like best to do," he said.

Reed nodded.

"So bad as that? What is the matter now?"

"It's hard to specify. I seem to have run myself aground."

"Pull off, then," Reed advised.

"No craft in sight to tow me."

Reed shut his teeth.

"Brenton, that has been your trouble from the start. You've always been
drifting, anchor up, ready for a tow. Now hoist your sails and, for the
Lord's sake, go ahead."

"Where?"

"Where! Wherever the chart takes you. What chart? The chart of plain
duty, man, the duty of an honest citizen to make the most of himself
and be a little good to humanity at large. No; wait. You've had your
chances; you can't cry off on that. You had your chance, 'way back in
college, and you chucked it over. How much more would it have hurt your
mother to have seen you once for all take up a secular profession, than
it would to have watched you setting out to preach all the things her
own religion didn't stand for? You had another chance in Saint Peter's.
It wasn't a small chance, either. You could have held that church
together, solid; you could have brought its people to a working assent
to a practical exposition of their creed that would have kept them busy
and loyal to their Creator, in doing their duty to their co-created
fellow men. Instead, you ignored your chance to keep them busy on
things that would help on the world we live in, and spent all your
energies in tangling up your notions of the world we came out of, and
the world we, some day, are going into. As mental gymnastics, it was
very pretty to watch; as a useful employment for a man who calls
himself a pastor of souls, it wasn't worth a rush."

"But a man can't help his thoughts," Brenton expostulated suddenly.

"Can't he?" Reed whitened. "Brenton," he asked gravely; "don't you
suppose that there have been times on times, since they lugged me up
these stairs, that, if I had let myself go, I wouldn't have turned my
face to the wall and cursed, not only the whole plan of creation, but
the Creator himself? Times on times that, if I hadn't held tight to a
few rudimentary notions that I took in with my mother's milk, notions
about the decent and square thing to do for the God that made you, I
wouldn't have tested the logic of your doubtings with a dose of
cyanide? I tell you a man can help his thoughts. I tell you a man can
hold to his beliefs. He can wonder about the petty things as much as he
chooses, and it never does him one bit of harm.