Ere I could finish, my pardon came with a silvery laugh, and the world went very well again.
Less than an hour after that, we were without the pale of society and, strange though it may seem, we were perfectly happy. My Mamie Rose was busy with her school-work, the mother was taking a well-earned rest—perhaps trying to take a little nap in the rocker, and the little fellow and I were racing about the place to the tune of "The Rocky Road to Dublin," sung—let me call it that—by me in tones that shook the rafters.
Within the last twelve months, I have been honored on several occasions with invitations to functions of the upper set. They were extended in a different spirit than the first one, still, I could not see my way clear to accept them.
I want to say most emphatically that I am not of anarchistic or nihilistic tendencies. We all have our work cut out, and my work is not in the direction of stirring up emotional outbursts of charity in the drawing rooms of the upper circles.
THE JOURNEY HOME.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE JOURNEY HOME.
Time passed on, bringing with it many of the things I was striving for. To become a learned man, a scientist, was never my desire, and, most likely, would have been an impossibility had I desired it. What I wanted was to be able to understand, to acquire a fair amount of mental balance, and then, to be able to put the acquired knowledge to the best use.
With the changing of my life, a changing of aims had also come, and, as in the old life, I was striving for success in the new life. The best way to make an ambition possible is to make the ambition reasonable.
I was still groping and groping, but thank God, I was groping forward. From whatever darkness still enshrouded me I kept steadily emerging closer to the light. I felt this and it made me feel that my probation should be ended.