect of the new life before me.  It seemed to be a fit
+opportunity to say something generally about Christianity and its special
+peculiarities.  I began by pointing out that each philosophy and religion
+which had arisen in the world was the answer to a question earnestly
+asked at the time; it was a remedy proposed to meet some extreme
+pressure.  Religions and philosophies were not created by idle people who
+sat down and said, “Let us build up a system of beliefs upon the
+universe; what shall we say about immortality, about sin?” and so on.
+Unless there had been antecedent necessity there could have been no
+religion; and no problem of life or death could be solved except under
+the weight of that necessity.  The stoical morality arose out of the
+condition of Rome when the scholar and the pious man could do nothing but
+simply strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable burden.  He
+was forced to find some counterpoise for the misery of poverty and
+persecution, and he found it in the denial of their power to touch him.
+So with Christianity.
+
+Jesus was a poor solitary thinker, confronted by two enormous and
+overpowering organisations—the Jewish hierarchy and the Roman State.  He
+taught the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven; He trained Himself to have
+faith in the absolute monarchy of the soul, the absolute monarchy of His
+own; He tells us that each man should learn to find peace in his own
+thoughts, his own visions.  It is a most difficult thing to do; most
+difficult to believe that my highest happiness consists in my perception
+of whatever is beautiful.  If I by myself watch the sun rise, or the
+stars come out in the evening, or feel the love of man or woman,—I ought
+to say to myself, “There is nothing beyond this.”  But people will not
+rest there; they are not content, and they are for ever chasing a shadow
+which flies before them, a something external which never brings what it
+promises.
+
+I said that Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown and
+of the lonely; of those who are not a success.  It was the religion of
+the man who goes through life thinking much, but who makes few friends
+and sees nothing come of his thoughts.  I said a good deal more upon the
+same theme which I have forgotten.
+
+After the service was over I went down into the vestry.  Nobody came near
+me but my landlord, the chapel-keeper, who said it was raining, and
+immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the building.  I
+had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but to walk out in the
+wet.  When I got home I found that my supper, consisting of bread and
+cheese with a pint of beer, was on the table, but apparently it had been
+thought unnecessary to light the fire again at that time of night.  I was
+overwrought, and paced about for hours in hysterics.  All that I had been
+preaching seemed the merest vanity when I was brought face to face with
+the fact itself; and I reproached myself bitterly that my own creed would
+not stand the stress of an hour’s actual trial.
+
+Towards morning I got into bed, but not to sleep; and when the dull
+daylight of Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed to be
+sinking into a bottomless abyss.  I became gradually worse week by week,
+and my melancholy took a fixed form.  I got a notion into my head that my
+brain was failing, and this was my first acquaintance with that most
+awful malady hypochondria.  I did not know then what I know now, although
+I only half believe it practically, that this fixity of form is a
+frequent symptom of the disease, and that the general weakness manifests
+itself in a determinate horror, which gradually fades with returning
+health.
+
+For months—many months—this dreadful conviction of coming idiocy or
+insanity lay upon me like some poisonous reptile with its fangs driven
+into my very marrow, so that I could not shake it off.  It went with me
+wherever I went, it got up with me in the morning, walked about with me
+all day, and lay down with me at night.  I managed, somehow or other, to
+do my work, but I prayed incessantly for death; and to such a state was I
+reduced that I could not even make the commonest appointment for a day
+beforehand.  The mere knowledge that something had to be done agitated me
+and prevented my doing it.
+
+In June next year my holiday came, and I went away home to my father’s
+house.  Father and mother were going, for the first time in their lives,
+to spend a few days by the seaside together, and I went with them to
+Ilfracombe.  I had been there about a week, when on one memorable
+morning, on the top of one of those Devonshire hills, I became aware of a
+kind of flush in the brain and a momentary relief such as I had not known
+since that November night.  I seemed, far away on the horizon, to see
+just a rim of olive light low down under the edge of the leaden cloud
+that hung over my head, a prophecy of the restoration of the sun, or at
+least a witness that somewhere it shone.  It was not permanent, and
+perhaps the gloom was never more profound, nor the agony more intense,
+than it was for long after my Ilfracombe visit.  But the light broadened,
+and gradually the darkness was mitigated.  I have never been thoroughly
+restored.  Often, with no warning, I am plunged in the Valley of the
+Shadow, and no outlet seems possible; but I contrive to traverse it, or
+to wait in calmness for access of strength.
+
+When I was at my worst I went to see a doctor.  He recommended me
+stimulants.  I had always been rather abstemious, and he thought I was
+suffering from physical weakness.  At first wine gave me relief, and such
+marked relief that whenever I felt my misery insupportable I turned to
+the bottle.  At no time in my life was I ever the worse for liquor, but I
+soon found the craving for it was getting the better of me.  I resolved
+never to touch it except at night, and kept my vow; but the consequence
+was, that I looked forward to the night, and waited for it with such
+eagerness that the day seemed to exist only for the sake of the evening,
+when I might hope at least for rest.  For the wine as wine I cared
+nothing; anything that would have dulled my senses would have done just
+as well.
+
+But now a new terror developed itself.  I began to be afraid that I was
+becoming a slave to alcohol; that the passion for it would grow upon me,
+and that I should disgrace myself, and die the most contemptible of all
+deaths.  To a certain extent my fears were just.  The dose which was
+necessary to procure temporary forgetfulness of my trouble had to be
+increased, and might have increased dangerously.
+
+But one day, feeling more than usual the tyranny of my master, I received
+strength to make a sudden resolution to cast him off utterly.  Whatever
+be the consequence, I said, I will not be the victim of this shame.  If I
+am to go down to the grave, it shall be as a man, and I will bear what I
+have to bear honestly and without resort to the base evasion of
+stupefaction.  So that night I went to bed having drunk nothing but
+water.  The struggle was not felt just then.  It came later, when the
+first enthusiasm of a new purpose had faded away, and I had to fall back
+on mere force of will.  I don’t think anybody but those who have gone
+through such a crisis can comprehend what it is.  I never understood the
+maniacal craving which is begotten by ardent spirits, but I understood
+enough to be convinced that the man who has once rescued himself from the
+domination even of half a bottle, or three-parts of a bottle of claret
+daily, may assure himself that there is nothing more in life to be done
+which he need dread.
+
+Two or three remarks begotten of experience in this matter deserve
+record.  One is, that the most powerful inducement to abstinence, in my
+case, was the interference of wine with liberty, and above all things its
+interference with what I really loved best, and the transference of
+desire from what was most desirable to what was sensual and base.  The
+morning, instead of being spent in quiet contemplation and quiet
+pleasures, was spent in degrading anticipations.  What enabled me to
+conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler joys, and
+the difficulty which a man must encounter who is not susceptible to them
+must be enormous and almost insuperable.  Pity, profound pity, is his
+due, and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, emotional
+organisation.  If we want to make men water-drinkers, we must first of
+all awaken in them a capacity for being tempted by delights which
+water-drinking intensifies.  The mere preaching of self-denial will do
+little or no good.
+
+Another observation is, that there is no danger in stopping at once, and
+suddenly, the habit of drinking.  The prisons and asylums furnish ample
+evidence upon that point, but there will be many an hour of exhaustion in
+which this danger will be simulated and wine will appear the proper
+remedy.  No man, or at least very few men, would ever feel any desire for
+it soon after sleep.  This shows the power of repose, and I would advise
+anybody who may be in earnest in this matter to be specially on guard
+during moments of physical fatigue, and to try the effect of eating and
+rest.  Do not persist in a blind, obstinate wrestle.  Simply take food,
+drink water, go to bed, and so conquer not by brute strength, but by
+strategy.
+
+Going back to hypochondria and its countless forms of agony, let it be
+borne in mind that the first thing to be aimed at is patience—not to get
+excited with fears, not to dread the evil which most probably will never
+arrive, but to sit down quietly and _wait_.  The simpler and less
+stimulating the diet, the more likely it is that the sufferer will be
+able to watch through the wakeful hours without delirium, and the less
+likely is it that the general health will be impaired.  Upon this point
+of health too much stress cannot be laid.  It is difficult for the victim
+to believe that his digestion has anything to do with a disease which
+seems so purely spiritual, but frequently the misery will break up and
+yield, if it do not altogether disappear, by a little attention to
+physiology and by a change of air.  As time wears on, too, mere duration
+will be a relief; for it familiarises with what at first was strange and
+insupportable, it shows the groundlessness of fears, and it enables us to
+say with each new paroxysm, that we have surmounted one like it before,
+and probably a worse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+EDWARD GIBBON MARDON
+
+
+I HAD now been “settled,” to use a Dissenting phrase, for nearly eighteen
+months.  While I was ill I had no heart in my work, and the sermons I
+preached were very poor and excited no particular suspicion.  But with
+gradually returning energy my love of reading revived, and questions
+which had slumbered again presented themselves.  I continued for some
+time to deal with them as I had dealt with the atonement at college.  I
+said that Jesus was the true Paschal Lamb, for that by His death men were
+saved from their sins, and from the consequences of them; I said that
+belief in Christ, that is to say, a love for Him, was more powerful to
+redeem men than the works of the law.  All this may have been true, but
+truth lies in relation.  It was not true when I, understanding what I
+understood by it, taught it to men who professed to believe in the
+Westminster Confession.  The preacher who preaches it uses a vocabulary
+which has a certain definite meaning, and has had this meaning for
+centuries.  He cannot stay to put his own interpretation upon it whenever
+it is upon his lips, and so his hearers are in a false position, and
+imagine him to be much more orthodox than he really is.
+
+For some time I fell into this snare, until one day I happened to be
+reading the story of Balaam.  Balaam, though most desirous to prophesy
+smooth things for Balak, had nevertheless a word put into his mouth by
+God.  When he came to Balak he was unable to curse, and could do nothing
+but bless.  Balak, much dissatisfied, thought that a change of position
+might alter Balaam’s temper, and he brought him away from the high places
+of Baal to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah.  But Balaam could
+do nothing better even on Pisgah.  Not even a compromise was possible,
+and the second blessing was more emphatic than the first.  “God,” cried
+the prophet, pressed sorely by his message, “is not a man, that He should
+lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and
+shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?
+Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and He hath blessed; and I
+cannot reverse it.”
+
+This was very unsatisfactory, and Balaam was asked, if he could not
+curse, at least to refrain from benediction.  The answer was still the
+same.  “Told not I thee, saying, All that the Lord speaketh, that I must
+do?”  A third shift was tried, and Balaam went to the top of Peor.  This
+was worse than ever.  The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he broke
+out into triumphal anticipation of the future glories of Israel.  Balak
+remonstrated in wrath, but Balaam was altogether inaccessible.  “If Balak
+would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the
+commandment of the Lord, to do either good or bad of mine own mind; but
+what the Lord saith, that will I speak.”
+
+This story greatly impressed me, and I date from it a distinct
+disinclination to tamper with myself, or to deliver what I had to deliver
+in phrases which, though they might be conciliatory, were misleading.
+
+About this time there was a movement in the town to obtain a better
+supply of water.  The soil was gravelly and full of cesspools, side by
+side with which were sunk the wells.  A public meeting was held, and I
+attended and spoke on behalf of the scheme.  There was much opposition,
+mainly on the score that the rates would be increased, and on the
+Saturday after the meeting the following letter appeared in the
+_Sentinel_, the local paper:
+
+    “SIR,—It is not my desire to enter into the controversy now raging
+    about the water-supply of this town, but I must say I was much
+    surprised that a minister of religion should interfere in politics.
+    Sir, I cannot help thinking that if the said minister would devote
+    himself to the Water of Life—
+
+             ‘that gentle fount
+    Progressing from Immanuel’s mount,’—
+
+    it would be much more harmonious with his function as a follower of
+    him who knew nothing save Christ crucified.  Sir, I have no wish to
+    introduce controversial topics upon a subject like religion into your
+    columns, which are allotted to a different line, but I must be
+    permitted to observe that I fail to see how a minister’s usefulness
+    can be stimulated if he sets class against class.  Like the widows in
+    affliction of old, he should keep himself pure and unspotted from the
+    world.  How can many of us accept the glorious gospel on the Sabbath
+    from a man who will incur spots during the week by arguing about
+    cesspools like any other man?  Sir, I will say nothing, moreover,
+    about a minister of the gospel assisting to bind burdens—that is to
+    say, rates and taxation—upon the shoulders of men grievous to be
+    borne.  Surely, sir, a minister of the Lamb of God, who was shed for
+    the remission of sins, should be _against_ burdens.—I am sir, your
+    obedient servant,
+
+                                                  “A CHRISTIAN TRADESMAN.”
+
+I had not the least doubt as to the authorship of this precious epistle.
+Mr. Snale’s hand was apparent in every word.  He was fond of making
+religious verses, and once we were compelled to hear the Sunday-school
+children sing a hymn which he had composed.  The two lines of poetry were
+undoubtedly his.  Furthermore, although he had been a chapel-goer all his
+life, he muddled, invariably, passages from the Bible.  They had no
+definite meaning for him, and there was nothing, consequently, to prevent
+his tacking the end of one verse to the beginning of another.  Mr. Snale,
+too, continually “failed to see.”  Where he got the phrase I do not know,
+but he liked it, and was always repeating it.  However, I had no external
+evidence that it was he who was my enemy, and I held my peace.  I was
+supported at the public meeting by a speaker from the body of the hall
+whom I had never seen before.  He spoke remarkably well, was evidently
+educated, and I was rather curious about him.
+
+It was my custom on Saturdays to go out for the whole of the day by the
+river, seawards, to prepare for the Sunday.  I was coming home rather
+tired, when I met this same man against a stile.  He bade me
+good-evening, and then proceeded to thank me for my speech, saying many
+complimentary things about it.  I asked who it was to whom I had the
+honour of talking, and he told me he was Edward Gibbon Mardon.  “It was
+Edward Gibson Mardon once, sir,” he said, smilingly.  “Gibson was the
+name of a rich old aunt who was expected to do something for me, but I
+disliked her, and never went near her.  I did not see why I should be
+ticketed with her label, and as Edward Gibson was very much like Edward
+Gibbon, the immortal author of the _Decline and Fall_, I dropped the ‘s’
+and stuck in a ‘b.’  I am nothing but a compositor on the _Sentinel_, and
+Saturday afternoon, after the paper is out, is a holiday for me, unless
+there is any reporting to do, for I have to turn my attention to that
+occasionally.”
+
+Mr. Edward Gibbon Mardon, I observed, was slightly built, rather short,
+and had scanty whiskers which developed into a little thicker tuft on his
+chin.  His eyes were pure blue, like the blue of the speedwell.  They
+were not piercing, but perfectly transparent, indicative of a character
+which, if it possessed no particular creative power, would not permit
+self-deception.  They were not the eyes of a prophet, but of a man who
+would not be satisfied with letting a half-known thing alone and saying
+he believed it.  His lips were thin, but not compressed into bitterness;
+and above everything there was in his face a perfectly legible frankness,
+contrasting pleasantly with the doubtfulness of most of the faces I knew.
+I expressed my gratitude to him for his kind opinion, and as we loitered
+he said:
+
+“Sorry to see that attack upon you in the _Sentinel_.  I suppose you are
+aware it was Snale’s.  Everybody could tell that who knows the man.”
+
+“If it is Mr. Snale’s, I am very sorry.”
+
+“It is Snale’s.  He is a contemptible cur and yet it is not his fault.
+He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for thirty
+years, and he has never once been warned against meanness, so of course
+he supposes that supernatural subjects are everything and meanness is
+nothing.  But I will not detain you any longer now, for you are busy.
+Good-night, sir.”
+
+This was rather abrupt and disappointing.  However, I was much absorbed
+in the morrow, and passed on.
+
+Although I despised Snale, his letter was the beginning of a great
+trouble to me.  I had now been preaching for many months, and had met
+with no response whatever.  Occasionally a stranger or two visited the
+chapel, and with what eager eyes did I not watch for them on the next
+Sunday, but none of them came twice.  It was amazing to me that I could
+pour out myself as I did—poor although I knew that self to be—and yet
+make so little impression.  Not one man or woman seemed any different
+because of anything I had said or done, and not a soul kindled at any
+word of mine, no matter with what earnestness it might be charged.  How I
+groaned over my incapacity to stir in my people any participation in my
+thoughts or care for them!
+
+Looking at the history of those days now from a distance of years,
+everything assumes its proper proportion.  I was at work, it is true,
+amongst those who were exceptionally hard and worldly, but I was seeking
+amongst men (to put it in orthodox language) what I ought to have sought
+with God alone.  In other, and perhaps plainer phrase, I was expecting
+from men a sympathy which proceeds from the Invisible only.  Sometimes,
+indeed, it manifests itself in the long-postponed justice of time, but
+more frequently it is nothing more and nothing less than a consciousness
+of approval by the Unseen, a peace unspeakable, which is bestowed on us
+when self is suppressed.
+
+I did not know then how little one man can change another, and what
+immense and persistent efforts are necessary—efforts which seldom succeed
+except in childhood—to accomplish anything but the most superficial
+alteration of character.  Stories are told of sudden conversions, and of
+course if a poor simple creature can be brought to believe that hell-fire
+awaits him as the certain penalty of his misdeeds, he will cease to do
+them; but this is no real conversion, for essentially he remains pretty
+much the same kind of being that he was before.
+
+I remember while this mood was on me, that I was much struck with the
+absolute loneliness of Jesus, and with His horror of that death upon the
+cross.  He was young and full of enthusiastic hope, but when He died He
+had found hardly anything but misunderstanding.  He had written nothing,
+so that He could not expect that His life would live after Him.
+Nevertheless His confidence in His own errand had risen so high, that He
+had not hesitated to proclaim Himself the Messiah: not the Messiah the
+Jews were expecting, but still the Messiah.  I dreamed over His walks by
+the lake, over the deeper solitude of His last visit to Jerusalem, and
+over the gloom of that awful Friday afternoon.
