It occurred to me sometimes that I should once have called this a humble service to be the visible boundary of a man's life. To what had all those old attainments come? Command of science? Developed skill? Public power? Extended fame? All those forms of personality which go with intellectual position and the use of it? Verily, I was brought to lowly tasks; we left them to women in the world below. But really, I think this troubled me less than it might have done; perhaps less than it should have done. I accepted the strange reversal of my fate as one accepts any turn of affairs which, he is convinced, is better than he might have expected. It had begun to be evident to me that it was better than I had deserved. If I am exceptional in being forced to admit that this consciousness was a novelty in my experience, the admission is none the less necessary for that. I had been in the habit of considering myself rather a good fellow, as a man with no vices in particular is apt to. I had possessed no standards of life below which my own fell to an embarrassing point. The situation to which I was now brought, was not unlike that of one who finds himself in a land where there are new and delicate instruments for indicating the state of the weather. I was aware, and knew that my neighbours were, of fluctuations in the moral atmosphere which had never before come under my attention. The whole subtle and tremendous force of public sentiment now bore upon me to make me uneasy before achievements with which I had hitherto been complacent. It had inconceivable effects to live in a community where spiritual character formed the sole scale of social position.
I, who had been always socially distinguished, found myself now exposed to incessant mortifications, such as spring from the fact that one is of no consequence.
I should say, however, that I felt this much less for myself than for my child; indeed, that it was because of Boy that I first felt the fact at all, or brooded over it after I had begun to feel it.
The little fellow developed rapidly, much faster than children of his age do in the human life; he ceased to be a baby, and was a little boy while I was yet wondering what I should do with him when he had outgrown his infancy. His intellect, his character, his physique, lifted themselves with a kind of luxuriance of growth, such as plants show in tropical countries; he blossomed as a thing does which has every advantage and no hindrance; nature moved magnificently to her ends in him; it was a delight to watch such vigorous processes; he was a rich, unthwarted little creature. With all a father's heart and a physician's sensibility, I was proud of him.
I was proud of him, alas! until I began to perceive that, as matters were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it. But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what would become of Boy?
As the child waxed in knowledge and in strength questions like these dropped from his lips so frequently that they distressed me:—
"Papa, what is God?"
"Papa, who is worship?"
"Tell me how boys pray."
"Is it a kind of game?"