Harry Leon Wilson

“ That was what I knew of my poor, cheap, fiddle-playing mountebank of a father. Just a moment more—this is what you must remember of me, in whatever I have to say hereafter, that after that night I never ceased to suffer all the hell my father could be suffering, and I suffered it until my mind went out in that sickness. But, listen now: whatever has happened—I'm not yet sure what it is—I no longer suffer. Two things only I know: that our creed still has my godless, scoffing, unbaptised father in hell, and that my love for him—my absolute oneness with him—has not lessened. ”

“ Weeping after them went Nancy—as far as the first fence, between two boards of which she put her head and sobbed with a heavenly bitterness; for to the little boy, pushing sternly on, her tears afforded that certain thrill of gratified brutality under conscious rectitude, the capacity for which is among those matters by which Heaven has set the male of our species apart from the female. The sensation would have been flawless but for Allan's lack of dignity: from the top board of the fence he held aloft in either hand a golden orange, and he chanted in endless inanity ”

“ There seems to be in my ego the power to prevail. Take Browett— most men are afraid of him—not physical fear, but their inner selves, their egos, go down before him. Yet from the moment I first saw that man I dominated him. It's all in having an ego that means mastery, Aunt Bell. Browett has it himself, but I have a greater one. Every time Browett's eyes meet mine he knows in his soul that I'm his master—his ego prostrates itself before mine— and yet that man"—he concluded in a tone of distinguishable awe—"is worth all the way from two to three hundred millions!" ”

“ I could no longer even want to be good—and all that for the lack of this dear foolish bit of realness in you."
"No one can know better than I that my nature is a faulty one, Nance——"
"Say unfortunate, Allan—not faulty. I shall never again believe a fault of you. How stupid a woman can be, how superficial in her judgments—and what stupids they are who say she is intuitive! Do you know, I believed in Bernal infinitely more than I can tell you, and Bernal made me believe in everything else—in God and goodness and virtue and truth—in all the good things we like to believe in—yet see what he did!" ”

“ Insisting upon his godship can only make him preposterous to the modern mind. Jesus, born to a carpenter's wife of Nazareth, declares himself, one day about his thirtieth year, to be the Christ, the second person in the universe, who will come in a cloud of glory to judge the world. He will save into everlasting life those who believe him to be of divine origin. Yet he has been called meek! Surely never was a more arrogant character in history—never one less meek than this carpenter's son who ranks himself second only to God, with power to send into everlasting hell those who disbelieve him! ”

“ Aunt Bell sighed cheerfully.
"After all," she said briskly, "isn't Christianity the most fascinating of all beliefs, if one comes into it from the higher unbelief? Isn't it fine, Allan—doesn't the very thought excite you—that not only the souls of thousands now living, but thousands yet unborn, will be affected through all eternity for good or bad, by the clearness with which you, here at this moment, perceive and reason out these spiritual values—and the honesty with which you act upon your conclusions. How truly God has made us responsible for the souls of one another!" ”

“ When I saw that there must be a hell for all so long as there is a hell for one—even for Spencer—I suddenly saw there was nothing in any man to merit the place— unless it were the ignorance of immaturity. For I saw that man by the very first law of his being can never have any but a selfish motive. Here again practical psychology sustains me. You cannot so much as raise your hand without an intention to promote your happiness— nor are you less selfish if you give your all to the needy —you are still equally doing that which promotes your happiness. ”

“ Would it be necessary to your happiness that you also have the power to send into hell all those who were not able to believe you had actually died for me?
"One moment more, sir—" The thin, brown, old hand had been raised in trembling appeal, while the lips moved without sound.
"You see every day in the papers how men die for other men, for one man, for two, a dozen! Why, sir, you know you would die to save the lives of five little children—their bare carnal lives, mind you, to say nothing of their immortal souls. ”

“ To Bernal, after his years in the big empty places, it was a part of all the world and of all times compacted in a small space. One might see in it ancient Jerusalem, Syria, Persia, Rome and modern Babylon—with something still peculiar and unclassifiable that one would at length have to call New York. And to make it more absorbing, the figures were always moving. Where so many were pressed together each was weighted by a thousand others—the rich not less than the poor; each was stirred to quick life and each was being visibly worn down by the ceaseless friction. ”

“ Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that my boy can have a wife from his own class—and still have it right up there—with Him, you know!" she concluded with an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost steely—watched her as one might watch an ant. She had the look of one whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner tumult.
When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand—her bag and parasol on the floor at her feet. ”

“ Not once was Browett permitted to feel himself more than one of a crowd; not once was he permitted to rise above his mere atomship, nor feel that he received more attention than the humblest worshipper in arrears for pew-rent. Yet, though the young rector regarded Browett as but one of many, he knew infallibly the instant that invisible wire was strung between them, and felt, thereafter, every tug of opposition or signal of agreement that flashed from Browett's mind, knowing in the end, without a look, that he had won Browett's approval and even excited his interest. ”

“ Charity—a tear dropped on the world's cold cheek of intolerance to make it burn forever! Or it was the grand motor-power which, like a giant engine, has rolled the car of civilisation out from the maze of antiquity into the light of the present day where it now waits to be freighted with the precious fruits of living genius, then to speed on to that hoped-for golden era when truth shall rise as a new and blazing star to light the splendid pageantry of earth, bound together in one law of universal brotherhood, independent, yet acknowledging the sovereignty of Omnipotence. ”

“ Not all one's idols are shattered in a day. This were a catastrophe that might wrench even youth's divine credulity.
Not until another year had gone, with its heavy-gaited school-months and its galloping vacation-days, did the little boy come to understand that Santa Claus was not a real presence. And instead of wailing over the ruins of this idol, he brought a sturdy faith to bear, building in its place something unseen and unheard of any save himself—an idol discernible only by him, but none the less real for that. ”

“ She was looking out to the two trees where once her hammock had swung—to the rustic chair, now falling apart from age, from which Bernal had faced her that last evening. Then with a start she was back in the present. Nancy of the old days must be shut fat in the old house. There she might wander and wonder endlessly among the echoes and the half-seen faces, but never could she come forth; over the threshold there could pass only the wife of Allan Linford.
Quick upon this realisation came a sharp fear of the man beside her—a fear born of his hand's hold upon hers when they had met. ”

“ On that dreaded morning a few weeks later, when the young minister faced a thronged St. Antipas at eleven o'clock service, his wife looked up at him from Aunt Bell's side in a pew well forward—the pew of Cyrus Browett—looked up at him in trembling, loving wonder. Then a little tender half-smile of perfect faith went dreaming along her just-parted lips. Let the many prototypes of Dives in St. Antipas—she could see the relentless profile of their chief at her right—be offended by his rugged speech: he should find atoning comfort in her new love. ”

“ It's the same old secret, Nance, that people have been discovering for ages—but it is a secret only until after you learn it for yourself. The only true revelation from God is here in man—in the human heart. I had to be years alone to find it out, Nance— I'd had so much of that Bible mythology stuffed into me—but I mustn't bore you with it."
"Oh, but I must know, Bernal—you don't dream how greatly I need at this moment to believe something— more than you ever did!" ”

“ I shall feel that way when Clytie brings my lunch, too." He smiled and drew her hand into both his own as she sat beside him.
"How plump and warm your hand is—all full of little whispering pulses. My hands are cold and drowsy and bony, and so uninterested! Doesn't fever bring forward a man's bones in the most shameless way?"
"Oh, Bernal—but you'll soon have them decently hidden again—indeed, you're looking—quite—quite plump." She smiled encouragingly. A sudden new look in his eyes made her own face serious again.
"Why, Nance, you're rather lovely when you smile!" ”

“ Preach to him the limitless devotion of his common dull brothers to one another through their sense of oneness. Show him the common beautiful, wonderful, selfish self-giving of humanity, not for an hour or for a day, but for long hard life-times. Preach the exquisite adjustment of that human nature which must always seek its own happiness, yet is slowly finding that that happiness depends on the happiness of all. The lives of daily crucifixion without hope of reward are abundant all about you—you all know them. ”