+
+The hold which He has upon us is easily explained, apart from the dignity
+of His recorded sayings and the purity of His life.  There is no Saviour
+for us like the hero who has passed triumphantly through the distress
+which troubles _us_.  Salvation is the spectacle of a victory by another
+over foes like our own.  The story of Jesus is the story of the poor and
+forgotten.  He is not the Saviour for the rich and prosperous, for they
+want no Saviour.  The healthy, active, and well-to-do need Him not, and
+require nothing more than is given by their own health and prosperity.
+But every one who has walked in sadness because his destiny has not
+fitted his aspirations; every one who, having no opportunity to lift
+himself out of his little narrow town or village circle of acquaintances,
+has thirsted for something beyond what they could give him; everybody
+who, with nothing but a dull, daily round of mechanical routine before
+him, would welcome death, if it were martyrdom for a cause; every
+humblest creature, in the obscurity of great cities or remote hamlets,
+who silently does his or her duty without recognition—all these turn to
+Jesus, and find themselves in Him.  He died, faithful to the end, with
+infinitely higher hopes, purposes, and capacity than mine, and with
+almost no promise of anything to come of them.
+
+Something of this kind I preached one Sunday, more as a relief to myself
+than for any other reason.  Mardon was there, and with him a girl whom I
+had not seen before.  My sight is rather short, and I could not very well
+tell what she was like.  After the service was over he waited for me, and
+said he had done so to ask me if I would pay him a visit on Monday
+evening.  I promised to do so, and accordingly went.
+
+I found him living in a small brick-built cottage near the outskirts of
+the town, the rental of which I should suppose would be about seven or
+eight pounds a year.  There was a patch of ground in front and a little
+garden behind—a kind of narrow strip about fifty feet long, separated
+from the other little strips by iron hurdles.  Mardon had tried to keep
+his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly,
+and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin cans to
+accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon’s labours might have
+afforded was somewhat spoiled.
+
+He himself came to the door when I knocked, and I was shown into a kind
+of sitting-room with a round table in the middle and furnished with
+Windsor chairs, two arm-chairs of the same kind standing on either side
+the fireplace.  Against the window was a smaller table with a green baize
+tablecloth, and about half-a-dozen plants stood on the window-sill,
+serving as a screen.  In the recess on one side of the fireplace was a
+cupboard, upon the top of which stood a tea-caddy, a workbox, some
+tumblers, and a decanter full of water; the other side being filled with
+a bookcase and books.  There were two or three pictures on the walls; one
+was a portrait of Voltaire, another of Lord Bacon, and a third was Albert
+Dürer’s St. Jerome.  This latter was an heirloom, and greatly prized I
+could perceive, as it was hung in the place of honour over the
+mantelpiece.
+
+After some little introductory talk, the same girl whom I had noticed
+with Mardon at the chapel came in, and I was introduced to her as his
+only daughter Mary.  She began to busy herself at once in getting the
+tea.  She was under the average height for a woman, and delicately built.
+Her head was small, but the neck was long.  Her hair was brown, of a
+peculiarly lustrous tint, partly due to nature, but also to a looseness
+of arrangement and a most diligent use of the brush, so that the light
+fell not upon a dead compact mass, but upon myriads of individual hairs,
+each of which reflected the light.  Her eyes, so far as I could make out,
+were a kind of greenish grey, but the eyelashes were long, so that it was
+difficult exactly to discover what was underneath them.  The hands were
+small, and the whole figure exquisitely graceful; the plain black dress,
+which she wore fastened right up to the throat, suiting her to
+perfection.  Her face, as I first thought, did not seem indicative of
+strength.  The lips were thin, but not straight, the upper lip showing a
+remarkable curve in it.  Nor was it a handsome face.  The complexion was
+not sufficiently transparent, nor were the features regular.
+
+During tea she spoke very little, but I noticed one peculiarity about her
+manner of talking, and that was its perfect simplicity.  There was no
+sort of effort or strain in anything she said, no attempt by emphasis of
+words to make up for the weakness of thought, and no compliance with that
+vulgar and most disagreeable habit of using intense language to describe
+what is not intense in itself.  Her yea was yea, and her no, no.  I
+observed also that she spoke without disguise, although she was not rude.
+The manners of the cultivated classes are sometimes very charming, and
+more particularly their courtesy, which puts the guest so much at his
+ease, and constrains him to believe that an almost personal interest is
+taken in his affairs, but after a time it becomes wearisome.  It is felt
+to be nothing but courtesy, the result of a rule of conduct uniform for
+all, and verging very closely upon hypocrisy.  We long rather for
+plainness of speech, for some intimation of the person with whom we are
+talking, and that the mask and gloves may be laid aside.
+
+Tea being over, Miss Mardon cleared away the tea-things, and presently
+came back again.  She took one of the arm-chairs by the side of the
+fireplace, which her father had reserved for her, and while he and I were
+talking, she sat with her head leaning a little sideways on the back of
+the chair.  I could just discern that her feet, which rested on the
+stool, were very diminutive, like her hands.
+
+The talk with Mardon turned upon the chapel.  I had begun it by saying
+that I had noticed him there on the Sunday just mentioned.  He then
+explained why he never went to any place of worship.  A purely orthodox
+preacher it was, of course, impossible for him to hear, but he doubted
+also the efficacy of preaching.  What could be the use of it, supposing
+the preacher no longer to be a believer in the common creeds?  If he
+turns himself into a mere lecturer on all sorts of topics, he does
+nothing more than books do, and they do it much better.  He must base
+himself upon the Bible, and above all upon Christ, and how can he base
+himself upon a myth?  We do not know that Christ ever lived, or that if
+He lived His life was anything like what is attributed to Him.  A mere
+juxtaposition of the Gospels shows how the accounts of His words and
+deeds differ according to the tradition followed by each of His
+biographers.
+
+I interrupted Mardon at this point by saying that it did not matter
+whether Christ actually existed or not.  What the four evangelists
+recorded was eternally true, and the Christ-idea was true whether it was
+ever incarnated or not in a being bearing His name.
+
+“Pardon me,” said Mardon, “but it does very much matter.  It is all the
+matter whether we are dealing with a dream or with reality.  I can dream
+about a man’s dying on the cross in homage to what he believed, but I
+would not perhaps die there myself; and when I suffer from hesitation
+whether I ought to sacrifice myself for the truth, it is of immense
+assistance to me to know that a greater sacrifice has been made before
+me—that a greater sacrifice is possible.  To know that somebody has
+poetically imagined that it is possible, and has very likely been
+altogether incapable of its achievement, is no help.  Moreover, the
+commonplaces which even the most freethinking of Unitarians seem to
+consider as axiomatic, are to me far from certain, and even unthinkable.
+For example, they are always talking about the omnipotence of God.  But
+power even of the supremest kind necessarily implies an object—that is to
+say, resistance.  Without an object which resists it, it would be a
+blank, and what, then, is the meaning of omnipotence?  It is not that it
+is merely inconceivable; it is nonsense, and so are all these abstract,
+illimitable, self-annihilative attributes of which God is made up.”
+
+This negative criticism, in which Mardon greatly excelled, was all new to
+me, and I had no reply to make.  He had a sledge-hammer way of expressing
+himself, while I, on the contrary, always required time to bring into
+shape what I saw.  Just then I saw nothing; I was stunned, bewildered,
+out of the sphere of my own thoughts, and pained at the roughness with
+which he treated what I had cherished.
+
+I was presently relieved, however, of further reflection by Mardon’s
+asking his daughter whether her face was better.  It turned out that all
+the afternoon and evening she had suffered greatly from neuralgia.  She
+had said nothing about it while I was there, but had behaved with
+cheerfulness and freedom.  Mentally I had accused her of slightness, and
+inability to talk upon the subjects which interested Mardon and myself;
+but when I knew she had been in torture all the time, my opinion was
+altered.  I thought how rash I had been in judging her as I continually
+judged other people, without being aware of everything they had to pass
+through; and I thought, too, that if I had a fit of neuralgia, everybody
+near me would know it, and be almost as much annoyed by me as I myself
+should be by the pain.
+
+It is curious, also, that when thus proclaiming my troubles I often
+considered. my eloquence meritorious, or, at least, a kind of talent for
+which I ought to praise God, contemning rather my silent friends as
+something nearer than myself to the expressionless animals.  To parade my
+toothache, describing it with unusual adjectives, making it felt by all
+the company in which I might happen to be, was to me an assertion of my
+superior nature.  But, looking at Mary, and thinking about her as I
+walked home, I perceived that her ability to be quiet, to subdue herself,
+to resist the temptation for a whole evening of drawing attention to
+herself by telling us what she was enduring, was heroism, and that my
+contrary tendency was pitiful vanity.  I perceived that such virtues as
+patience and self-denial—which, clad in russet dress, I had often passed
+by unnoticed when I had found them amongst the poor or the humble—were
+more precious and more ennobling to their possessor than poetic
+yearnings, or the power to propound rhetorically to the world my
+grievances or agonies.
+
+Miss Mardon’s face was getting worse, and as by this time it was late, I
+stayed but a little while longer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+MISS ARBOUR
+
+
+FOR some months I continued without much change in my monotonous
+existence.  I did not see Mardon often, for I rather dreaded him.  I
+could not resist him, and I shrank from what I saw to be inevitably true
+when I talked to him.  I can hardly say it was cowardice.  Those may call
+it cowardice to whom all associations are nothing, and to whom beliefs
+are no more than matters of indifferent research; but as for me, Mardon’s
+talk darkened my days and nights.  I never could understand the light
+manner in which people will discuss the gravest questions, such as God
+and the immortality of the soul.  They gossip about them over their tea,
+write and read review articles about them, and seem to consider
+affirmation or negation of no more practical importance than the
+conformation of a beetle.  With me the struggle to retain as much as I
+could of my creed was tremendous.  The dissolution of Jesus into
+mythologic vapour was nothing less than the death of a friend dearer to
+me then than any other friend whom I knew.
+
+But the worst stroke of all was that which fell upon the doctrine of a
+life beyond the grave.  In theory I had long despised the notion that we
+should govern our conduct here by hope of reward or fear of punishment
+hereafter.  But under Mardon’s remorseless criticism, when he insisted on
+asking for the where and how, and pointed out that all attempts to say
+where and how ended in nonsense, my hope began to fail, and I was
+surprised to find myself incapable of living with proper serenity if
+there was nothing but blank darkness before me at the end of a few years.
+
+As I got older I became aware of the folly of this perpetual reaching
+after the future, and of drawing from to-morrow, and from to-morrow only,
+a reason for the joyfulness of to-day.  I learned, when, alas! it was
+almost too late, to live in each moment as it passed over my head,
+believing that the sun as it is now rising is as good as it will ever be,
+and blinding myself as much as possible to what may follow.  But when I
+was young I was the victim of that illusion, implanted for some purpose
+or other in us by Nature, which causes us, on the brightest morning in
+June, to think immediately of a brighter morning which is to come in
+July.  I say nothing, now, for or against the doctrine of immortality.
+All I say is, that men have been happy without it, even under the
+pressure of disaster, and that to make immortality a sole spring of
+action here is an exaggeration of the folly which deludes us all through
+life with endless expectation, and leaves us at death without the
+thorough enjoyment of a single hour.
+
+So I shrank from Mardon, but none the less did the process of excavation
+go on.  It often happens that a man loses faith without knowing it.
+Silently the foundation is sapped while the building stands fronting the
+sun, as solid to all appearance as when it was first turned out of the
+builder’s hands, but at last it falls suddenly with a crash.  It was so
+at this time with a personal relationship of mine, about which I have
+hitherto said nothing.
+
+Years ago, before I went to college, and when I was a teacher in the
+Sunday-school, I had fallen in love with one of my fellow-teachers, and
+we became engaged.  She was the daughter of one of the deacons.  She had
+a smiling, pretty, vivacious face; was always somehow foremost in school
+treats, picnics, and chapel-work, and she had a kind of piquant manner,
+which to many men is more ensnaring than beauty.  She never read
+anything; she was too restless and fond of outward activity for that, and
+no questions about orthodoxy or heresy ever troubled her head.  We
+continued our correspondence regularly after my appointment as minister,
+and her friends, I knew, were looking to me to fix a day for marriage.
+But although we had been writing to one another as affectionately as
+usual, a revolution had taken place.  I was quite unconscious of it, for
+we had been betrothed for so long that I never once considered the
+possibility of any rupture.
+
+One Monday morning, however, I had a letter from her.  It was not often
+that she wrote on Sunday, as she had a religious prejudice against
+writing letters on that day.  However, this was urgent, for it was to
+tell me that an aunt of hers who was staying at her father’s was just
+dead, and that her uncle wanted her to go and live with him for some
+time, to look after the little children who were left behind.  She said
+that her dear aunt died a beautiful death, trusting in the merits of the
+Redeemer.  She also added, in a very delicate way, that she would have
+agreed to go to her uncle’s at once, but she had understood that we were
+to be married soon, and she did not like to leave home for long.  She was
+evidently anxious for me to tell her what to do.
+
+This letter, as I have said, came to me on Monday, when I was exhausted
+by a more than usually desolate Sunday.  I became at once aware that my
+affection for her, if it ever really existed, had departed.  I saw before
+me the long days of wedded life with no sympathy, and I shuddered when I
+thought what I should do with such a wife.  How could I take her to
+Mardon?  How could I ask him to come to me?  Strange to say, my pride
+suffered most.  I could have endured, I believe, even discord at home, if
+only I could have had a woman whom I could present to my friends, and
+whom they would admire.  I was never unselfish in the way in which women
+are, and yet I have always been more anxious that people should respect
+my wife than respect me, and at any time would withdraw myself into the
+shade if only she might be brought into the light.  This is nothing
+noble.  It is an obscure form of egotism probably, but anyhow, such
+always was my case.
+
+It took but a very few hours to excite me to distraction.  I had gone on
+for years without realising what I saw now, and although in the situation
+itself the change had been only gradual, it instantaneously became
+intolerable.  Yet I never was more incapable of acting.  What could I do?
+After such a long betrothal, to break loose from her would be cruel and
+shameful.  I could never hold up my head again, and in the narrow circle
+of Independency, the whole affair would be known and my prospects ruined.
+
+Then other and subtler reasons presented themselves.  No men can expect
+ideal attachments.  We must be satisfied with ordinary humanity.
+Doubtless my friend with a lofty imagination would be better matched with
+some Antigone who exists somewhere and whom he does not know.  But he
+wisely does not spend his life in vain search after her, but settles down
+with the first decently sensible woman he finds in his own street, and
+makes the best of his bargain.  Besides, there was the power of use and
+wont to be considered.  Ellen had no vice of temper, no meanness, and it
+was not improbable that she would be just as good a helpmeet for me in
+time as I had a right to ask.  Living together, we should mould one
+another, and at last like one another.  Marrying her, I should be
+relieved from the insufferable solitude which was depressing me to death,
+and should have a home.
+
+So it has always been with me.  When there has been the sternest need of
+promptitude, I have seen such multitudes of arguments for and against
+every course that I have despaired.  I have at my command any number of
+maxims, all of them good, but I am powerless to select the one which
+ought to be applied.
+
+A general principle, a fine saying, is nothing but a tool, and the wit of
+man is shown not in possession of a well-furnished tool-chest, but in the
+ability to pick out the proper instrument and use it.
+
+I remained in this miserable condition for days, not venturing to answer
+Ellen’s letter, until at last I turned out for a walk.  I have often
+found that motion and change will bring light and resolution when
+thinking will not.  I started off in the morning down by the river, and
+towards the sea, my favourite stroll.  I went on and on under a leaden
+sky, through the level, solitary, marshy meadows, where the river began
+to lose itself in the ocean, and I wandered about there, struggling for
+guidance.  In my distress I actually knelt down and prayed, but the
+heavens remained impassive as before, and I was half ashamed of what I
+had done, as if it were a piece of hypocrisy.
+
+At last, wearied out, I turned homeward, and diverging from the direct
+road, I was led past the house where the Misses Arbour lived.  I was
+faint, and some beneficent inspiration prompted me to call.  I went in,
+and found that the younger of the two sisters was out.  A sudden tendency
+to hysterics overcame me, and I asked for a glass of water.  Miss Arbour,
+having given it to me, sat down by the side of the fireplace opposite to
+the one at which I was sitting, and for a few moments there was silence.
+I made some commonplace observation, but instead of answering me she said
+quietly, “Mr. Rutherford, you have been upset; I hope you have met with
+no accident.”
+
+How it came about I do not know, but my whole story rushed to my lips,
+and I told her all of it with quivering voice.  I cannot imagine what
+possessed me to make her my confidante.  Shy, reserved, and proud, I
+would have died rather than have breathed a syllable of my secret if I
+had been in my ordinary humour, but her soft, sweet face altogether
+overpowered me.
+
+As I proceeded with my tale, the change that came over her was most
+remarkable.  When I began she was leaning back placidly in her large
+chair, with her handkerchief upon her lap; but gradually her face
+kindled, she sat upright, and she was transformed with a completeness and
+suddenness which I could not have conceived possible.  At last, when I
+had finished, she put both her hands to her forehead, and almost shrieked
+out, “Shall I tell him?—O my God, shall I tell him?—may God have mercy on
+him!”  I was amazed beyond measure at the altogether unsuspected depth of
+passion which was revealed in her whom I had never before seen disturbed
+by more than a ripple of emotion.  She drew her chair nearer to mine, put
+both her hands on my knees, looked right into my eyes, and said,
+“Listen.”  She then moved back a little, and spoke as follows:
+
+“It is forty-five years ago this month since I was married.  You are
+surprised; you have always known me under my maiden name, and you thought
+I had always been single.  It is forty-six years ago this month since the
+man who afterwards became my husband first saw me.  He was a partner in a
+cloth firm.  At that time it was the duty of one member of a firm to
+travel, and he came to our town, where my father was a well-to-do
+carriage-builder.  My father was an old customer of his house, and the
+relationship between the customer and the wholesale merchant was then
+very different from what it is now.  Consequently, Mr. Hexton—for that
+was my husband’s name—was continually asked to stay with us so long as he
+remained in the town.  He was what might be called a singularly handsome
+man—that is to say, he was upright, well-made, with a straight nose,
+black hair, dark eyes, and a good complexion.  He dressed with perfect
+neatness and good taste, and had the reputation of being a most temperate
+and most moral man, much respected—amongst the sect to which both of us
+belonged.
