ference is to Thackeray's story of a hairdresser named Samuel,
who remarked, "Mr. Thackeray, there comes a time in the life of every
man when he says to himself, 'Sammy, my boy, this won't do.'" The story
was an especial favourite of Froude's.
--

"Of other things which are popularly called religion, I have my
opinion positive and negative. But religion to me is not opinion it
is certainty. I cannot govern my actions or guide my deepest
convictions by probabilities. The laws which we are to obey and the
obligations to obey them are part of my being of which I am as sure
as that I am alive. The things to argue about are by their nature
uncertain, and therefore it is to me inconceivable that in them can
lie Religion. I cannot tell whether these thoughts will be of any
help to you. But it is better, in my judgment, to remain a proselyte
of the gate--resolute to remain there till one receives a genuine
conviction of some truths beyond--than for imagined relief from the
pain of suspense to take up by an act of will a complete system of
belief, Catholic or Calvinistic, and insist to one's own soul that
it is, was, and shall be the whole and complete truth. Some people
do this--deliberately blind their eyes, and because they never see
again declare loudly that no one else can see. Other people, less
happy, find by experience that they cannot believe what they have
taken to in this way, and fly for a change to the next theory and
then to the next. I remain for myself unconvinced of much which is
generally called the essential part of things; but convinced with
all my heart of what I regard as essential."

Froude made no secret of his religious opinions and they may be
collected from his numerous books, especially perhaps from The
Oxford Counter-Reformation. A curious paper, first published in
1879, called "A Siding at a Railway Station," is one of his most
direct utterances on the subject. It will be found in the fourth
series of Short Studies, and is in many respects the most remarkable
of them all. "Some years' ago," it begins, "I was travelling by
railway, no matter whence or whither." The railway is life, and the
siding at which the train was suddenly stopped is the end that
awaits all travellers through this world. The examination of the
luggage is the judgment which will be passed upon all human actions
hereafter. Wages received are placed on one side, and value to
mankind of service rendered on the other. Naturally wo