This did not interest me at all. I hated to see Nellie looking so sweetly solemn over her "New Religion." In the not unnatural reaction of a minister's son, rigidly reared, I had had small use for religion of any sort. As a scholar I had studied them all, and felt as little reverence for the ancient ones as for the shifty mushroom crop of new sects and schools of thought with which the country teemed in my time.
"Now, look here, John," said she at length, "I've been watching you pretty closely and I think you're equal to a considerable mental effort—In one way, it may be easier for you, just because you've not seen a bit of it—anyhow, you've got to face it—
"Our world has changed in these thirty years, more than the change between what it used to be and what people used to imagine about Heaven. Here is the first thing you've got to do—mentally. You must understand, clearly, in your human consciousness, that the objection and distaste you feel is only in your personal consciousness. Everything is better; there is far more comfort, pleasure, peace of mind; a richer, swifter growth, a higher happier life in every way; and yet, you won't like it because your—" she seemed to hesitate for a word, now and then; as one trying to translate, "reactions are all tuned to earlier conditions. If you can understand this and see over your own personal—attitudes it will not be long before a real convincing sense of joy, of life, will follow the intellectual perception that things are better."
"Hold on," I said, "Let me chew on that a little."
"As if," I presently suggested, "as if I'd left a home that was poor and dirty and crowded, with a pair of quarrelsome inefficient parents—drunken and abusive, maybe, and a lot of horrid, wrangling, selfish, little brothers and sisters—and woke up one fine morning in a great clean beautiful house—richly furnished—full of a lot of angels—who were total strangers?"
"Exactly!" she cried. "Hurrah for you, Johnnie, you couldn't have defined it better."
"I don't like it," said I. "I'd rather have my old home and my own family than all the princely palaces and amiable angels you could dream of in a hundred years."
"Mother had an old story-book by a New England author," Nellie quietly remarked, "where somebody said, 'You can't always have your "druthers"'—she used to quote it to me when I was little and complained that things were not as I wanted them. John, dear, please remember that the new people in the new world find it 'like home' and love it far better than we used to. It'll be queer to you, but it's a pleasant commonplace to them. We have found out at last that it is natural to be happy."
She was silent and I was silent; till I asked her "What's the name of your new religion?"
"It hasn't any," she answered.