+
+“When he first came our way I was about nineteen and he about
+three-and-twenty.  My father and his had long been acquainted, and he was
+of course received even with cordiality.  I was excitable, a lover of
+poetry, a reader of all sorts of books, and much given to enthusiasm.
+Ah! you do not think so, you do not see how that can have been, but you
+do not know how unaccountable is the development of the soul, and what is
+the meaning of any given form of character which presents itself to you.
+You see nothing but the peaceful, long since settled result, but how it
+came there, what its history has been, you cannot tell.  It may always
+have been there, or have gradually grown so, in gradual progress from
+seed to flower, or it may be the final repose of tremendous forces.
+
+“I will show you what I was like at nineteen,” and she got up and turned
+to a desk, from which she took a little ivory miniature.  “That,” she
+said, “was given to Mr. Hexton when we were engaged.  I thought he would
+have locked it up, but he used to leave it about, and one day I found it
+in the dressing-table drawer, with some brushes and combs, and two or
+three letters of mine.  I withdrew it, and burnt the letters.  He never
+asked for it, and here it is.”
+
+The head was small and set upon the neck like a flower, but not bending
+pensively.  It was rather thrown back with a kind of firmness, and with a
+peculiarly open air, as if it had nothing to conceal and wished the world
+to conceal nothing.  The body was shown down to the waist, and was slim
+and graceful.  But what was most noteworthy about the picture was its
+solemn seriousness, a seriousness capable of infinite affection, and of
+infinite abandonment, not sensuous abandonment—everything was too severe,
+too much controlled by the arch of the top of the head for that—but of an
+abandonment to spiritual aims.
+
+Miss Arbour continued: “Mr. Hexton after a while gave me to understand
+that he was my admirer, and before six months of acquaintanceship had
+passed my mother told me that he had requested formally that he might be
+considered as my suitor.  She put no pressure upon me, nor did my father,
+excepting that they said that if I would accept Mr. Hexton they would be
+content, as they knew him to be a very well-conducted young man, a member
+of the church, and prosperous in his business.  My first, and for a time
+my sovereign, impulse was to reject him, because I thought him mean, and
+because I felt he lacked sympathy with me.
+
+“Unhappily I did not trust that impulse.  I looked for something more
+authoritative, but I was mistaken, for the voice of God, to me at least,
+hardly ever comes in thunder, but I have to listen with perfect stillness
+to make it out.  It spoke to me, told me what to do, but I argued with it
+and was lost.  I was guiltless of any base motive, but I found the wrong
+name for what displeased me in Mr. Hexton, and so I deluded myself.  I
+reasoned that his meanness was justifiable economy, and that his
+dissimilarity from me was perhaps the very thing which ought to induce me
+to marry him, because he would correct my failings.  I knew I was too
+inconsiderate, too rash, too flighty, and I said to myself that his
+soberness would be a good thing for me.
+
+“Oh, if I had but the power to write a book which should go to the ends
+of the world, and warn young men and women not to be led away by any
+sophistry when choosing their partners for life!  It may be asked, How
+are we to distinguish heavenly instigation from hellish temptation?  I
+say, that neither you nor I, sitting here, can tell how to do it.  We can
+lay down no law by which infallibly to recognise the messenger from God.
+But what I do say is, that when the moment comes, it is perfectly easy
+for us to recognise him.  Whether we listen to his message or not is
+another matter.  If we do not—if we stop to dispute with him, we are
+undone, for we shall very soon learn to discredit him.
+
+“So I was married, and I went to live in a dark manufacturing town, away
+from all my friends.  I awoke to my misery by degrees, but still rapidly.
+I had my books sent down to me.  I unpacked them in Mr. Hexton’s
+presence, and I kindled at the thought of ranging my old favourites in my
+sitting-room.  He saw my delight as I put them on some empty shelves, but
+the next day he said that he wanted a stuffed dog there, and that he
+thought my books, especially as they were shabby, had better go upstairs.
+
+“We had to give some entertainments soon afterwards.  The minister and
+his wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the conversation
+turned on parties and the dullness of winter evenings if no amusements
+were provided.  I maintained that rational human beings ought not to be
+dependent upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy themselves
+and interest themselves with talk.  Talk, I said—not gossip, but
+talk—pleases me better than chess or forfeits; and the lines of Cowper
+occurred to me—
+
+    ‘When one, that holds communion with the skies,
+    Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
+    And once more mingles with us meaner things,
+    ’Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
+    Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
+    That tells us whence his treasures are supplied.’
+
+I ventured to repeat this verse, and when I had finished, there was a
+pause for a moment, which was broken by my husband’s saying to the
+minister’s wife who sat next to him, ‘Oh, Mrs. Cook, I quite forgot to
+express my sympathy with you; I heard that you had lost your cat.’  The
+blow was deliberately administered, and I felt it as an insult.  I was
+wrong, I know.  I was ignorant of the ways of the world, and I ought to
+have been aware of the folly of placing myself above the level of my
+guests, and of the extreme unwisdom of revealing myself in that unguarded
+way to strangers.  Two or three more experiences of that kind taught me
+to close myself carefully to all the world, and to beware how I uttered
+anything more than commonplace.  But I was young, and ought to have been
+pardoned.  I felt the sting of self-humiliation far into the night, as I
+lay and silently cried, while Mr. Hexton slept beside me.
+
+“I soon found that he was entirely insensible to everything for which I
+most cared.  Before our marriage he had affected a sort of interest in my
+pursuits, but in reality he was indifferent to them.  He was cold, hard,
+and impenetrable.  His habits were precise and methodical, beyond what is
+natural for a man of his years.  I remember one evening—strange that
+these small events should so burn themselves into me—that some friends
+were at our house at tea.  A tradesman in the town was mentioned, a
+member of our congregation, who had become bankrupt, and everybody began
+to abuse him.  It was said that he had been extravagant; that he had
+chosen to send his children to the grammar-school, where the children of
+gentlefolk went; and finally, that only last year he had let his wife go
+to the seaside.
+
+“I knew what the real state of affairs was.  He had perhaps been living a
+little beyond his means, but as to the school, he had rather refined
+tastes, and he longed to teach his children something more than the
+ciphering, as it was called, and bookkeeping which they would have
+learned at the academy at which men in his position usually educated
+their boys; and as to the seaside, his wife was ill, and he could not
+bear to see her suffering in the smoky street, when he knew that a little
+fresh air and change of scene would restore her.
+
+“So I said that I was sorry to hear the poor man attacked; that he had
+done wrong, no doubt, but so had the woman who was brought before Jesus;
+and that with me, charity or a large heart covered a multitude of sins.
+I added that there was something dreadful in the way in which everybody
+always seemed to agree in deserting the unfortunate.  I was a little
+moved, and unluckily upset a teacup.  No harm was done; and if my
+husband, who sat next to me, had chosen to take no notice, there need
+have been no disturbance whatever.  But he made a great fuss, crying,
+‘Oh, my dear, pray mind!  Ring the bell instantly, or it will all be
+through the tablecloth.’  In getting up hastily to obey him, I happened
+to drag the cloth, as it lay on my lap; a plate fell down and was broken;
+everything was in confusion; I was ashamed and degraded.
+
+“I do not believe there was a single point in Mr. Hexton’s character in
+which he touched the universal; not a single chink, however narrow,
+through which his soul looked out of itself upon the great world around.
+If he had kept bees, or collected butterflies or beetles, I could have
+found some avenue of approach.—But he had no taste for anything of the
+kind.  He had his breakfast at eight regularly every morning, and read
+his letters at breakfast.  He came home to dinner at two, looked at the
+newspaper for a little while after dinner, and then went to sleep.  At
+six he had his tea, and in half-an-hour went back to his counting-house,
+which he did not leave till eight.  Supper at nine, and bed at ten,
+closed the day.
+
+“It was a habit of mine to read a little after supper, and occasionally I
+read aloud to him passages which struck me, but I soon gave it up, for
+once or twice he said to me, ‘Now you’ve got to the bottom of that page,
+I think you had better go to bed,’ although perhaps the page did not end
+a sentence.  But why weary you with all this?  I pass over all the rest
+of the hateful details which made life insupportable to me.  Suffice to
+say, that one wet Sunday evening, when we could not go to chapel and were
+in the dining-room alone, the climax was reached.  My husband had a
+religious magazine before him, and I sat still, doing nothing.  At last,
+after an hour had passed without a word, I could bear it no longer, and I
+broke out—
+
+“‘James, I am wretched beyond description!”
+
+“He slowly shut the magazine, tearing a piece of paper from a letter and
+putting it in as a mark, and then said—
+
+“‘What is the matter?’
+
+“‘You must know.  You must know that ever since we have been married you
+have never cared for one single thing I have done or said; that is to
+say, you have never cared for me.  It is _not_ being married.’
+
+“It was an explosive outburst, sudden and almost incoherent, and I cried
+as if my heart would break.
+
+“‘What is the meaning of all this?  You must be unwell.  Will you not
+have a glass of wine?’
+
+“I could not regain myself for some minutes, during which he sat
+perfectly still, without speaking, and without touching me.  His coldness
+nerved me again, congealing all my emotion into a set resolve, and I
+said—
+
+“‘I want no wine.  I am not unwell.  I do not wish to have a scene.  I
+will not, by useless words, embitter myself against you, or you against
+me.  You know you do not love me.  I know I do not love you.  It is all a
+bitter, cursed mistake, and the sooner we say so and rectify it the
+better.’
+
+“The colour left his face; his lips quivered, and he looked as if he
+would have killed me.
+
+“‘What monstrous thing is this?  What do you mean by your tomfooleries?’
+
+“I did not speak.
+
+“‘Speak!’ he roared.  ‘What am I to understand by rectifying your
+mistake?  By the living God, you shall not make me the laughing-stock and
+gossip of the town!  I’ll crush you first.’
+
+“I was astonished to see such rage develop itself so suddenly in him, and
+yet afterwards, when I came to reflect, I saw there was no reason for
+surprise.  Self, self was his god, and the thought of the damage which
+would be done to him and his reputation was what roused him.  I was still
+silent, and he went on—
+
+“‘I suppose you intend to leave me, and you think you’ll disgrace me.
+You’ll disgrace yourself.  Everybody knows me here, and knows you’ve had
+every comfort and everything to make you happy.  Everybody will say what
+everybody will have the right to say about you.  Out with it and confess
+the truth, that one of your snivelling poets has fallen in love with you
+and you with him.’
+
+“I still held my peace, but I rose and went into the best bedchamber, and
+sat there in the dark till bedtime.  I heard James come upstairs at ten
+o’clock as usual, go to his own room, and lock himself in.  I never
+hesitated a moment.  I could not go home to become the centre of all the
+chatter of the little provincial town in which I was born.  My old nurse,
+who took care of me as a child, had got a place in London as housekeeper
+in a large shop in the Strand.  She was always very fond of me, and to
+her instantly I determined to go.  I came down, wrote a brief note to
+James, stating that after his base and lying sneer he could not expect to
+find me in the morning still with him, and telling him I had left him for
+ever.  I put on my cloak, took some money which was my own out of my
+cashbox, and at half-past twelve heard the mail-coach approaching.  I
+opened the front door softly—it shut with an oiled spring bolt; I went
+out, stopped the coach, and was presently rolling over the road to the
+great city.
+
+“Oh, that night!  I was the sole passenger inside, and for some hours I
+remained stunned, hardly knowing what had become of me.  Soon the morning
+began to break, with such calm and such slow-changing splendour that it
+drew me out of myself to look at it, and it seemed to me a prophecy of
+the future.  No words can tell the bound of my heart at emancipation.  I
+did not know what was before me, but I knew from what I had escaped; I
+did not believe I should be pursued, and no sailor returning from
+shipwreck and years of absence ever entered the port where wife and
+children were with more rapture than I felt journeying through the rain
+into which the clouds of the sunrise dissolved, as we rode over the dim
+flats of Huntingdonshire southwards.
+
+“There is no need for me to weary you any longer, nor to tell you what
+happened after I got to London, or how I came here.  I had a little
+property of my own and no child.  To avoid questions I resumed my maiden
+name.  But one thing you must know, because it will directly tend to
+enforce what I am going to beseech of you.  Years afterwards, I might
+have married a man who was devoted to me.  But I told him I was married
+already, and not a word of love must he speak to me.  He went abroad in
+despair, and I have never seen anything more of him.
+
+“You can guess now what I am going to pray of you to do.  Without
+hesitation, write to this girl and tell her the exact truth.  Anything,
+any obloquy, anything friends or enemies may say of you must be faced
+even joyfully rather than what I had to endure.  Better die the death of
+the Saviour on the cross than live such a life as mine.”
+
+I said: “Miss Arbour, you are doubtless right, but think what it means.
+It means nothing less than infamy.  It will be said, I broke the poor
+thing’s heart, and marred her prospects for ever.  What will become of
+me, as a minister, when all this is known?”
+
+She caught my hand in hers, and cried with indescribable feeling—
+
+“My good sir, you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls.  Oh! if
+you did but know, if you _could_ but know, you would be as decisive in
+your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your
+feet.  Never mind the future.  The one thing you have to do is the thing
+that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you.  What does the 119th
+Psalm say?—‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.’  We have no light promised
+us to show us our road a hundred miles away, but we have a light for the
+next footstep, and if we take that, we shall have a light for the one
+which is to follow.  The inspiration of the Almighty could not make
+clearer to me the message I deliver to you.  Forgive me—you are a
+minister, I know, and perhaps I ought not to speak so to you, but I am an
+old woman.  Never would you have heard my history from me, if I had not
+thought it would help to save you from something worse than death.”
+
+At this moment there came a knock at the door, and Miss Arbour’s sister
+came in.  After a few words of greeting I took my leave and walked home.
+I was confounded.  Who could have dreamed that such tragic depths lay
+behind that serene face, and that her orderly precision was like the
+grass and flowers upon volcanic soil with Vesuvian fires slumbering
+below?  I had been altogether at fault, and I was taught, what I have
+since been taught, over and over again, that unknown abysses, into which
+the sun never shines, lie covered with commonplace in men and women, and
+are revealed only by the rarest opportunity.
+
+But my thoughts turned almost immediately to myself, and I could bring
+myself to no resolve.  I was weak and tired, and the more I thought the
+less capable was I of coming to any decision.  In the morning, after a
+restless night, I was in still greater straits, and being perfectly
+unable to do anything, I fled to my usual refuge, the sea.  The whole day
+I swayed to and fro, without the smallest power to arbitrate between the
+contradictory impulses which drew me in opposite directions.
+
+I knew what I ought to do, but Ellen’s image was ever before me, mutely
+appealing against her wrongs, and I pictured her deserted and with her
+life spoiled.  I said to myself that instinct is all very well, but for
+what purpose is reason given to us if not to reason with it; and
+reasoning in the main is a correction of what is called instinct, and of
+hasty first impressions.  I knew many cases in which men and women loved
+one another without similarity of opinions, and, after all, similarity of
+opinions upon theological criticism is a poor bond of union.  But then,
+no sooner was this pleaded than the other side of the question was
+propounded with all its distinctness, as Miss Arbour had presented it.
+
+I came home thoroughly beaten with fatigue, and went to bed.  Fortunately
+I sank at once to rest, and with the morning was born the clear
+discernment that whatever I ought to do, it was more manly of me to go
+than to write to Ellen.  Accordingly, I made arrangements for getting
+somebody to supply my place in the pulpit for a couple of Sundays, and
+went home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+ELLEN AND MARY
+
+
+I NOW found myself in the strangest position.  What was I to do?  Was I
+to go to Ellen at once and say plainly, “I have ceased to care for you”?
+I did what all weak people do.
+
+I wished that destiny would take the matter out of my hands.  I would
+have given the world if I could have heard that Ellen was fonder of
+somebody else than me, although the moment the thought came to me I saw
+its baseness.  But destiny was determined to try me to the uttermost, and
+make the task as difficult for me as it could be made.
+
+It was Thursday when I arrived, and somehow or other—how I do not know—I
+found myself on Thursday afternoon at her house.  She was very pleased to
+see me, for many reasons.  My last letters had been doubtful and the time
+for our marriage, as she at least thought, was at hand.  I, on my part,
+could not but return the usual embrace, but after the first few words
+were over there was a silence, and she noticed that I did not look well.
+Anxiously she asked me what was the matter.  I said that something had
+been upon my mind for a long time, which I thought it my duty to tell
+her.  I then went on to say that I felt she ought to know what had
+happened.  When we were first engaged we both professed the same faith.
+From that faith I had gradually departed, and it seemed to me that it
+would be wicked if she were not made acquainted before she took a step
+which was irrevocable.  This was true, but it was not quite all the
+truth, and with a woman’s keenness she saw at once everything that was in
+me.  She broke out instantly with a sob—
+
+“Oh, Rough!”—a nickname she had given me—“I know what it all means—you
+want to get rid of me.”
+
+God help me, if I ever endure greater anguish than I did then.  I could
+not speak, much less could I weep, and I sat and watched her for some
+minutes in silence.  My first impulse was to retract, to put my arms
+round her neck, and swear that whatever I might be, Deist or Atheist,
+nothing should separate me from her.  Old associations, the thought of
+the cruel injustice put upon her, the display of an emotion which I had
+never seen in her before, almost overmastered me, and why I did not yield
+I do not know.  Again and again have I failed to make out what it is
+which, in moments of extreme peril, has restrained me from making some
+deadly mistake, when I have not been aware of the conscious exercise of
+any authority of my own.  At last I said—
+
+“Ellen, what else was I to do?  I cannot help my conversion to another
+creed.  Supposing you had found out that you had married a Unitarian and
+I had never told you!”
