lf their virtues)
lived hard-working, studious lives, in which the common kinds of
self-indulgence played but a very small part. Honourable, kindly at
heart, gentle, rarely consciously selfish, these worthy men never gave a
thought to the current affairs of their country, to their own part as
citizens, or to the daily lives of their fellow countrymen. Indeed, they
exhibited a kind of gentle intolerance and contempt in all topical
concerns; and though they preached religion and drew stipends as
expounders of Christianity, they no more thought of "prying" or
"interfering," as they would have said, into the actual lives and hearts
and minds of those about them, than of thrusting their hands into their
parishioners' pockets.

Stated in this bald way the thing may sound incredible, but those whose
recollections carry them back to the opening years of the century will
bear me out in saying that this was far from being either the most
distressing or the most remarkable among the outworkings of what was
then extolled as a broad spirit of tolerance. Our "tolerance," our
vaunted "cosmopolitanism," were far more dangerous factors of our
national life, had we but known it, than either the insularity of our
sturdy forbears or the strength of our enemies had ever been.

Even my dear mother did not, I think, feel the shock of her bereavement
so much as might have been supposed. One may say, without disrespect,
that the loss of my father gave point and justification to my mother's
attitude toward life. Kind, gentle soul that she was, my mother was
afflicted with what might be called the worrying temperament; a
disposition characteristic of that troublous time. My memory seems to
fasten upon the matter of domestic labour as representing the crux and
centre of my dear mother's grievances and topics of lament prior to my
father's death. The subject may seem to border upon the ridiculous, as
an influence upon one's general point of view; but at that time it was
really more tragic than farcical, and I know that what was called "the
servant question"--as such it was gravely treated in books and papers,
and even by leader-writers and lecturers--formed the basis of a great
deal of my mother's conversation, just as I am sure that it coloured her
outlook upon life, and strengthened her tendency to worry over
everything, from the wear-and-tear of house-linen to the morality of the
people. All this was incomprehensible and absurd to my father, th