." I am sending you a little book.

GRANDFATHER.

(From Bernal Linford to the Reverend Allan Delcher.)

_Dear Old Man:_ How am I going to thank you for the "little book"--for
Butler's Analogy? Or rather, how shall I forgive you for keeping it from
me all these years? I see that you acquired it in 1863--and I never knew!
I must tell you that I looked upon it with suspicion when I unwrapped
it--a suspicion that the title did not allay. For I recalled the last time
you gave me a book--the year before I came here. That book, my friend, was
"Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." I began it with deep respect for you. I
finished with a profound distrust of all Abyssinians and an overwhelming
grief for the untimely demise of Mrs. Johnson--for you had told me that
the good doctor wrote this book to get money to bury her. How the circle
of mourners for that estimable woman must have widened as Rasselas made
its way out into the world! Oh, Grandad, if only they had been able to
keep her going some way until he needn't have done it! If only she could
have been spared until her son got in a little money from the Dictionary
or something!

All of which is why I viewed with unfriendly distrust your latest gift,
the Analogy of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. But, honestly,
old man, did you know how funny it was when you sent it? It's funnier than
any of the books of Moses, without being bloody. What a dear, innocent old
soul the Bishop is! How sincerely he believes he is reasoning when he is
merely doing a roguish two-step down the grim corridor of the eternal
verities--with a little jig here and there, and a pause to flirt his frock
airily in the face of some graven image of Fact. Ah, he is so weirdly
innocent. Even when his logical toes go blithely into the air, his dear
old face is most resolutely solemn, and I believe he is never in the least
aware of his frivolous caperings over the floor of induction. Indeed, his
unconsciousness is what makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his
good old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time.

You will never know, Grandad, what this book has done for me. I am
stimulated in the beginning by this: "From the vast extent of God's
dominion there must be some things beyond our comprehension, and the
Christian scheme may be one of them." And at the last I am soothed with
this heart-rending _pas seul:_ "Concluding remarks by which it is clearly
shown that those men who can evade th