+
+“Oh, Rough! you are not a Unitarian, you don’t love me,” and she sobbed
+afresh.
+
+I could not plead against hysterics.  I was afraid she would get ill.  I
+thought nobody was in the house, and I rushed across the passage to get
+her some stimulants.  When I came back her father was in the room.  He
+was my aversion—a fussy, conceited man, who always prated about “my
+daughter” to me in a tone which was very repulsive—just as if she were
+his property, and he were her natural protector against me.
+
+“Mr. Rutherford,” he cried, “what is the matter with my daughter?  What
+have you said to her?”
+
+“I don’t think, sir, I am bound to tell you.  It is a matter between
+Ellen and myself.”
+
+“Mr. Rutherford, I demand an explanation.  Ellen is mine.  I am her
+father.”
+
+“Excuse me, sir, if I desire not to have a scene here just now.  Ellen is
+unwell.  When she recovers she will tell you.  I had better leave,” and I
+walked straight out of the house.
+
+Next morning I had a letter from her father to say, that whether I was a
+Unitarian or not, my behaviour to Ellen showed I was bad enough to be
+one.  Anyhow, he had forbidden her all further intercourse with me.  When
+I had once more settled down in my solitude, and came to think over what
+had happened, I felt the self-condemnation of a criminal without being
+able to accuse myself of a crime.  I believe with Miss Arbour that it is
+madness for a young man who finds out he has made a blunder, not to set
+it right; no matter what the wrench may be.  But that Ellen was a victim
+I do not deny.  If any sin, however, was committed against her, it was
+committed long before our separation.  It was nine-tenths mistake and
+one-tenth something more heinous; and the worst of it is, that while
+there is nothing which a man does which is of greater consequence than
+the choice of a woman with whom he is to live, there is nothing he does
+in which he is more liable to self-deception.
+
+On my return I heard that Mardon was ill, and that probably he would die.
+During my absence a contested election for the county had taken place,
+and our town was one of the polling-places.  The lower classes were
+violently Tory.  During the excitement of the contest the mob had set
+upon Mardon as he was going to his work, and had reviled him as a
+Republican and an Atheist.  By way of proving their theism they had
+cursed him with many oaths, and had so sorely beaten him that the shock
+was almost fatal.  I went to see him instantly, and found him in much
+pain, believing that he would not get better, but perfectly peaceful.
+
+I knew that he had no faith in immortality, and I was curious beyond
+measure to see how he would encounter death without such a faith; for the
+problem of death, and of life after death, was still absorbing me even to
+the point of monomania.  I had been struggling as best I could to protect
+myself against it, but with little success.  I had long since seen the
+absurdity and impossibility of the ordinary theories of hell and heaven.
+I could not give up my hope in a continuance of life beyond the grave,
+but the moment I came to ask myself how, I was involved in
+contradictions.  Immortality is not really immortality of the person
+unless the memory abides and there be a connection of the self of the
+next world with the self here, and it was incredible to me that there
+should be any memories or any such connection after the dissolution of
+the body; moreover, the soul, whatever it may be, is so intimately one
+with the body, and is affected so seriously by the weaknesses, passions,
+and prejudices of the body, that without it my soul would not be myself,
+and the fable of the resurrection of the body, of this same brain and
+heart, was more than I could ever swallow in my most orthodox days.
+
+But the greatest difficulty was the inability to believe that the
+Almighty intended to preserve all the mass of human beings, all the
+countless millions of barbaric, half-bestial forms which, since the
+appearance of man, had wandered upon the earth, savage or civilised.  Is
+it like Nature’s way to be so careful about individuals, and is it to be
+supposed that, having produced, millions of years ago, a creature
+scarcely nobler than the animals he tore with his fingers, she should
+take pains to maintain him in existence for evermore?  The law of the
+universe everywhere is rather the perpetual rise from the lower to the
+higher; an immortality of aspiration after more perfect types; a
+suppression and happy forgetfulness of its comparative failures.
+
+There was nevertheless an obstacle to the acceptance of this negation in
+a faintness of heart which I could not overcome.  Why this ceaseless
+struggle, if in a few short years I was to be asleep for ever?  The
+position of mortal man seemed to me infinitely tragic.  He is born into
+the world, beholds its grandeur and beauty, is filled with unquenchable
+longings, and knows that in a few inevitable revolutions of the earth he
+will cease.  More painful still; he loves somebody, man or woman, with a
+surpassing devotion; he is so lost in his love that he cannot endure a
+moment without it; and when he sees it pass away in death, he is told
+that it is extinguished—that that heart and mind absolutely are _not_.
+
+It was always a weakness with me that certain thoughts preyed on me.  I
+was always singularly feeble in laying hold of an idea, and in the
+ability to compel myself to dwell upon a thing for any lengthened period
+in continuous exhaustive reflection.  But, nevertheless, ideas would
+frequently lay hold of me with such relentless tenacity that I was
+passive in their grasp.  So it was about this time with death and
+immortality, and I watched eagerly Mardon’s behaviour when the end had to
+be faced.  As I have said, he was altogether calm.  I did not like to
+question him while he was so unwell, because I knew that a discussion
+would arise which I could not control, and it might disturb him, but I
+would have given anything to understand what was passing in his mind.
+
+During his sickness I was much impressed by Mary’s manner of nursing him.
+She was always entirely wrapped up in her father, so much so, that I had
+often doubted if she could survive him; but she never revealed any trace
+of agitation.  Under the pressure of the calamity which had befallen her,
+she showed rather increased steadiness, and even a cheerfulness which
+surprised me.  Nothing went wrong in the house.  Everything was perfectly
+ordered, perfectly quiet, and she rose to a height of which I had never
+suspected her capable, while her father’s stronger nature was allowed to
+predominate.  She was absolutely dependent on him.  If he did not get
+well she would be penniless, and I could not help thinking that with the
+like chance before me, to say nothing of my love for him and anxiety lest
+he should die, I should be distracted, and lose my head; more especially
+if I had to sit by his bed, and spend sleepless nights such as fell to
+her lot.  But she belonged to that class of natures which, although
+delicate and fragile, rejoice in difficulty.  Her grief for her father
+was exquisite, but it was controlled by a sense of her responsibility.
+The greater the peril, the more complete was her self-command.
+
+To the surprise of everybody Mardon got better.  His temperate habits
+befriended him in a manner which amazed his more indulgent neighbours,
+who were accustomed to hot suppers, and whisky-and-water after them.
+Meanwhile I fell into greater difficulties than ever in my ministry.  I
+wonder now that I was not stopped earlier.  I was entirely unorthodox,
+through mere powerlessness to believe, and the catalogue of the articles
+of faith to which I might be said really to subscribe was very brief.  I
+could no longer preach any of the dogmas which had always been preached
+in the chapel, and I strove to avoid a direct conflict by taking
+Scripture characters, amplifying them from the hints in the Bible, and
+neglecting what was supernatural.  That I was allowed to go on for so
+long was mainly due to the isolation of the town and the ignorance of my
+hearers.  Mardon and his daughter came frequently to hear me, and this, I
+believe, finally roused suspicion more than any doctrine expounded from
+the pulpit.  One Saturday morning there appeared the following letter in
+the _Sentinel_:
+
+    “SIR,—Last Sunday evening I happened to stray into a chapel not a
+    hundred miles from Water Lane.  Sir, it was a lovely evening, and
+
+    ‘The glorious stars on high,
+    Set like jewels in the sky,’
+
+    were circling their courses, and, with the moon, irresistibly
+    reminded me of that blood which was shed for the remission of sins.
+    Sir, with my mind attuned in that direction I entered the chapel.  I
+    hoped to hear something of that Rock of Ages in which, as the poet
+    sings, we shall wish to hide ourselves in years to come.  But, sir, a
+    young man, evidently a young man, occupied the pulpit, and great was
+    my grief to find that the tainted flood of human philosophy had
+    rolled through the town and was withering the truth as it is in
+    Christ Jesus.  Years ago that pulpit sent forth no uncertain sound,
+    and the glorious gospel was proclaimed there—not a _German gospel_,
+    sir—of our depravity and our salvation through Christ Jesus.  Sir, I
+    should like to know what the dear departed who endowed that chapel,
+    and are asleep in the Lord in that burying-ground, would say if they
+    were to rise from their graves and sit in those pews again and hear
+    what I heard—a sermon which might have been a week-day lecture.  Sir,
+    as I was passing through the town, I could not feel that I had done
+    my duty without announcing to you the fact as above stated, and had
+    not raised a humble warning from—
+
+                                                         Sir, Yours truly,
+                                                  “A CHRISTIAN TRAVELLER.”
+
+Notwithstanding the transparent artifice of the last paragraph, there was
+no doubt that the author of this precious production was Mr. Snale, and I
+at once determined to tax him with it.  On the Monday morning I called on
+him, and found him in his shop.
+
+“Mr. Snale,” I said, “I have a word or two to say to you.”
+
+“Certainly, sir.  What a lovely day it is!  I hope you are very well,
+sir.  Will you come upstairs?”
+
+But I declined to go upstairs, as it was probable I might meet Mrs. Snale
+there.  So I said that we had better go into the counting-house, a little
+place boxed off at the end of the shop, but with no door to it.  As soon
+as we got in I began.
+
+“Mr. Snale, I have been much troubled by a letter which has appeared in
+last week’s _Sentinel_.  Although disguised, it evidently refers to me,
+and to be perfectly candid with you, I cannot help thinking you wrote
+it.”
+
+“Dear me, sir, may I ask _why_ you think so?”
+
+“The internal evidence, Mr. Snale, is overwhelming; but if you did not
+write it, perhaps you will be good enough to say so.”
+
+Now Mr. Snale was a coward, but with a peculiarity which I have marked in
+animals of the rat tribe.  He would double and evade as long as possible,
+but if he found there was no escape, he would turn and tear and fight to
+the last extremity.
+
+“Mr. Rutherford, that is rather—ground of an, of an—what shall I say?—of
+an assumptive nature on which to make such an accusation, and I am not
+obliged to deny every charge which you may be pleased to make against
+me.”
+
+“Pardon me, Mr. Snale, do you then consider what I have said is an
+accusation and charge?  Do you think that it was wrong to write such a
+letter?”
+
+“Well, sir, I cannot exactly say that it was; but I must say, sir, that I
+do think it peculiar of you, peculiar of you, sir, to come here and
+attack one of your friends, who, I am sure, has always showed you so much
+kindness—to attack him, sir, with no proof.”
+
+Now Mr. Snale had not openly denied his authorship.  But the use of the
+word “friend” was essentially a lie—just one of those lies which, by
+avoiding the form of a lie, have such a charm for a mind like his.  I was
+roused to indignation.
+
+“Mr. Snale, I will give you the proof which you want, and then you shall
+judge for yourself.  The letter contains two lines of a hymn which you
+have misquoted.  You made precisely that blunder in talking to the
+Sunday-school children on the Sunday before the letter appeared.  You
+will remember that in accordance with my custom to visit the
+Sunday-school occasionally, I was there on that Sunday afternoon.”
+
+“Well, sir, I’ve not denied I did write it.”
+
+“Denied you did write it!” I exclaimed, with gathering passion; “what do
+you mean by the subterfuge about your passing through the town and by
+your calling me your friend a minute ago?  What would you have thought if
+anybody had written anonymously to the _Sentinel_, and had accused you of
+selling short measure?  You would have said it was a libel, and you would
+also have said that a charge of that kind ought to be made publicly and
+not anonymously.  You seem to think, nevertheless, that it is no sin to
+ruin me anonymously.”
+
+“Mr. Rutherford, I _am_ sure I am your friend.  I wish you well, sir,
+both here”—and Mr. Snale tried to be very solemn—“and in the world to
+come.  With regard to the letter, I don’t see it as you do, sir.  But,
+sir, if you are going to talk in this tone, I would advise you to be
+careful.  We have heard, sir”—and here Mr. Snale began to simper and grin
+with an indescribably loathsome grimace—“that some of your acquaintances
+in your native town are of opinion that you have not behaved quite so
+well as you should have done to a certain young lady of your
+acquaintance; and what is more, we have marked with pain here, sir, your
+familiarity with an atheist and his daughter, and we have noticed their
+coming to chapel, and we have also noticed a change in your doctrine
+since these parties attended there.”
+
+At the word “daughter” Mr. Snale grinned again, apparently to somebody
+behind me, and I found that one of his shopwomen had entered the
+counting-house, unobserved by me, while this conversation was going on,
+and that she was smirking in reply to Mr. Snale’s signals.  In a moment
+the blood rushed to my brain.  I was as little able to control myself as
+if I had been shot suddenly down a precipice.
+
+“Mr. Snale, you are a contemptible scoundrel and a liar.”
+
+The effort on him was comical.  He cried:
+
+“What, sir!—what do you mean, sir?—a minister of the gospel—if you were
+not, I would—a liar”—and he swung round hastily on the stool on which he
+was sitting, to get off and grasp a yard-measure which stood against the
+fireplace.  But the stool slipped, and he came down ignominiously.  I
+waited till he got up, but as he rose a carriage stopped at the door, and
+he recognised one of his best customers.  Brushing the dust off his
+trousers, and smoothing his hair, he rushed out without his hat, and in a
+moment was standing obsequiously on the pavement, bowing to his patron.
+I passed him in going out, but the oily film of subserviency on his face
+was not broken for an instant.
+
+When I got home I bitterly regretted what had happened.  I never regret
+anything more than the loss of self-mastery.  I had been betrayed, and
+yet I could not for the life of me see how the betrayal could have been
+prevented.  It was upon me so suddenly, that before a moment had been
+given me for reflection, the words were out of my mouth.  I was
+distinctly conscious that the _I_ had not said those words.  They had
+been spoken by some other power working in me which was beyond my reach.
+Nor could I foresee how to prevent such a fall for the future.  The only
+advice, even now, which I can give to those who comprehend the bitter
+pangs of such self-degradation as passion brings, is to watch the first
+risings of the storm, and to say “Beware; be watchful,” at the least
+indication of a tempest.  Yet, after every precaution, we are at the
+mercy of the elements, and in an instant the sudden doubling of a cape
+may expose us, under a serene sky, to a blast which, taking us with all
+sails spread, may overset us and wreck us irretrievably.
+
+My connection with the chapel was now obviously at an end.  I had no mind
+to be dragged before a church meeting, and I determined to resign.  After
+a little delay I wrote a letter to the deacons, explaining that I had
+felt a growing divergence from the theology taught heretofore in Water
+Lane, and I wished consequently to give up my connection with them.  I
+received an answer stating that my resignation had been accepted; I
+preached a farewell sermon; and I found myself one Monday morning with a
+quarter’s salary in my pocket, a few bills to pay, and a blank outlook.
+
+What was to be done?  My first thought was towards Unitarianism, but when
+I came to cast up the sum-total of what I was assured, it seemed so
+ridiculously small that I was afraid.  The occupation of a merely
+miscellaneous lecturer had always seemed to me very poor.  I could not
+get up Sunday after Sunday and retail to people little scraps suggested
+by what I might have been studying during the week; and with regard to
+the great subjects—for the exposition of which the Christian minister
+specially exists—how much did I know about them?  The position of a
+minister who has a gospel to proclaim; who can go out and tell men what
+they are to do to be saved, was intelligible; but not so the position of
+a man who had no such gospel.
+
+What reason for continuance as a preacher could I claim?  Why should
+people hear me rather than read books?  I was alarmed to find, on making
+my reckoning, that the older I got the less I appeared to believe.
+Nakeder and nakeder had I become with the passage of every year, and I
+trembled to anticipate the complete emptiness to which before long I
+should be reduced.
+
+What the dogma of immortality was to me I have already described, and
+with regard to God I was no better.  God was obviously not a person in
+the clouds, and what more was really firm under my feet than this—that
+the universe is governed by immutable laws?  These laws were not what is
+commonly understood as God.  Nor could I discern any ultimate tendency in
+them.  Everything was full of contradiction.  On the one hand was
+infinite misery; on the other there were exquisite adaptations producing
+the highest pleasure; on the one hand the mystery of life-long disease,
+and on the other the equal mystery of the unspeakable glory of the
+sunrise on a summer’s morning over a quiet summer sea.
+
+I happened to hear once an atheist discoursing on the follies of theism.
+If he had made the world, he would have made it much better.  He would
+not have racked innocent souls with years of torture, that tyrants might
+live in splendour.  He would not have permitted the earthquake to swallow
+up thousands of harmless mortals, and so forth.  But, putting aside all
+dependence upon the theory of a coming rectification of such wrongs as
+these, the atheist’s argument was shallow enough.
+
+It would have been easy to show that a world such as he imagines is
+unthinkable directly we are serious with our conception of it.  On
+whatever lines the world may be framed, there must be distinction,
+difference, a higher and a lower; and the lower, relatively to the
+higher, must always be an evil.  The scale upon which the higher and
+lower both are makes no difference.  The supremest bliss would not be
+bliss if it were not definable bliss—that is to say, in the sense that it
+has limits, marking it out from something else not so supreme.  Perfectly
+uninterrupted, infinite light, without shadow, is a physical absurdity.
+I see a thing because it is lighted, but also because of the differences
+of light, or, in other words, because of shade, and without shade the
+universe would be objectless, and in fact invisible.  The atheist was
+dreaming of shadowless light, a contradiction in terms.  Mankind may be
+improved, and the improvement may be infinite, and yet good and evil must
+exist.  So with death and life.  Life without death is not life, and
+death without life is equally impossible.
+
+But though all this came to me, and was not only a great comfort to me,
+but prevented any shallow prating like that to which I listened from this
+lecturer, it could not be said that it was a gospel from which to derive
+apostolic authority.  There remained morals.  I could become an
+instructor of morality.  I could warn tradesmen not to cheat, children to
+honour their parents, and people generally not to lie.  The mission was
+noble, but I could not feel much enthusiasm for it, and more than this,
+it was a fact that reformations in morals have never been achieved by
+mere directions to be good, but have always been the result of an
+enthusiasm for some City of God, or some supereminent person.  Besides,
+the people whom it was most necessary to reach would not be the people
+who would, unsolicited, visit a Unitarian meeting-house.  As for a
+message of negations, emancipating a number of persons from the dogma of
+the Trinity or future punishment, and spending my strength in merely
+demonstrating the nonsense of orthodoxy, my soul sickened at the very
+thought of it.  Wherein would men be helped, and wherein should I be
+helped?
