m it."

He need not have troubled. It went the road that all luck derived
however indirectly from old Hasluck ever went. Yet it served good
purpose on its way.

But the most marvellous feat, to my thinking, ever accomplished by
Barbara was the bearing off of my father and mother to witness "A Voice
from the Grave, or the Power of Love, New and Original Drama in five
acts and thirteen tableaux."

They had been bred in a narrow creed, both my father and my mother. That
Puritan blood flowed in their veins that throughout our land has drowned
much harmless joyousness; yet those who know of it only from hearsay
do foolishly to speak but ill of it. If ever earnest times should
come again, not how to enjoy but how to live being the question, Fate
demanding of us to show not what we have but what we are, we may regret
that they are fewer among us than formerly, those who trained themselves
to despise all pleasure, because in pleasure they saw the subtlest foe
to principle and duty. No graceful growth, this Puritanism, for its
roots are in the hard, stern facts of life; but it is strong, and from
it has sprung all that is worth preserving in the Anglo-Saxon character.
Its men feared and its women loved God, and if their words were harsh
their hearts were tender. If they shut out the sunshine from their lives
it was that their eyes might see better the glory lying beyond; and if
their view be correct, that earth's threescore years and ten are but
as preparation for eternity, then who shall call them even foolish for
turning away their thoughts from its allurements.

"Still, I think I should like to have a look at one, just to see what it
is like," argued my father; "one cannot judge of a thing that one knows
nothing about."

I imagine it was his first argument rather than his second that
convinced my mother.

"That is true," she answered. "I remember how shocked my poor father
was when he found me one night at the bedroom window reading Sir Walter
Scott by the light of the moon."

"What about the boy?" said my father, for I had been included in the
invitation.

"We will all be wicked together," said my mother.

So an evening or two later the four of us stood at the corner of Pigott
Street waiting for the 'bus.

"It is a close evening," said my father; "let's go the whole hog and
ride outside."

In those days for a lady to ride outside a 'bus was as in these days for
a lady to smoke in public. Surely my mother's gua