left
them, doing the same things, repeating at every well-known juncture the
same trite observations. Their ingenuousness affected him as a negro,
civilised and educated, on visiting after many years his native tribe,
might be affected by their nose-rings and yellow ochre. James was
astounded that they should ignore matters which he fancied common
knowledge, and at the same time accept beliefs that he had thought
completely dead. He was willing enough to shrug his shoulders and humour
their prejudices, but they had made of them a rule of life which
governed every action with an iron tyranny. It was in accordance with
all these outworn conventions that they conducted the daily round. And
presently James found that his father and mother were striving to draw
him back into the prison. Unconsciously, even with the greatest
tenderness, they sought to place upon his neck again that irksome yoke
which he had so difficultly thrown off.

If James had learnt anything, it was at all hazards to think for
himself, accepting nothing on authority, questioning, doubting; it was
to look upon life with a critical eye, trying to understand it, and to
receive no ready-made explanations. Above all, he had learnt that every
question has two sides. Now this was precisely what Colonel Parsons and
his wife could never acknowledge; for them one view was certainly right,
and the other as certainly wrong. There was no middle way. To doubt what
they believed could only be ascribed to arrant folly or to wickedness.
Sometimes James was thrown into a blind rage by the complacency with
which from the depths of his nescience his father dogmatised. No man
could have been more unassuming than he, and yet on just the points
which were most uncertain his attitude was almost inconceivably
arrogant.

And James was horrified at the pettiness and the prejudice which he
found in his home. Reading no books, for they thought it waste of time
to read, the minds of his father and mother had sunk into such a narrow
sluggishness that they could interest themselves only in trivialities.
Their thoughts were occupied by their neighbours and the humdrum
details of the life about them. Flattering themselves on their ideals
and their high principles, they vegetated in stupid sloth and in a less
than animal vacuity. Every topic of conversation above the most
commonplace they found dull or incomprehensible. James learned that he
had to talk to them almost as if they were ch