+
+There were only two persons in the town who had ever been of any service
+to me.  One was Miss Arbour, and the other was Mardon.  But I shrank from
+Miss Arbour, because I knew that my troubles had never been hers.  She
+belonged to a past generation, and as to Mardon, I never saw him without
+being aware of the difficulty of accepting any advice from him.  He was
+perfectly clear, perfectly secular, and was so definitely shaped and
+settled, that his line of conduct might always be predicted beforehand
+with certainty.  I knew very well what he thought about preaching, and
+what he would tell me to do, or rather, what he would tell me not to do.
+
+Nevertheless, after all, I was a victim to that weakness which impels us
+to seek the assistance of others when we know that what they offer will
+be of no avail.  Accordingly, I called on him.  Both he and Mary were at
+home, and I was received with more than usual cordiality.  He knew
+already that I had resigned, for the news was all over the town.  I said
+I was in great perplexity.
+
+“The perplexities of most persons arise,” said Mardon, “as yours probably
+arise, from not understanding exactly what you want to do.  For one
+person who stumbles and falls with a perfectly distinct object to be
+attained, I have known a score whose disasters are to be attributed to
+their not having made themselves certain what their aim is.  You do not
+know what you believe; consequently you do not know how to act.”
+
+“What would you do if you were in my case?”
+
+“Leave the whole business and prefer the meanest handicraft.  You have no
+right to be preaching anything doubtful.  You are aware what my creed is.
+I profess no belief in God, and no belief in what hangs upon it.  Try and
+name now, any earnest conviction you possess, and see whether you have a
+single one which I have not got.”
+
+“I _do_ believe in God.”
+
+“There is nothing in that statement.  What do you believe about Him?—that
+is the point.  You will find that you believe nothing, in truth, which I
+do not also believe of the laws which govern the universe and man.”
+
+“I believe in an intellect of which these laws are the expression.”
+
+“Now what kind of an intellect can that be?  You can assign to it no
+character in accordance with its acts.  It is an intellect, if it be an
+intellect at all, which will swallow up a city, and will create the music
+of Mozart for me when I am weary; an intellect which brings to birth His
+Majesty King George IV., and the love of an affectionate mother for her
+child; an intellect which, in the person of a tender girl, shows an
+exquisite conscience, and in the person of one or two religious creatures
+whom I have known, shows a conscience almost inverted.  I have always
+striven to prove to my theological friends that their mere affirmation of
+God is of no consequence.  They may be affirming anything or nothing.
+The question, the all-important question is, _What_ can be affirmed about
+Him?”
+
+“Your side of the argument naturally admits of a more precise statement
+than mine.  I cannot encompass God with a well-marked definition, but for
+all that, I believe in Him.  I know all that may be urged against the
+belief, but I cannot help thinking that the man who looks upon the stars,
+or the articulation of a leaf, is irresistibly impelled, unless he has
+been corrupted by philosophy, to say, There is intellect there.  It is
+the instinct of the child and of the man.”
+
+“I don’t think so; but grant it, and again I ask, _What_ intellect is
+it?”
+
+“Again I say, I do not know.”
+
+“Then why dispute?  Why make such a fuss about it?”
+
+“It really seems to me of immense importance whether you see this
+intellect or not, although you say it is of no importance.  It appears to
+be of less importance than it really is, because I do not think that even
+you ever empty the universe of intellect.  I believe that mind never
+worships anything but mind, and that you worship it when you admire the
+level bars of cloud over the setting sun.  You think you eject mind, but
+you do not.  I can only half imagine a belief which looks upon the world
+as a mindless blank, and if I could imagine it, it would be depressing in
+the last degree to me.  I know that I have mind, and to live in a
+universe in which my mind is answered by no other would be unbearable.
+Better any sort of intelligence than none at all.  But, as I have just
+said, your case admits of plainer statement than mine.  You and I have
+talked this matter over before, and I have never gained a logical victory
+over you.  Often I have felt thoroughly prostrated by you, and yet, when
+I have left you, the old superstition has arisen unsubdued.  I do not
+know how it is, but I always feel that upon this, as upon many other
+subjects, I never can really speak myself.  An unshapen thought presents
+itself to me, I look at it, and I do all in my power to give it body and
+expression, but I cannot.  I am certain that there is something truer and
+deeper to be said about the existence of God than anything I have said,
+and what is more, I am certain of the presence of this something in me,
+but I cannot lift it to the light.”
+
+“Ah, you are now getting into the region of sentiment, and I am unable to
+accompany you.  When my friends go into the clouds, I never try to follow
+them.”
+
+All this time Mary had been sitting in the arm-chair against the
+fireplace in her usual attitude, resting her head on her hand and with
+her feet crossed one over the other on the fender.  She had been
+listening silently and motionless.  She now closed her eyes and said—
+
+“Father, father, it is not true.”
+
+“What is not true?”
+
+“I do not mean that what you have said about theology is not true, but
+you make Mr. Rutherford believe you are what you are not.  Mr.
+Rutherford, father sometimes tells us he has no sentiment, but you must
+take no notice of him when he talks in that way.  I always think of our
+visit to the seaside two years ago.  The railway-station was in a
+disagreeable part of the town, and when we came out we walked along a
+dismal row of very plain-looking houses.  There were cards in the window
+with ‘Lodgings’ written on them, and father wanted to go in to ask the
+terms.  I said that I did not wish to stay in such a dull street, but
+father could not afford to pay for a sea view, and so we went in to
+inquire.  We then found that what we thought were the fronts of the
+houses were the backs, and that the fronts faced the bay.  They had
+pretty gardens on the other side, and a glorious sunny prospect over the
+ocean.”
+
+Mardon laughed and said—
+
+“Ah, Mary, there is no sea front here, and no garden.”
+
+I took up my hat and said I must go.  Both pressed me to stop, but I
+declined.  Mardon urged me again, and at last said—
+
+“I believe you’ve never once heard Mary sing.”
+
+Mary protested, and pleaded that as they had no piano, Mr. Rutherford
+would not care for her poor voice without any accompaniment.  But I, too,
+protested that I should, and she got out the “Messiah.”  Her father took
+a tuning-fork out of his pocket, and having struck it, Mary rose and
+began, “He was despised.”  Her voice was not powerful, but it was pure
+and clear, and she sang with that perfect taste which is begotten solely
+of a desire to honour the Master.  The song always had a profound charm
+for me.  Partly this was due to association.  The words and tones, which
+have been used to embody their emotions by those whom we have loved, are
+doubly expressive when we use them to embody our own.  The song is potent
+too, because with utmost musical tenderness and strength it reveals the
+secret of the influence of the story of Jesus.  Nobody would be bold
+enough to cry, _That too is my case_, and yet the poorest and the
+humblest soul has a right to the consolation that Jesus was a man of
+sorrows and acquainted with grief.
+
+For some reason or the other, or for many reasons, Mary’s voice wound
+itself into the very centre of my existence.  I seemed to be listening to
+the tragedy of all human worth and genius.  The ball rose in my throat,
+the tears mounted to my eyes, and I had to suppress myself rigidly.
+
+Presently she ceased.  There was silence for a moment.  I looked round,
+and saw that Mardon’s face was on the table, buried in his hands.  I felt
+that I had better go, for the presence of a stranger, when the heart is
+deeply stirred, is an intrusion.  I noiselessly left the room, and Mary
+followed.  When we got to the door she said: “I forgot that mother used
+to sing that song.  I ought to have known better.”  Her own eyes were
+full; I thought the pressure of her hand as she bade me good-bye was a
+little firmer than usual, and as we parted an over-mastering impulse
+seized me.  I lifted her hand to my lips; without giving her time to
+withdraw it, I gave it one burning kiss, and passed out into the street.
+It was pouring with rain, and I had neither overcoat nor umbrella, but I
+heeded not the heavens, and not till I got home to my own fireless, dark,
+solitary lodgings, did I become aware of any contrast between the sphere
+into which I had been exalted and the earthly commonplace world by which
+I was surrounded.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+EMANCIPATION
+
+
+THE old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them
+become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a
+respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of Queen
+Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century heretics still
+testify against three Gods in one and the deity of Jesus Christ.
+Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very meagre, but
+they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
+
+There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-,
+within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant.  The income
+was about £100 a year.  The principal man there was a small general
+dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village street, and I had
+come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken to give his boy a few
+lessons to prepare him for admission to a boarding-school.  The money in
+my pocket was coming to an end, and as I did not suppose that any
+dishonesty would be imposed on me, and although the prospect were not
+cheering, I expressed my willingness to be considered as a candidate.
+
+In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach.  I was
+so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the Sunday
+morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the chapel,
+and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and opened a door
+at the back.  I explained who I was, and sat down in a Windsor chair
+against a small kitchen table in the vestry.  It was cold, but there was
+no fire, nor were any preparations made for one.  On the mantel-shelf
+were a bottle of water and a glass, but as the water had evidently been
+there for some time, it was not very tempting.
+
+I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer
+then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly,
+asked me for the hymns.  These I gave him, and went into the pulpit.  I
+found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two
+hundred people.  There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was
+occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my right
+and left being surrounded with faded green curtains.  I counted my
+hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including two
+very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door.  The gallery was
+quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was called,
+which was played by a young woman.  The dealer gave out the hymns, and
+accompanied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air.  A weak
+whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation, but nothing
+more.
+
+I was somewhat taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which had
+been left by one of my predecessors.  It was a funeral-sermon, neatly
+written, and had evidently done duty on several occasions, although the
+allusions in it might be considered personal.  The piety and good works
+of the departed were praised with emphasis, but the masculine pronouns
+originally used were altered above the lines all throughout to feminine
+pronouns, and the word “brother” to “sister,” so that no difficulty might
+arise in reading it for either sex.  I was faint, benumbed, and with no
+heart for anything.  I talked for about half-an-hour about what I
+considered to be the real meaning of the death of Christ, thinking that
+this was a subject which might prove as attractive as any other.
+
+After the service the assembly of seventeen departed, save one thin
+elderly gentleman, who came into the vestry, and having made a slight
+bow, said: “Mr. Rutherford, will you come with me, if you please?”  I
+accordingly followed him, almost in silence, through the village till we
+reached his house, where his wife, who had gone on before, received us.
+They had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, but had
+retired.  They might both be about sixty-five, and were of about the same
+temperament, pale, thin, and ineffectual, as if they had been fed on
+gruel.
+
+We had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate in it, in which
+was stuck a basket stove.  I remember perfectly well what we had for
+dinner.  There was a neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a suet
+pudding, and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw—about the
+colour of lemon juice, but what it was really like I do not know, as I
+did not drink beer.  I was somewhat surprised at being asked whether I
+would take potatoes _or_ cabbage, but thinking it was the custom of the
+country not to indulge in both at once, and remembering that I was on
+probation, I said “cabbage.”
+
+Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, and scarcely a word
+by my hostess.  After dinner she cleared the things away, and did not
+again appear.  My host drew near the basket stove, and having remarked
+that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber.  At twenty minutes to
+two we sallied out for the afternoon service, and found the seventeen
+again in their places, excepting the two labourers, who were probably
+prevented by the wet from attending.
+
+The service was a repetition of that in the morning, and when I came down
+my host again came forward and presented me with nineteen shillings.  The
+fee was a guinea, but from that two shillings were abated for my
+entertainment.  He informed me at the same time that a farmer, who had
+been hearing me and who lived five miles on my road, would give me a
+lift.  He was a very large, stout man, with a rosy countenance, which was
+somewhat of a relief after the gruel face of my former friend.  We went
+round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four-wheeled chaise.  His wife
+sat with him in front, and a biggish boy sat with me behind.
+
+When we came to a guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out, and
+was dismissed in the dark with the observation—uttered good-naturedly and
+jovially, but not very helpfully—that he was “afraid I should have a
+wettish walk.”  The walk certainly was wettish, and as I had had nothing
+to eat or drink since my midday meal, I was miserable and desponding.
+But just before I reached home the clouds rolled off with the south-west
+wind into detached, fleecy masses, separated by liquid blue gulfs, in
+which were sowed the stars, and the effect upon me was what that sight,
+thank God, always has been—a sense of the infinite, extinguishing all
+mean cares.
+
+I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian acquaintances, and was
+therefore greatly surprised when, a week after my visit, I received an
+invitation to “settle” amongst them.  The usual month’s trial was thought
+unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger to some of them.  I
+hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the prospect
+of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing else before
+me.  There is no more helpless person in this world than a minister who
+is thrown out of work.  At any rate, I should be doing no harm if I went.
+
+I pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a case
+where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to plunge at
+an impassable barrier, but to take that one opening, however unpromising
+it may be.  Accordingly I accepted.  My income was to be a hundred a
+year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend the retired
+dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village which were available.
+
+I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye.  I had not seen either of them
+since the night of the song.  To my surprise I found them both away.  The
+blinds were down and the door locked.  A neighbour, who heard me
+knocking, came out and told me the news.  Mardon had had a dispute with
+his employer, and had gone to London to look for work.  Mary had gone to
+see a relative at some distance, and would remain there until her father
+had determined what was to be done.
+
+I obtained the addresses of both of them, and wrote to Mardon, telling
+him what my destiny for the present was to be.  To Mary I wrote also, and
+to her I offered my heart.  Looking backward, I have sometimes wondered
+that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted since,
+that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I have done
+in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself with
+meditative indecision.  I had doubted before.  I remember once being so
+near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the paper under
+my hand.  But I held back, could not make up my mind, and happily was
+stayed.  Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have been
+miserable.  The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge
+that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an
+emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction.  There
+was no such tendency now.  I thought I chose Mary, but there was no
+choice.  The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would
+think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own
+free will.  My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by the force of a
+loadstone.
+
+But she was not to be mine.  I had a note from her, a sweet note,
+thanking me with much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her, but
+saying that her mind had long since been made up.  She was an only child
+of a mother whom her father had loved above everything in life, and she
+could never leave him nor suffer any affection to interfere with that
+which she felt for him and which he felt for her.  I might well
+misinterpret him, and think it strange that he should be so much bound up
+in her.  Few people knew him as she did.
+
+The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I fell under the influence
+of that horrible monomania from which I had been free for so long.  For
+weeks I was prostrate, with no power of resistance; the evil being
+intensified by my solitude.  Of all the dreadful trials which human
+nature has the capacity to bear unshattered, the worst—as, indeed, I have
+already said—is the fang of some monomaniacal idea which cannot be
+wrenched out.  A main part of the misery, as I have also said, lies in
+the belief that suffering of this kind is peculiar to ourselves.  We are
+afraid to speak of it, and not knowing, therefore, how common it is, we
+are distracted with the fear that it is our own special disease.
+
+I managed to get through my duties, but how I cannot tell.  Fortunately
+our calamities are not what they appear to be when they lie in
+perspective behind us or before us, for they actually consist of distinct
+moments, each of which is overcome by itself.  I was helped by
+remembering my recovery before, and I was able now, as a reward of
+long-continued abstinence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with
+more patience till the cloud should lift.
+
+Mardon having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, but my love for
+Mary increased in intensity, and had a good deal to do with my
+restoration to health.  It was a hopeless love, but to be in love
+hopelessly is more akin to sanity than careless, melancholy indifference
+to the world.  I was relieved from myself by the anchorage of all my
+thoughts elsewhere.  The pain of loss was great, but the main curse of my
+existence has not been pain or loss, but gloom; blind wandering in a
+world of black fog, haunted by apparitions.  I am not going to expand
+upon the history of my silent relationship to Mary during that time.  How
+can I?  All that I felt has been described better by others; and if it
+had not been, I have no mind to attempt a description myself, which would
+answer no purpose.
+
+I continued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I interchanged no
+word.  After her denial of me I should have dreaded the charge of
+selfishness if I had opened my lips again.  I could not place myself in
+her affection before her father.
+
+My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind.  My people really
+consisted of five families—those of the retired dealer, the farmer who
+took me home the first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in the
+village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, including ready-made
+clothing and provisions.  He had a wife and one child.
+
+Then there was a super-annuated brass-founder, who had a large house
+near, and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed himself a
+Unitarian in the town in which he was formerly in business, where
+Unitarianism was flourishing.  He had come down here to cultivate, for
+amusement, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a cheap rate.
+Released from active employment, he had given himself over to eating and
+drinking, particularly the drinking of port wine.  His wife was dead, his
+sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters all went to
+church.  His connection with the chapel was merely nominal, and I was
+very glad it was so.  I was hardly ever brought into contact with him,
+except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner; but the
+attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the rudeness
+of his children was so marked, that I never went again.
+
+There was also a schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school with
+a Unitarian connection.  He lived, however, at such a distance that his
+visits were very unfrequent.  Sometimes on a fine summer’s Sunday morning
+the boys would walk over—about twenty of them altogether, but this only
+happened perhaps half-a-dozen times in a year.
+
+Although my congregation had a freethought lineage, I do not think that I
+ever had anything to do with a more petrified set.  With one exception,
+they were meagre in the extreme.  They were perfectly orthodox, except
+that they denied a few orthodox doctrines.  Their method was as strict as
+that of the most rigid Calvinist.  They plumed themselves, however,
+greatly on their intellectual superiority over the Wesleyans and Baptists
+round them; and so far as I could make out, the only topics they
+delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God from texts in the
+Bible, and polemics against tri-theism.  Sympathy with the great problems
+then beginning to agitate men they had none.  Socially they were cold,
+and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious.  They never
+considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support.
+There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from
+all further anxiety.  They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came
+or stayed away on the Sunday just as it suited them, and without caring
+to assign any reason.
