“Mr. Cardew, as I said, I have been to hear you preach, and I thank you with all my heart for your sermon, but I want to ask you something about it. What you said about the Mediator was true enough, but somehow, sir, I feel as if I ought to have liked the first part most, but I couldn’t, and perhaps the reason is that it was poetry. Oh, Mr. Cardew, if you could but tell me how to like poetry!”
“I am afraid neither I nor anybody else can teach you that; but why are you anxious to like it? Why are you dissatisfied with yourself?”
“I do not think I am stupid. When I am in the shop I know that I am more of a match for most persons, and yet, Mr. Cardew, there are some people who seem to me to have something I have not got, and they value it more than anything besides, and they have nothing to say really, really, I mean, to those who have not got it, although they are kind to them.”
“It is not very easy to understand what you mean.”
“Well now to-night, sir, when you talked about God moving in us, and the force which binds the planets together, and all that, I am sure you felt it, and I am sure it is true, and yet I was out of doors, so to speak.”
“Perhaps I may be peculiar, and it is you who are sane and sound.”
“Ah, Mr. Cardew, if you were alone in it, and everybody were like me, that might be true, but it is not so; it is I who am alone.”
“Who cares for it whom you know? You are under a delusion.”
“Oh, no, I am not. Why there—there.” Tom stopped.
“There was what?”