nted his
laudatory references to my father.

The old church, with its severity, had actually stood for something. It
was the Westminster Catechism in wood and stone, and Dr. Pound had been
the human incarnation of that catechism, the fit representative of a
wrathful God, a militant shepherd who had guarded with vigilance his
respectable flock, who had protested vehemently against the sins of the
world by which they were surrounded, against the "dogs, and sorcerers,
and whoremongers, and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth
and maketh a lie." How Dr. Pound would have put the emphasis of the
Everlasting into those words!

Against what was Mr. Randlett protesting?

My glance wandered to the pews which held the committees from various
organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Bar Association,
which had come to do honour to my father. And there, differentiated from
the others, I saw the spruce, alert figure of Theodore Watling. He, too,
represented a new type and a new note,--this time a forceful note,
a secular note that had not belonged to the old church, and seemed
likewise anomalistic in the new....

During the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my mother
did not raise her veil. It was not until she reached out and seized
my hand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my
existence.

In the days that followed I became aware that my father's death had
removed a restrictive element, that I was free now to take without
criticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire. It may
be that I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would
not have coincided with my own. Mingled with this sense of emancipation
was a curious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never
valued, something fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock
and a refuge of which I had never availed myself!... When his will was
opened it was found that the property had been left to my mother during
her lifetime. It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousand
dollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate. My
father had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had no
interest in them.

Three or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten letter
signed by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, and
asking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city.
In contrast to the