hen we
painted butterflies and seaweeds, placing perfectly pure pigments
side by side, without any nonsense about chiaroscuro. This large,
bright, comprehensive picture made a very deep impression upon
me, not exactly as a work of art, but as a brilliant natural
specimen. I was pleased to have seen it, as I was pleased to have
seen the comet, and the whale which was brought to our front door
on a truck. It was a prominent addition to my experience.

The slender expansions of my interest which were now budding
hither and thither do not seem to have alarmed my Father at all.
His views were short; if I appeared to be contented and obedient,
if I responded pleasantly when he appealed to me, he was not
concerned to discover the source of my cheerfulness. He put it
down to my happy sense of joy in Christ, a reflection of the
sunshine of grace beaming upon me through no intervening clouds
of sin or doubt. The 'saints' were, as a rule, very easy to
comprehend; their emotions lay upon the surface. If they were
gay, it was because they had no burden on their consciences,
while, if they were depressed, the symptom might be depended upon
as showing that their consciences were troubling them, and if
they were indifferent and cold, it was certain that they were
losing their faith and becoming hostile to godliness. It was
almost a mechanical matter with these simple souls. But, although
I was so much younger, I was more complex and more crafty than
the peasant 'saints'. My Father, not a very subtle psychologist,
applied to me the same formulas which served him well at the
chapel, but in my case the results were less uniformly
successful.

The excitement of school-life and the enlargement of my circle of
interests, combined to make Sunday, by contrast, a very tedious
occasion. The absence of every species of recreation on the
Lord's Day grew to be a burden which might scarcely be borne. I
have said that my freedom during the week had now become
considerable; if I was at home punctually at meal times, the rest
of my leisure was not challenged. But this liberty, which in the
summer holidays came to surpass that of 'fishes that tipple in
the deep', was put into more and more painful contrast with the
unbroken servitude of Sunday.

My Father objected very strongly to the expression Sabbath-day,
as it is commonly used by Presbyterians and others. He said,
quite justly, that it was an inaccurate modern innovation, that
Sabbath was Sat