It was too much, and she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears, rocking to and fro. Here Mrs. Grimes broke in with:
“Mrs. Hobbs, will you never—! Why, ’Pasia has more sense than all of us. She ain’t no fool. She ain’t—Why, didn’t I come three weeks lackin’ two days afore she was born, and didn’t I wash and dress her myself?” The gentle Grimes always availed herself of the opportunity to tell of my birth, to cut off any quibbler who might state I was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. “Mrs. Hobbs, you are a fool, and if ’Pasia ever does a bad thing it’ll be ’cause you drives her to it. I don’t know where she’s goin’, and dam if I care! I’ll trust her anywhere! Go on, ’Pasia, and stay a year. You’ll find us here when you comes back.”
The Grimes cyclone had cleared the atmosphere, the rain had ceased, although the landscape was a trifle disheveled. I kissed the dear mother, grabbed my lunch-bag, and was gone.
[CHAPTER X.
SECOND SUNDAY—TO THE WOODS AWAY.]
I hurried through my work, dusted off the desk, locked the typewriter, and at two o’clock mounted my bicycle, went straight out Seneca street, over the iron bridge, on out the plank road, past Wendlings, through Springbrook, and stopped then for the first time, and standing on a rising slope of ground, I looked around in every direction. The dandelions seemed to cover the earth as with a carpet, and great masses of white hawthorn-trees in bridal array decked the landscape. The trees were bursting into leaf, and through the silence there came the drowsy hum of insects, and away off in the distance I could just detect the tinkle of a cowbell. To the left, two miles away, I saw a dense wood which seemed to transform the hill on which it stood into a great green mound.
“Yes, that surely is the place,” I said. I followed the plank road a mile further, then turned into a road which seemed like two paths side by side, as a line of green sward filled the centre of the roadway. I came to the wood, let down the bars, and back in the clearing was the log house, and out under the spreading branches of a great oak sat The Man. He smiled the same sweet smile and motioned me to a seat beside him, and together we sat in silence. The calm and rest seemed complete.
“Let us sit here under the trees,” said The Man, “and I will explain several things which you must understand before I make known the higher truths which you are to give to mankind.
“Perhaps you have wondered why I do not go out into the world and teach face to face; and my reason, friend, for not doing this, is because I must needs disguise myself, if I go among the people. They would not comprehend me, but would shout, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ as they did in the days of old. If I should go into the city and teach as the Master did, can you imagine the headlines in the Sunday papers? I would have followers of course, but even they would misunderstand me and quarrel among themselves about who should be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of them would fall down and worship me, and when I passed out of their sight there would be an ever-increasing number who would deify me, confounding my personality with that of a God, while the power I possess is possible for all men. They would say I was not a man but a ‘supreme being.’ On my metaphor they would construct a system of theology, and would use my words as a fence to hedge in and limit truth, instead of accepting my principles as a broad base on which they might build a tower to touch the skies.