+
+The one exception was the wife of the shopkeeper.  She was a contrast to
+her husband and all the rest.  I do not think she was a Unitarian born
+and bred.  She talked but little about theology, but she was devoted to
+her Bible, and had a fine sense for all the passages in it which had an
+experience in them.  She was generous, spiritual, and possessed of an
+unswerving instinct for what was right.  Oftentimes her prompt decisions
+were a scandal to her more sedate friends, who did not believe in any way
+of arriving at the truth except by rationalising, but she hardly ever
+failed to hit the mark.  It was in questions of relationship between
+persons, of behaviour, and of morals, that her guidance was the surest.
+In such cases her force seemed to keep her straight, while the weakness
+of those around made it impossible for them not to wander, first on one
+side and then on the other.  She was unflinching in her expressions, and
+at any sacrifice did her duty.  It was her severity in obeying her
+conscience which not only gave authority to her admonitions, but was the
+source of her inspirations.
+
+She was not much of a reader, but she read strange things.  She had some
+old volumes of a magazine—a “Repository” of some kind; I have forgotten
+what—and she picked out from them some translations of German verses
+which she greatly admired.  She was not a well educated woman in the
+school sense of the word, and of several of our greatest names in
+literature had heard nothing.  I do not think she knew anything about
+Shakespeare, and she never entered into the meaning of dramatic poetry.
+At all points her path was her own, intersecting at every conceivable
+angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never straying along them
+except just so far as they might happen to be hers.
+
+While I was in the village an event happened which caused much commotion.
+Her son was serving in the shop, and there was in the house at the time a
+nice-looking, clean servant-girl.  Mrs. Lane, for that was my friend’s
+name, had meditated discharging her, for, with her usual quickness, she
+thought she saw something in the behaviour of her son to the girl which
+was peculiar.  One morning, however, both her son and the girl were
+absent, and there was a letter upon the table announcing that they were
+in a town about twenty miles off and were married.
+
+The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, confusing counsel.
+Mrs. Lane said but little, but never wavered an instant.  Leaving her
+husband to “consider what was best to be done,” she got out the gig,
+drove herself over to her son’s lodging, and presented herself to her
+amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees and prayed for pity.  “My
+dear,” said Mrs. Lane, “get up this instant; you are my daughter.  Not
+another word.  I’ve come to see what you want.”  And she kissed her
+tenderly.  The girl was at heart a good girl.  She was so bound to her
+late mistress and her new mother by this behaviour, that the very depth
+in her opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with almost
+religious fervour.  She was taught a little up to her son’s level, and a
+happier marriage I never knew.  Mrs. Lane told me what she had done, but
+she had no theory about it.  She merely said she knew it to be the right
+thing to do.
+
+She was very fond of getting up early in the morning and going out, and
+in such a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost on lunacy.
+At five o’clock she was often wandering about her garden.  She was a
+great lover of order in the house, and kept it well under control, but I
+do not think I ever surprised her when she was so busy that she would not
+easily, and without any apparent sacrifice, leave what she was doing to
+come and talk with me.
+
+As I have said, the world of books in which I lived was almost altogether
+shut to her, but yet she was the only person in the village whose
+conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal into the region of
+the universal.  I have been thus particular in describing her—I fear
+without raising any image of her—because she was of incalculable service
+to me.  I languished from lack of life, and her mere presence, so
+exuberant in its full vivacity, was like mountain air.  Furthermore, she
+was not troubled much with my philosophical difficulties.  They had not
+come in her path.  Her world was the world of men and women—more
+particularly of those she knew—and it was a world in which it did me good
+to dwell.  She was all the more important to me, because outside our own
+little circle there was no society whatever.  The Church and the other
+Dissenting bodies considered us non-Christian.
+
+I often wondered that Mr. Lane retained his business, and, indeed, he
+would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty,
+which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of
+the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the
+insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed in
+the Trinity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+PROGRESS IN EMANCIPATION
+
+
+I WAS with my Unitarian congregation for about a twelvemonth.  My life
+during that time, save so far as my intercourse with Mrs. Lane, and one
+other friend presently to be mentioned, was concerned, was as sunless and
+joyless as it had ever been.  Imagine me living by myself, roaming about
+the fields, and absorbed mostly upon insoluble problems with which I
+never made any progress, and which tended to draw me away from what
+enjoyment of life there was which I might have had.
+
+One day I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a
+great place for butterflies, and I saw a man, apparently about fifty
+years old, coming along with a butterfly-net.  He did not see me, for he
+looked about for a convenient piece of turf, and presently sat down,
+taking out a sandwich-box, from which he produced his lunch.  His
+occupation did not particularly attract me, but in those days, if I
+encountered a new person who was not repulsive, I was always as eager to
+make his acquaintance as if he perchance might solve a secret for me, the
+answer to which I burned to know.  I have been disappointed so many
+times, and have found that nobody has much more to tell me, that my
+curiosity has somewhat abated, but even now, the news that anybody who
+has the reputation for intelligence has come near me, makes me restless
+to see him.  I accordingly saluted the butterfly-catcher, who returned
+the salutation kindly, and we began to talk.
+
+He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot because
+he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of butterfly which
+he wished to get; and as it was a still, bright day, he hoped to find a
+specimen.  He had been unsuccessful for some years.  Presupposing that I
+knew all about his science, he began to discourse upon it with great
+freedom, and he ended by saying that he would be happy to show me his
+collection, which was one of the finest in the country.
+
+“But I forget,” said he, “as I always forget in such cases, perhaps you
+don’t care for butterflies.”
+
+“I take much interest in them.  I admire exceedingly the beauty of their
+colours.”
+
+“Ah, yes, but you don’t care for them scientifically, or for collecting
+them.”
+
+“No, not particularly.  I cannot say I ever saw much pleasure in the mere
+classification of insects.”
+
+“Perhaps you are devoted to some other science?”
+
+“No, I am not.”
+
+“Well, I daresay it looks absurd for a man at my years to be running
+after a moth.  I used to think it was absurd, but I am wiser now.
+However, I cannot stop to talk; I shall lose the sunshine.  The first
+time you are anywhere near me, come and have a look.  You will alter your
+opinion.”
+
+Some weeks afterwards I happened to be in the neighbourhood of the
+butterfly-catcher’s house, and I called.  He was at home, and welcomed me
+cordially.  The first thing he did was to show me his little museum.  It
+was really a wonderful exhibition, and as I saw the creatures in lines,
+and noted the amazing variations of the single type, I was filled with
+astonishment.  Seeing the butterflies systematically arranged was a
+totally different thing from seeing a butterfly here and there, and gave
+rise to altogether new thoughts.  My friend knew his subject from end to
+end, and I envied him his mastery of it.  I had often craved the mastery
+of some one particular province, be it ever so minute.  I half or a
+quarter knew a multitude of things, but no one thing thoroughly, and was
+never sure, just when I most wanted to be sure.  We got into
+conversation, and I was urged to stay to dinner.  I consented, and found
+that my friend’s household consisted of himself alone.  After dinner, as
+we became a little more communicative, I asked him when and how he took
+to this pursuit.
+
+“It will be twenty-six years ago next Christmas,” said he, “since I
+suffered a great calamity.  You will forgive my saying anything about it,
+as I have no assurance that the wound which looks healed may not break
+out again.  Suffice to say, that for some ten years or more my thoughts
+were almost entirely occupied with death and our future state.  There is
+a strange fascination about these topics to many people, because they are
+topics which permit a great deal of dreaming, but very little thinking:
+in fact, true thinking, in the proper sense of the word, is impossible in
+dealing with them.  There is no rigorous advance from one position to
+another, which is really all that makes thinking worth the name.  Every
+man can imagine or say cloudy things about death and the future, and feel
+himself here, at least, on a level with the ablest brain which he knows.
+
+“I went on gazing gloomily into dark emptiness, till all life became
+nothing for me.  I did not care to live, because there was no assurance
+of existence beyond.  By the strangest of processes, I neglected the
+world, because I had so short a time to be in it.  It is with absolute
+horror now that I look back upon those days, when I lay as if alive in a
+coffin of lead.  All passions and pursuits were nullified by the
+ever-abiding sense of mortality.  For years this mood endured, and I was
+near being brought down to the very dust.
+
+“At last, by the greatest piece of good fortune, I was obliged to go
+abroad.  The change, and the obligation to occupy myself about many
+affairs, was an incalculable blessing to me.  While travelling I was
+struck with the remarkable and tropical beauty of the insects, and
+especially of the butterflies.  I captured a few, and brought them home.
+On showing them to a friend, learned in such matters, I discovered that
+they were rare, and I had a little cabinet made for them.  I looked into
+the books, found what it was which I had got, and what I had not got.
+
+“Next year it was my duty to go abroad again, and I went with some
+feeling akin to pleasure, for I wished to add to my store.  I increased
+it considerably, and by the time I returned I had as fine a show as any
+private person might wish to possess.  A good deal of my satisfaction,
+perhaps, was unaccountable, and no rational explanation can be given of
+it.  But men should not be too curious in analysing and condemning any
+means which Nature devises to save them from themselves, whether it be
+coins, old books, curiosities, butterflies, or fossils.  And yet my
+newly-acquired passion was not altogether inexplicable.  I was the owner
+of something which other persons did not own, and in a little while, in
+my own limited domain, I was supreme.  No man either can study any
+particular science thoroughly without transcending it; and it is an utter
+mistake to suppose that, because a student sticks to any one branch, he
+necessarily becomes contracted.
+
+“However, I am not going to philosophise; I do not like it.  All I can
+say is, that I shun all those metaphysical speculations of former years
+as I would a path which leads to madness.  Other people may be able to
+occupy themselves with them and be happy; I cannot.  I find quite enough
+in my butterflies to exercise my wonder, and yet, on the other hand, my
+study is not a mere vacant, profitless stare.  When you saw me that
+morning, I was trying to obtain an example which I have long wanted to
+fill up a gap.  I have looked for it for years, but have missed it.  But
+I know it has been seen lately where we met, and I shall triumph at
+last.”
+
+A good deal of all this was to me incomprehensible.  It seemed mere
+solemn trifling compared with the investigation of those great questions
+with which I had been occupied, but I could not resist the contagion of
+my friend’s enthusiasm when he took me to his little library and
+identified his treasures with pride, pointing out at the same time those
+in which he was deficient.  He was specially exultant over one minute
+creature which he had caught himself, which he had not as yet seen
+figured, and he proposed going to the British Museum almost on purpose to
+see if he could find it there.
+
+When I got home I made inquiries into the history of my entomologist.  I
+found that years ago he had married a delicate girl, of whom he was
+devotedly fond.  She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken.
+Her offspring, a boy, survived, but he was a cripple, and grew up
+deformed.  As he neared manhood he developed a satyr-like lustfulness,
+which was almost uncontrollable, and made it difficult to keep him at
+home without constraint.  He seemed to have no natural affection for his
+father, nor for anybody else, but was cunning with the base, beastly
+cunning of the ape.  The father’s horror was infinite.  This thing was
+his only child, and the child of the woman whom he worshipped.  He was
+excluded from all intercourse with friends; for, as the boy could not be
+said to be mad, he could not be shut up.  After years of inconceivable
+misery, however, lust did deepen into absolute lunacy, and the crooked,
+misshapen monster was carried off to an asylum, where he died, and the
+father well-nigh went there too.
+
+Before I had been six months amongst the Unitarians, I found life even
+more intolerable with them than it had been with the Independents.  The
+difference of a little less belief was nothing.  The question of
+Unitarianism was altogether dead to me; and although there was a phase of
+the doctrine of God’s unity which would now and then give me an
+opportunity for a few words which I felt, it was not a phase for which my
+hearers in the least cared or which they understood.
+
+Here, as amongst the Independents, there was the same lack of personal
+affection, or even of a capability of it—excepting always Mrs. Lane—and,
+in fact, it was more distressing amongst the Unitarians than amongst the
+orthodox.  The desire for something like sympathy and love absolutely
+devoured me.  I dwelt on all the instances in poetry and history in which
+one human being had been bound to another human being, and I reflected
+that my existence was of no earthly importance to anybody.  I could not
+altogether lay the blame on myself.  God knows that I would have stood
+against a wall and have been shot for any man or woman whom I loved, as
+cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but nobody seemed to wish for
+such a love, or to know what to do with it.
+
+Oh, the humiliations under which this weakness has bent me!  Often and
+often I have thought that I have discovered somebody who could really
+comprehend the value of a passion which could tell everything and venture
+everything.  I have overstepped all bounds of etiquette in obtruding
+myself on him, and have opened my heart even to shame.  I have then found
+that it was all on my side.  For every dozen times I went to his house,
+he came to mine once, and only when pressed: I have languished in
+sickness for a month without his finding it out; and if I were to drop
+into the grave, he would perhaps never give me another thought.  If I had
+been born a hundred years earlier, I should have transferred this burning
+longing to the unseen God and have become a devotee.  But I was a hundred
+years too late, and I felt that it was mere cheating of myself and a
+mockery to think about love for the only God whom I knew—the forces which
+maintained the universe.
+
+I am now getting old, and have altered in many things.  The hunger and
+thirst of those years have abated, or rather, the fire has had ashes
+heaped on it, so that it is well-nigh extinguished.  I have been repulsed
+into self-reliance and reserve, having learned wisdom by experience; but
+still I know that the desire has not died, as so many other desires have
+died, by the natural evolution of age.  It has been forcibly suppressed,
+and that is all.  If anybody who reads these words of mine should be
+offered by any young dreamer such a devotion as I once had to offer, and
+had to take back again refused so often, let him in the name of all that
+is sacred accept it.  It is simply the most precious thing in existence.
+Had I found anybody who would have thought so, my life would have been
+redeemed into something which I have often imagined, but now shall never
+know.
+
+I determined to leave, but what to do I could not tell.  I was fit for
+nothing, and yet I could not make up my mind to accept a life which was
+simply living.  It must be a life, through which some benefit was
+conferred upon my fellow-creatures.  This was mainly delusion.  I had not
+then learned to correct this natural instinct to be of some service to
+mankind by the thought of the boundlessness of infinity and of Nature’s
+profuseness.  I had not come to reflect that, taking into account her
+eternities, and absolute exhaustlessness, it was folly in me to fret and
+fume, and I therefore clung to the hope that I might employ myself in
+some way which, however feebly, would help mankind a little to the
+realisation of an ideal.  But I was not the man for such a mission.  I
+lacked altogether that concentration which binds up the scattered powers
+into one resistless energy, and I lacked faith.  All I could do was to
+play the vagrant in literature, picking up here and there an idea which
+attracted me, and presenting it to my flock on the Sunday; the net result
+being next to nothing.
+
+However, existence like that which I had been leading was intolerable,
+and change it I must.  I accordingly resigned, and with ten pounds in my
+pocket, which was all that remained after paying my bills, I came to
+London, thinking that until I could settle what to do, I would try and
+teach in a school.  I called on an agent somewhere near the Strand, and
+after a little negotiation, was engaged by a gentleman who kept a private
+establishment at Stoke Newington.
+
+Thither I accordingly went one Monday afternoon in January, about two
+days before the term commenced.  When I got there, I was shown into a
+long schoolroom, which had been built out from the main building.  It was
+dark, save for one candle, and was warmed by a stove.  The walls were
+partly covered with maps, and at one end of the room hung a diagram
+representing a globe, on which an immense amount of wasted ingenuity had
+been spent to produce the illusion of solidity.  The master, I was told,
+was out, and in this room with one candle I remained till nine o’clock.
+At that time a servant brought me some bread and cheese on a small tray,
+with half-a-pint of beer.  I asked for water, which was given me, and she
+then retired.  The tray was set down on the master’s raised desk, and
+sitting there I ate my supper in silence, looking down upon the
+dimly-lighted forms, and forward into the almost absolute gloom.
+
+At ten o’clock a man, who seemed as if he were the knife and
+boot-cleaner, came and said he would show me where I was to sleep.  We
+passed through the schoolroom into a kind of court, where there was a
+ladder standing against a trap-door.  He told me that my bedroom was up
+there, and that when I got up I could leave the ladder down, or pull it
+up after me, just as I pleased.
+
+I ascended and found a little chamber, duly furnished with a chest of
+drawers, bed, and washhand-stand.  It was tolerably clean and decent; but
+who shall describe what I felt!  I went to the window and looked out.
+There were scattered lights here and there, marking roads, but as they
+crossed one another, and now and then stopped where building had ceased,
+the effect they produced was that of bewilderment with no clue to it.
+Further off was the great light of London, like some unnatural dawn, or
+the illumination from a fire which could not itself be seen.  I was
+overcome with the most dreadful sense of loneliness.  I suppose it is the
+very essence of passion, using the word in its literal sense, that no
+account can be given of it by the reason.
+
+Reflecting on what I suffered, then, I cannot find any solid ground for
+it, and yet there are not half-a-dozen days or nights of my life which
+remain with me like that one.  I was beside myself with a kind of terror,
+which I cannot further explain.  It is possible for another person to
+understand grief for the death of a friend, bodily suffering, or any
+emotion which has a distinct cause, but how shall he understand the worst
+of all calamities, the nameless dread, the efflux of all vitality, the
+ghostly, haunting horror which is so nearly akin to madness?
+
+It is many years ago since that evening, but while I write I am at the
+window still, and the yellow flare of the city is still in my eyes.  I
+remember the thought of all the happy homes which lay around me, in which
+dwelt men who had found a position, an occupation, and, above all things,
+affection.  I know the causelessness of a good deal of all those panic
+fears and all that suffering, but I tremble to think how thin is the
+floor on which we stand which separates us from the bottomless abyss.
+
+The next morning I went down into the schoolroom, and after I had been
+there for some little time, the proprietor of the school made his
+appearance.  He was not a bad man, nor even unkind in his way, but he was
+utterly uninteresting, and as commonplace as might be expected after
+having for many years done nothing but fight a very uphill battle in
+boarding the sons of tradesfolk, and teaching them, at very moderate
+rates, the elements of Latin, and the various branches of learning which
+constitute what is called a commercial education.  He said that he
+expected some of the boys back that day; that when they came, he should
+wish me to take my meals with them, but that meanwhile he would be glad
+if I would breakfast with him and his wife.  This accordingly I did.
