I began to perceive that, as matters
were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This
was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it.
But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had
first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me
lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what would become of Boy?

As the child waxed in knowledge and in strength questions like these
dropped from his lips so frequently that they distressed me:--

"Papa, what is God?"

"Papa, who is worship?"

"Tell me how boys pray."

"Is it a kind of game?"

"What is Christ, papa? Is it people's Mother? What is it for?"

My friend, the eminent surgeon, left me much to myself in these
perplexities; regarding my natural reserve, and trusting, I thought, to
nature, or to some Power beyond nature, to assist me. But on one
occasion, happening to be present when the child interrogated me in
this manner, he bent a piercing gaze upon me.

"Why do you not answer the child, Esmerald Thorne?" he asked me in a
voice of authority.

"Alas," I said, "I have no answer. I know nothing of these matters.
They have been so foreign to my temperament, that--I"--

But here I faltered. I felt ashamed of my excuse, and of myself for
offering it.

"It is a trying position for a man to be put in," I ventured to add,
putting an arm about my boy; "naturally, I wish my child to develop in
accordance with the social and educational system of the place."

"Naturally, I should suppose," replied he, dryly. He offered me no
further suggestion on the subject and with some severity of manner
moved to leave me. Now it happened to be the vesper hour in the
hospital, and my visitor was going to his patients, the "sick of soul,"
with whom he was wont to join in the evening chant which, at a certain
hour, daily arose from every roof in the wide city, and waxed mightily
to the sides. It was music of a high order, and I always enjoyed it;
no person of any musical taste could have done otherwise.

"Listen!" said my friend, as he turned to depart from me. I had only
to glance at his rapt and noble countenance to perceive the high
acoustic laws which separated his sensibility to the vesper from my
own. To him it was religious expression. To me it was classical music.

While I was thus thinking, from the great wards of the Home of Healing
the prayer went up. The sinful, the sorely stricke