+What his wife was like I have almost entirely forgotten, and I only saw
+her once again.  After breakfast he said I could go for a walk, and for a
+walk I went; wandering about the dreary, intermingled chaos of fields
+with damaged hedges, and new roads divided into building plots.
+
+Meanwhile one or two of the boys had made their appearance, and I
+therefore had my dinner with them.  After dinner, as there was nothing
+particular to do, I was again dismissed with them for a walk just as the
+light of the winter afternoon was fading.  My companions were dejected,
+and so was I!  The wind was south-easterly, cold, and raw, and the smoke
+came up from the region about the river and shrouded all the building
+plots in fog.  I was now something more than depressed.  It was
+absolutely impossible to endure such a state of things any longer, and I
+determined that, come what might, I would not stop.  I considered whether
+I should leave without saying a word—that is to say, whether I should
+escape, but I feared pursuit and some unknown legal proceedings.
+
+When I got home, therefore, I sought the principal, and informed him that
+I felt so unwell that I was afraid I must throw up my engagement at once.
+He naturally observed that this was a serious business for him; that my
+decision was very hasty—what was the matter with me?  I might get better;
+but he concluded, after my reiterated asseverations that I must go, with
+a permission to resign, only on one condition, that I should obtain an
+equally efficient substitute at the same salary.  I was more agitated
+than ever.  With my natural tendency to believe the worst, I had not the
+least expectation of finding anybody who would release me.
+
+The next morning I departed on my errand.  I knew a poor student who had
+been at college with me, and who had nothing to do, and to him I betook
+myself.  I strove—as even now I firmly believe—not to make the situation
+seem any better than it was, and he consented to take it.  I have no
+clear recollection of anything that happened till the following day,
+excepting that I remember with all the vividness of actual and present
+sensuous perception lugging my box down the ladder and sending for a cab.
+I was in a fever lest anything should arrest me, but the cab came, and I
+departed.  When I had got fairly clear of the gates, I literally cried
+tears of joy—the first and the last of my life.  I am constrained now,
+however, to admit that my trouble was but a bubble blown of air, and I
+doubt whether I have done any good by dwelling upon it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+OXFORD STREET
+
+
+UNTIL I had actually left, I hardly knew where I was going, but at last I
+made up my mind I would go to Reuben Shapcott, another fellow-student,
+whom I knew to be living in lodgings in one of the streets just then
+beginning to creep over the unoccupied ground between Camden Town and
+Haverstock Hill, near the Chalk Farm turnpike gate.  To his address I
+betook myself, and found him not at home.  He, like me, had been
+unsuccessful as a minister, and wrote a London letter for two country
+papers, making up about £100 or £120 a year by preaching occasionally in
+small Unitarian chapels in the country.  I waited till his return, and
+told him my story.  He advised me to take a bed in the house where he was
+staying, and to consider what could be done.
+
+At first I thought I would consult Mardon, but I could not bring myself
+to go near him.  How was I to behave in Mary’s presence?  During the last
+few months she had been so continually before me, that it would have been
+absolutely impossible for me to treat her with assumed indifference.  I
+could not have trusted myself to attempt it.  When I had been lying alone
+and awake at night, I had thought of all the endless miles of hill and
+valley that lay outside my window, separating me from the one house in
+which I could be at peace; and at times I scarcely prevented myself from
+getting up and taking the mail train and presenting myself at Mardon’s
+door, braving all consequences.  With the morning light, however, would
+come cooler thoughts and a dull sense of impossibility.
+
+This, I know, was not pure love for her; it was a selfish passion for
+relief.  But then I have never known what is meant by a perfectly pure
+love.  When Christian was in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and,
+being brought to the mouth of hell, was forced to put up his sword, and
+could do no other than cry, O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul, he
+heard a voice going before him and saying, Though I walk through the
+Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear none ill, for Thou art with
+me.  And by and by the day broke.  “Then,” said Christian, “He hath
+turned the Shadow of Death into morning.  Whereupon Christian sang—
+
+    “Oh, world of wonders! (I can say no less)
+    That I should be preserved in that distress
+    That I have met with here! Oh, blessed be
+    That hand that from it hath delivered me!”
+
+This was Christian’s love for God, and for God as his helper.  Was that
+perfectly pure?  However, this is a digression.  I determined to help
+myself in my own way, and thought I would try the publishers.  One
+morning I walked from Camden Town to Paternoster Row.  I went straightway
+into two or three shops and asked whether they wanted anybody.  I was
+ready to do the ordinary work it of a publisher’s assistant, and aspired
+no higher.  I met with several refusals, some of them not over-polite,
+and the degradation—for so I felt it—of wandering through the streets and
+suing for employment cut me keenly.  I remember one man in particular,
+who spoke to me with the mechanical brutality with which probably he
+replied to a score of similar applications every week.  He sat in a
+little glass box at the end of a long dark room lighted with gas.  It was
+a bitterly cold room, with no contrivances for warming it, but in his box
+there was a fire burning for his own special benefit.  He surveyed all
+his clerks unceasingly, and woe betide the unhappy wretch who was caught
+idling.  He and his slaves reminded me of a thrashing-machine which is
+worked by horses walking round in a ring, the driver being perched on a
+high stool in the middle and armed with a long whip.
+
+While I was waiting his pleasure he came out and spoke to one or two of
+his miserable subordinates words of directest and sharpest rebuke,
+without anger or the least loss of self-possession, and yet without the
+least attempt to mitigate their severity.  I meditated much upon him.  If
+ever I had occasion to rebuke anybody, I always did it apologetically,
+unless I happened to be in a flaming passion—and this was my habit, not
+from any respectable motive of consideration for the person rebuked, but
+partly because I am timid, and partly because I shrink from giving pain.
+This man said with perfect ease what I could not have said unless I had
+been wrought up to white heat.  With all my dislike to him, I envied him:
+I envied his complete certainty; for although his language was harsh in
+the extreme, he was always sure of his ground, and the victim upon whom
+his lash descended could never say that he had given absolutely no reason
+for the chastisement, and that it was altogether a mistake.  I envied
+also his ability to make himself disagreeable and care nothing about it;
+his power to walk in his own path, and his resolve to succeed, no matter
+what the cost might be.
+
+As I left him, it occurred to me that I might be more successful perhaps
+with a publisher of whom I had heard, who published and sold books of a
+sceptical turn.  To him I accordingly went, and although I had no
+introductions or recommendatory letters, I was received, if not with a
+cordiality, at least with an interest which surprised me.  He took me
+into a little back shop, and after hearing patiently what I wanted, he
+asked me somewhat abruptly what I thought of the miracles in the Bible.
+This was a curious question if he wished to understand my character; but
+his mind so constantly revolved in one circle, and existed so completely
+by hostility to the prevailing orthodoxy, that belief or disbelief in it
+was the standard by which he judged men.  It was a very absurd standard
+doubtless, but no more absurd than many others, and not so absurd then as
+it would be now, when heresy is becoming more fashionable.
+
+I explained to him as well as I could what my position was; that I did
+not suppose that the miracles actually happened as they are recorded, but
+that, generally speaking, the miracle was a very intense statement of a
+divine truth; in fact, a truth which was felt with a more than common
+intensity seemed to take naturally a miraculous expression.  Hence, so
+far from neglecting the miraculous stories of the Bible as simply outside
+me, I rejoiced in them more, perhaps, than in the plain historical or
+didactic prose.
+
+He seemed content, although hardly to comprehend, and the result was that
+he asked me if I would help him in his business.  In order to do this, it
+would be more economical if I would live in his house, which was too big
+for him.  He promised to give me £40 a year, in addition to board and
+lodging.  I joyously assented, and the bargain was struck.
+
+The next day I came to my new quarters.  I found that he was a bachelor,
+with a niece, apparently about four or five and twenty years old, acting
+as a housekeeper, who assisted him in literary work.  My own room was at
+the top of the house, warm, quiet, and comfortable, although the view was
+nothing but a wide reaching assemblage of chimney-pots.  My hours were
+long—from nine in the morning till seven in the evening; but this I did
+not mind.  I felt that if I was not happy, I was at least protected, and
+that I was with a man who cared for me, and for whom I cared.  The first
+day I went there, he said that I could have a fire in my bedroom whenever
+I chose, so that I could always retreat to it when I wished to be by
+myself.  As for my duties, I was to sell his books, keep his accounts,
+read proofs, run errands, and in short do just what he did himself.
+
+After my first morning’s work we went upstairs to dinner, and I was
+introduced to “my niece Theresa.”  I was rather surprised that I should
+have been admitted to a house in which there lived a young woman with no
+mother nor aunt, but this surprise ceased when I came to know more of
+Theresa and her uncle.  She had yellowish hair which was naturally waved,
+a big arched head, greyish-blue eyes, so far as I could make out, and a
+mouth which, although it had curves in it, was compressed and indicative
+of great force of character.  She was rather short, with square
+shoulders, and she had a singularly vigorous, firm walk.  She had a way,
+when she was not eating or drinking, of sitting back in her chair at
+table and looking straight at the person with whom she was talking.
+
+Her uncle, whom, by the way, I had forgotten to name—his name was
+Wollaston—happened to know some popular preacher whom I knew, and I said
+that I wondered so many people went to hear him, for I believed him to be
+a hypocrite, and hypocrisy was one of the easiest of crimes to discover.
+Theresa, who had hitherto been silent, and was reclining in her usual
+attitude, instantly broke out with an emphasis and directness which quite
+startled me.
+
+“The easiest to discover, do you think, Mr. Rutherford?  I think it is
+the most difficult, at least for ordinary persons; and when they do
+discover it, I believe they like it, especially if it is successful.
+They like the sanction it gives to their own hypocrisy.  They like a man
+to come to them who will say to them, ‘We are all hypocrites together,’
+and who will put his finger to his nose and comfort them.  Don’t you
+think so yourself?”
+
+In conversation I was always a bad hand at assuming a position contrary
+to the one assumed by the person to whom I might be talking—nor could I
+persistently maintain my own position if it happened to be opposed.  I
+always rather tried to see as my opponent saw, and to discover how much
+there was in him with which I could sympathise.  I therefore assented
+weakly to Theresa, and she seemed disappointed.  Dinner was just over;
+she got up and rang the bell and went out of the room.
+
+I found my work very hard, and some of it even loathsome.  Particularly
+loathsome was that part of it which brought me into contact with the
+trade.  I had to sell books to the booksellers’ assistants, and I had to
+collect books myself.  These duties are usually undertaken in large
+establishments by men specially trained, who receive a low rate of wages
+and who are rather a rough set.  It was totally different work to
+anything I had ever had to do before, and I suffered as a man with soft
+hands would suffer who was suddenly called to be a blacksmith or a
+dock-labourer.
+
+Specially, too, did I miss the country.  London lay round me like a
+mausoleum.  I got into the habit of rising very early in the morning and
+walking out to Kensington Gardens and back before breakfast, varying my
+route occasionally so as even to reach Battersea Bridge, which was always
+a favourite spot with me.  Kensington Gardens and Battersea Bridge were
+poor substitutes for the downs, and for the level stretch by the river
+towards the sea where I first saw Mardon, but we make too much of
+circumstances, and the very pressure of London produced a sensibility to
+whatever loveliness could be apprehended there, which was absent when
+loveliness was always around me.  The stars seen in Oxford Street late
+one night; a sunset one summer evening from Lambeth pier; and, above
+everything, Piccadilly very early one summer morning, abide with me
+still, when much that was more romantic has been forgotten.  On the
+whole, I was not unhappy.  The constant outward occupation prevented any
+eating of the heart or undue brooding over problems which were insoluble,
+at least for my intellect, and on that very account fascinated me the
+more.
+
+I do not think that Wollaston cared much for me personally.  He was a
+curious compound, materialistic yet impulsive, and for ever drawn to some
+new thing; without any love for anybody particularly, as far as I could
+see, and yet with much more general kindness and philanthropy than many a
+man possessing much stronger sympathies and antipathies.  There was no
+holy of holies in him, into which one or two of the elect could
+occasionally be admitted and feel God to be there.  He was no temple, but
+rather a comfortable, hospitable house open to all friends, well
+furnished with books and pictures, and free to every guest from garret to
+cellar.  He had “liberal” notions about the relationship between the
+sexes.  Not that he was a libertine, but he disbelieved in marriage,
+excepting for so long as husband and wife are a necessity to one another.
+If one should find the other uninteresting, or somebody else more
+interesting, he thought there ought to be a separation.
+
+All this I soon learned from him, for he was communicative without any
+reserve.  His treatment of his niece was peculiar.  He would talk on all
+kinds of subjects before her, for he had a theory that she ought to
+receive precisely the same social training as men, and should know just
+what men knew.  He was never coarse, but on the other hand he would say
+things to her in my presence which brought a flame into my face.  What
+the evil consequences of this might be, I could not at once foresee, but
+one good result obviously was, that in his house there was nothing of
+that execrable practice of talking down to women; there was no change of
+level when women were present.
+
+One day he began to speak about a novel which everybody was reading then,
+and I happened to say that I wished people who wrote novels would not
+write as if love were the very centre and sum of human existence.  A
+man’s life was made up of so much besides love, and yet novelists were
+never weary of repeating the same story, telling it over and over again
+in a hundred different forms.
+
+“I do not agree with you,” said Theresa.  “I disagree with you utterly.
+I dislike foolish, inane sentiment—it makes me sick; but I do believe, in
+the first place, that no man was ever good for anything who has not been
+devoured, I was going to say, by a great devotion to a woman.  The lives
+of your great men are as much the history of women whom they adored as of
+themselves.  Dante, Byron, Shelley, it is the same with all of them, and
+there is no mistake about it; it is the great fact of life.  What would
+Shakespeare be without it? and Shakespeare is life.  A man, worthy to be
+named a man, will find the fact of love perpetually confronting him till
+he reaches old age, and if he be not ruined by worldliness or
+dissipation, will be troubled by it when he is fifty as much as when he
+was twenty-five.  It is the subject of all subjects.  People abuse love,
+and think it the cause of half the mischief in the world.  It is the one
+thing that keeps the world straight, and if it were not for that
+overpowering instinct, human nature would fall asunder; would be the prey
+of inconceivable selfishness and vices, and finally, there would be
+universal suicide.  I did not intend to be eloquent: I hate being
+eloquent.  But you did not mean what you said; you spoke from the head or
+teeth merely.”
+
+Theresa’s little speech was delivered not with any heat of the blood.
+There was no excitement in her grey eyes, nor did her cheek burn.  Her
+brain seemed to rule everything.  This was an idea she had, and she
+kindled over it because it was an idea.  It was impossible, of course,
+that she should say what she did without some movement of the organ in
+her breast, but how much share this organ had in her utterances I never
+could make out.  How much was due to the interest which she as a
+looker-on felt in men and women, and how much was due to herself as a
+woman, was always a mystery to me.
+
+She was fond of music, and occasionally I asked her to play to me.  She
+had a great contempt for bungling, and not being a professional player,
+she never would try a piece in my presence of which she was not perfectly
+master.  She particularly liked to play Mozart, and on my asking her once
+to play a piece of Beethoven, she turned round upon me and said: “You
+like Beethoven best.  I knew you would.  He encourages a luxurious
+revelling in the incomprehensible and indefinably sublime.  He is not
+good for you.”
+
+My work was so hard, and the hours were so long, that I had little or no
+time for reading, nor for thinking either, except so far as Wollaston and
+Theresa made me think.  Wollaston himself took rather to science,
+although he was not scientific, and made a good deal of what he called
+psychology.  He was not very profound, but he had picked up a few
+phrases, or if this word is too harsh, a few ideas about metaphysical
+matters from authors who contemned metaphysics, and with these he was
+perfectly satisfied.  A stranger listening to him would at first consider
+him well read, but would soon be undeceived, and would find that these
+ideas were acquired long ago; that he had never gone behind or below
+them, and that they had never fructified in him, but were like hard
+stones, which he rattled in his pocket.  He was totally unlike Mardon.
+Mardon, although he would have agreed with many of Wollaston’s results,
+differed entirely from him in the processes by which they had been
+brought about; and a mental comparison of the two often told me what I
+had been told over and over again, that what we believe is not of so much
+importance as the path by which we travel to it.
+
+Theresa too, like her uncle, eschewed metaphysics, but she was a woman,
+and a woman’s impulses supplied in her the lack of those deeper
+questionings, and at times prompted them.  She was far more original than
+he was, and was impatient of the narrowness of the circle in which he
+moved.  Her love of music, for example, was a thing incomprehensible to
+him, and I do not remember that he ever sat for a quarter of an hour
+really listening to it.  He would read the newspaper or do anything while
+she was playing.  She never resented his inattention, except when he made
+a noise, and then, without any rebuke, she would break off and go away.
+This mode of treatment was the outcome of one of her theories.  She
+disbelieved altogether in punishment, except when it was likely to do
+good, either to the person punished or to others.  “A good deal of
+punishment,” she used to say, “is mere useless pain.”
+
+Both Theresa and her uncle were kind and human, and I endeavoured to my
+utmost to repay them by working my hardest.  My few hours of leisure were
+sweet, and when I spent them with Wollaston and Theresa, were
+interesting.  I often asked myself why I found this mode of existence
+more tolerable than any other I had hitherto enjoyed.  I had, it is true,
+an hour or two’s unspeakable peace in the early morning, but, as I have
+said, at nine my toil commenced, and, with a very brief interval for
+meals, lasted till seven.  After seven I was too tired to do anything by
+myself, and could only keep awake if I happened to be in company.
+
+One reason certainly why I was content, was Theresa herself.  She was a
+constant study to me, and I could not for a long time obtain any
+consistent idea of her.  She was not a this or a that or the other.  She
+could not be summarily dismissed into any ordinary classification.  At
+first I was sure she was hard, but I found by the merest accident that
+nearly all her earnings were given with utmost secrecy to support a
+couple of poor relatives.  Then I thought her self-conscious, but this,
+when I came to think upon it, seemed a mere word.  She was one of those
+women, and very rare they are, who deal in ideas, and reflectiveness must
+be self-conscious.  At times she appeared passionless, so completely did
+her intellect dominate, and so superior was she to all the little arts
+and weaknesses of women; but this was a criticism she contradicted
+continually.
+
+There was very little society at the Wollastons’, but occasionally a few
+friends called.  One evening there was a little party, and the
+conversation flagged.  Theresa said that it was a great mistake to bring
+people together with nothing special to do but talk.  Nothing is more
+tedious than to be in a company assembled for no particular reason, and
+every host, if he asks more than two persons at the outside, ought to
+provide some entertainment.  Talking is worth nothing unless it is
+perfectly spontaneous, and it cannot be spontaneous if there are sudden
+and blank silences, and nobody can think of a fresh departure.  The
+master of the house is bound to do something.  He ought to hire a Punch
+and Judy show, or get up a dance.
+
+This spice of bitterness and flavour of rudeness was altogether
+characteristic of Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her that
+_she_ was the hostess.  “Of course,” she replied, “that is why I said it:
+what shall I do?”  One of her gifts was memory, and her friends cried out
+at once that she should recite something.  She hesitated a little, and
+then throwing herself back in her chair, began _The Lass of Lochroyan_.
+At first she was rather diffident, but she gathered strength as she went
+on.  There is a passage in the middle of the poem in which Lord Gregory’s
+cruel mother pretends she is Lord Gregory, and refuses to recognise his
+former love, Annie of Lochroyan, as she stands outside his tower.  The
+mother calls to Annie from the inside—
+
+    “Gin thou be Annie of Lochroyan
+       (As I trow thou binna she),
+    Now tell me some of the love tokèns
+       That passed between thee and me.”
+
+    “Oh, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
+       As we sat at the wine,
+    We changed the rings frae our fingers,
+       And I can show thee thine?
+
+    “Oh, yours was gude, and gude enough,
+       But aye the best was mine;
+    For yours was o’ the gude red gowd,
+       _But mine o’ the diamond fine_.”
+
+The last verse is as noble as anything in any ballad in the English
+language, and I thought that when Theresa was half way through it her
+voice shook a good deal.  There was a glass of flowers standing near her,
+and just as she came to an end her arm moved and the glass was in a
+moment on the floor, shivered into twenty pieces.  I happened to be
+watching her, and felt perfectly sure that the movement of her arm was
+not accidental, and that her intention was to conceal, by the apparent
+mishap, an emotion which was increasing and becoming inconvenient.  At
+any rate, if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, for the
+recitation was abruptly terminated, there was general commiseration over
+the shattered vase, and when the pieces were picked up and order was
+restored, it was nearly time to separate.
+
+Two of my chief failings were forgetfulness and a want of thoroughness in
+investigation.  What misery have I not suffered from insufficient
+presentation of a case to myself, and from prompt conviction of
+insufficiency and inaccuracy by the person to whom I in turn presented
+it!  What misery have I not suffered from the discovery that explicit
+directions to me had been overlooked or only half understood!
+
+One day in particular, I had to take round a book to be “subscribed”
+which Wollaston had just published—that is to say, I had to take a copy
+to each of the leading booksellers to see how many they would purchase.
+Some books are sold “thirteen as twelve,” the thirteenth book being given
+to the purchaser of twelve, and some are sold “twenty-five as
+twenty-four.”  This book was to be sold “twenty-five as twenty-four,”
+according to Wollaston’s orders.  I subscribed it thirteen as twelve.
+Wollaston was annoyed, as I could see, for I had to go over all my work
+again, but in accordance with his fixed principles, he was not out of
+temper.
+
+It so happened that that same day he gave me some business correspondence
+which I was to look through; and having looked through it, I was to
+answer the last letter in the sense which he indicated.  I read the
+correspondence and wrote the letter for his signature.  As soon as he saw
+it, he pointed out to me that I had only half mastered the facts, and
+that my letter was all wrong.  This greatly disturbed me, not only
+because I had vexed him and disappointed him, but because it was renewed
+evidence of my weakness.  I thought that if I was incapable of getting to
+the bottom of such a very shallow complication as this, of what value
+were any of my thinkings on more difficult subjects, and I fell a prey to
+self-contempt and scepticism.  Contempt from those about us is hard to
+bear, but God help the poor wretch who contemns himself.
+
+How well I recollect the early walk on the following morning in
+Kensington Gardens, the feeling of my own utter worthlessness, and the
+longing for death as the cancellation of the blunder of my existence!  I
+went home, and after breakfast some proofs came from the printer of a
+pamphlet which Wollaston had in hand.  Without unfastening them, he gave
+them to me, and said that as he had no time to read them himself, I must
+go upstairs to Theresa’s study and read them off with her.  Accordingly I
+went and began to read.  She took the manuscript and I took the proof.
+She read about a page, and then she suddenly stopped.  “Oh, Mr.
+Rutherford,” she said, it, “what have you done?  I heard my uncle
+distinctly tell you to mark on the manuscript when it went to the
+printer, that it was to be printed in demy octavo, and you have marked it
+twelvemo.”
+
+I had had little sleep that night, I was exhausted with my early walk,
+and suddenly the room seemed to fade from me and I fainted.  When I came
+to myself, I found that Theresa had not sought for any help; she had done
+all that ought to be done.  She had unfastened my collar and had sponged
+my face with cold water.  The first thing I saw as I gradually recovered
+myself, was her eyes looking steadily at me as she stood over me, and I
+felt her hand upon my head.  When she was sure I was coming to myself,
+she held off and sat down in her chair.
+
+I was a little hysterical, and after the fit was over I broke loose.
+With a storm of tears, I laid open all my heart.  I told her how nothing
+I had ever attempted had succeeded; that I had never even been able to
+attain that degree of satisfaction with myself and my own conclusions,
+without which a man cannot live; and that now I found I was useless, even
+to the best friends I had ever known, and that the meanest clerk in the
+city would serve them better than I did.  I was beside myself, and I
+threw myself on my knees, burying my face in Theresa’s lap and sobbing
+convulsively.  She did not repel me, but she gently passed her fingers
+through my hair.  Oh, the transport of that touch!  It was as if water
+had been poured on a burnt hand, or some miraculous Messiah had soothed
+the delirium of a fever-stricken sufferer, and replaced his visions of
+torment with dreams of Paradise.
+
+She gently lifted me up, and as I rose I saw her eyes too were wet.  “My
+poor friend,” she said, “I cannot talk to you now.  You are not strong
+enough, and for that matter, nor am I, but let me say this to you, that
+you are altogether mistaken about yourself.  The meanest clerk in the
+city could not take your place here.”  There was just a slight emphasis I
+thought upon the word “here.”  “Now” she said, “you had better go.  I
+will see about the pamphlet.”
+
+I went out mechanically, and I anticipate my story so far as to say that,
+two days after, another proof came in the proper form.  I went to the
+printer to offer to pay for setting it up afresh, and was told that Miss
+Wollaston had been there and had paid herself for the rectification of
+the mistake, giving special injunctions that no notice of it was to be
+given to her uncle.  I should like to add one more beatitude to those of
+the gospels and to say, Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings.
+Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.
+
+When I went back to my work I worshipped Theresa, and was entirely
+overcome with unhesitating, absorbing love for her.  I saw no thing more
+of her that day nor the next day.  Her uncle told me that she had gone
+into the country, and that probably she would not return for some time,
+as she had purposed paying a lengthened visit to a friend at a distance.
+I had a mind to write to her; but I felt as I have often felt before in
+great crises, a restraint which was gentle and incomprehensible, but
+nevertheless unmistakable.  I suppose it is not what would be called
+conscience, as conscience is supposed to decide solely between right and
+wrong, but it was none the less peremptory, although its voice was so
+soft and low that it might easily have been overlooked.  Over and over
+again, when I have purposed doing a thing, have I been impeded or
+arrested by this same silent monitor, and never have I known its warnings
+to be the mere false alarms of fancy.
+
+After a time, the thought of Mary recurred to me.  I was distressed to
+find that, in the very height of my love for Theresa, my love for Mary
+continued unabated.  Had it been otherwise, had my affection for Mary
+grown dim, I should not have been so much perplexed, but it did not.  It
+may be ignominious to confess it, but so it was; I simply record the
+fact.
+
+I had not seen Mardon since that last memorable evening at his house, but
+one day as I was sitting in the shop, who should walk it in but Mary
+herself.  The meeting, although strange, was easily explained.  Her
+father was ill, and could do nothing but read.  Wollaston published
+free-thinking books, and Mardon had noticed in an advertisement the name
+of a book which he particularly wished to see.  Accordingly he sent Mary
+for it.  She pressed me very much to call on him.  He had talked about me
+a good deal, and had written to me at the last address he knew, but the
+letter had been returned through the dead-letter office.
+
+It was a week before I could go, and when did go, I found him much worse
+than I had imagined him to be.  There was no virulent disease of any
+particular organ, but he was slowly wasting away from atrophy, and he
+knew, or thought he knew, he should not recover.  But he was perfectly
+self-possessed.
+
+“With regard to immortality,” he said, “I never know what men mean by it.
+_What_ self is it which is to be immortal?  Is it really desired by
+anybody that he should continue to exist for ever with his present
+limitations and failings?  Yet if these are not continued, the man does
+not continue, but something else, a totally different person.  I believe
+in the survival of life and thought.  People think is not enough.  They
+say they want the survival of their personality.  It is very difficult to
+express any conjecture upon the matter, especially now when I am weak,
+and I have no system—nothing but surmises.  One thing I am sure of—that a
+man ought to rid himself as much as possible of the miserable egotism
+which is so anxious about self, and should be more and more anxious about
+the Universal.”
+
+Mardon grew slowly worse.  The winter was coming on, and as the
+temperature fell and the days grew darker, he declined.  With all his
+heroism and hardness he had a weakness or two, and one was, that he did
+not want to die in London or be buried there.  So we got him down to
+Sandgate near Hythe, and procured lodging for him close to the sea, so
+that he could lie in bed and watch the sun and moon rise over the water.
+Mary, of course, remained with him, and I returned to London.
+
+Towards the end of November I got a letter, to tell me that if I wished
+to see him alive again, I must go down at once.  I went that day, and I
+found that the doctor had been and had said that before the morning the
+end must come.  Mardon was perfectly conscious, in no pain, and quite
+calm.  He was just able to speak.  When I went into his bedroom, he
+smiled, and without any preface or introduction he said: “Learn not to be
+over-anxious about meeting troubles and solving difficulties which time
+will meet and solve for you.”  Excepting to ask for water, I don’t think
+he spoke again.
+
+All that night Mary and I watched in that topmost garret looking out over
+the ocean.  It was a night entirely unclouded, and the moon was at the
+full.  Towards daybreak her father moaned a little, then became quite
+quiet, and just as the dawn was changing to sunrise, he passed away.
+What a sunrise it was!  For about half-an-hour before the sun actually
+appeared, the perfectly smooth water was one mass of gently heaving
+opaline lustre.  Not a sound was to be heard, and over in the south-east
+hung the planet Venus.  Death was in the chamber, but the surpassing
+splendour of the pageant outside arrested us, and we sat awed and silent.
+Not till the first burning-point of the great orb itself emerged above
+the horizon, not till the day awoke with its brightness and brought with
+it the sounds of the day and its cares, did we give way to our grief.
+
+It was impossible for me to stay.  It was not that I was obliged to get
+back to my work in London, but I felt that Mary would far rather be
+alone, and that it would not be proper for me to remain.  The woman of
+the house in which the lodgings were was very kind, and promised to do
+all that was necessary.  It was arranged that I should come down again to
+the funeral.
+
+So I went back to London.  Before I had got twenty miles on my journey
+the glory of a few hours had turned into autumn storm.  The rain came
+down in torrents, and the wind rushed across the country in great blasts,
+stripping the trees, and driving over the sky with hurricane speed great
+masses of continuous cloud, which mingled earth and heaven.  I thought of
+all the ships which were on the sea in the night, sailing under the
+serene stars which I had seen rise and set; I thought of Mardon lying
+dead, and I thought of Mary.  The simultaneous passage through great
+emotions welds souls, and begets the strongest of all forms of love.
+Those who have sobbed together over a dead friend, who have held one
+another’s hands in that dread hour, feel a bond of sympathy, pure and
+sacred, which nothing can dissolve.
+
+I went to the funeral as appointed.  There was some little difficulty
+about it, for Mary, who knew her father so well, was unconquerably
+reluctant that an inconsistency should crown the career of one who, all
+through life, had been so completely self-accordant.  She could not bear
+that he should be buried with a ceremony which he despised, and she was
+altogether free from that weakness which induces a compliance with the
+rites of the Church from persons who avow themselves sceptics.
+
+At last a burying-ground was found, belonging to a little half-forsaken
+Unitarian chapel; and there Mardon was laid.  A few friends came from
+London, one of whom had been a Unitarian minister, and he “conducted the
+service,” such as it was.  It was of the simplest kind.  The body was
+taken to the side of the grave, and before it was lowered a few words
+were said, calling to mind all the virtues of him whom we had lost.
+These the speaker presented to us with much power and sympathy.  He did
+not merely catalogue a disconnected string of excellences, but he seemed
+to plant himself in the central point of Mardon’s nature, and to see from
+what it radiated.
+
+He then passed on to say that about immortality, as usually understood,
+he knew nothing; but that Mardon would live as every force in nature
+lives—for ever; transmuted into a thousand different forms; the original
+form utterly forgotten, but never perishing.  The cloud breaks up and
+comes down upon the earth in showers which cease, but the clouds and the
+showers are really undying.  This may be true,—but, after all, I can only
+accept the fact of death in silence, as we accept the loss of youth and
+all other calamities.  We are able to see that the arrangements which we
+should make, if we had the control of the universe, would be more absurd
+than those which prevail now.  We are able to see that an eternity of
+life in one particular form, with one particular set of relationships,
+would be misery to many and mischievous to everybody, however sweet those
+relationships may be to some of us.  At times we are reconciled to death
+as the great regenerator, and we pine for escape from the surroundings of
+which we have grown weary; but we can say no more, and the hour of
+illumination has not yet come.  Whether it ever will come to a more nobly
+developed race we cannot tell.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Thus far goes the manuscript which I have in my possession.  I know that
+there is more of it, but all my search for it has been in vain.  Possibly
+some day I may be able to recover it.  My friend discontinued his notes
+for some years, and consequently the concluding portion of them was
+entirely separate from the earlier portion, and this is the reason, I
+suppose, why it is missing.
+
+Miss Mardon soon followed her father.  She caught cold at his funeral;
+the seeds of consumption developed themselves with remarkable rapidity,
+and in less than a month she had gone.  Her father’s peculiar habits had
+greatly isolated him, and Miss Mardon had scarcely any friends.
+Rutherford went to see her continually, and during the last few nights
+sat up with her, incurring not a little scandal and gossip, to which he
+was entirely insensible.
+
+For a time he was utterly broken-hearted; and not only broken-hearted,
+but broken-spirited, and incapable of attacking the least difficulty.
+All the springs of his nature were softened, so that if anything was cast
+upon him, there it remained without hope, and without any effort being
+made to remove it.  He only began to recover when he was forced to give
+up work altogether and take a long holiday.  To do this he was obliged to
+leave Mr. Wollaston, and the means of obtaining his much-needed rest were
+afforded him, partly by what he had saved, and partly by the kindness of
+one or two whom he had known.
+
+I thought that Miss Mardon’s death would permanently increase my friend’s
+intellectual despondency, but it did not.  On the contrary, he gradually
+grew out of it.  A crisis seemed to take a turn just then, and he became
+less involved in his old speculations, and more devoted to other
+pursuits.  I fancy that something happened; there was some word revealed
+to him, or there was some recoil, some healthy horror of eclipse in this
+self-created gloom which drove him out of it.
+
+He accidentally renewed his acquaintance with the butterfly-catcher, who
+was obliged to leave the country and come up to London.  He, however, did
+not give up his old hobby, and the two friends used every Sunday in
+summer time to sally forth some distance from town and spend the whole
+live-long day upon the downs and in the green lanes of Surrey.  Both of
+them had to work hard during the week.  Rutherford, who had learned
+shorthand when he was young, got employment upon a newspaper, and
+ultimately a seat in the gallery of the House of Commons.  He never took
+to collecting insects like his companion, nor indeed to any scientific
+pursuits, but he certainly changed.
+
+I find it very difficult to describe exactly what the change was, because
+it was into nothing positive; into no sect, party, nor special mode.  He
+did not, for example, go off into absolute denial.  I remember his
+telling me, that to suppress speculation would be a violence done to our
+nature as unnatural as if we were to prohibit ourselves from looking up
+to the blue depths between the stars at night; as if we were to determine
+that nature required correcting in this respect, and that we ought to be
+so constructed as not to be able to see anything but the earth and what
+lies on it.  Still, these things in a measure ceased to worry him, and
+the long conflict died away gradually into a peace not formally
+concluded, and with no specific stipulations, but nevertheless definite.
+He was content to rest and wait.  Better health and time, which does so
+much for us, brought this about.  The passage of years gradually relaxed
+his anxiety about death by loosening his anxiety for life without
+loosening his love of life.
+
+But I would rather not go into any further details, because I still
+cherish the hope that some day or the other I may recover the contents of
+the diary.  I am afraid that up to this point he has misrepresented
+himself, and that those who read his story will think him nothing but a
+mere egoist, selfish and self-absorbed.  Morbid he may have been, but
+selfish he was not.  A more perfect friend I never knew, nor one more
+capable of complete abandonment to a person for whom he had any real
+regard, and I can only hope that it may be my good fortune to find the
+materials which will enable me to represent him autobiographically in a
+somewhat different light to that in which he appears now.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK
+RUTHERFORD***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 3269-0.txt or 3269-0.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/6/3269
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.