"I don't feel as if I understood at all clearly what is God's purpose
for individuals. I can't take public opinion for granted. I will not
let it overwhelm me. I want to stand aside and think; and my own
prayer for my own children, if I had them, would rather be that they
might be saved from being effective, when I see all the evils which
success and mere effectiveness bring.

"What I had thought of doing was of going abroad for a year or two;
but in that matter I am entirely in your hands, because I am
dependent on you. I consider travel not a luxury, but a necessity. If
you will make me an allowance for that purpose I shall very gladly
accept it. If not, I shall endeavour to get some post where I may
make enough money to take me where I wish to go. I shall throw myself
upon the power 'who providently caters for the sparrows' after that.

"I propose to come home on Friday for a week or two. This letter
contains only a draft of what I should have preferred to say there in
words.

"I am your affectionate son,
"Arthur Hamilton."

His father curtly acknowledged this letter, but nothing more; and
left the discussion of the subject to be a personal one. They came to
the following compromise.

Arthur was to engage for one year in some active profession,
business, the law, medicine, schoolmastering, taking pupils; at the
end of that time he was to make his choice; if he decided not to take
up any profession, his father promised to allow him L350 a year
as long as he lived, and to secure him the same sum after his own
death. This occupation was to extend from August till the August
following. He was allowed three days for his decision.

He at once decided on schoolmastering, and without much difficulty
secured a post at an upper-class private school, being a substantial
suburban house, in fine timbered grounds, the boys being all destined
for public schools.

He wrote me several letters from that place, but during that time our
correspondence waned, as we were both very busy. He was interested in
his work, and very popular with the boys.

"My experience of life generally gives me a strong impulse in favour
of Determinism; that is to say, the system which considers the
histories of nations, the lives of individuals, their very deeds and
words, to be all part of a vast unalterable design: and whose dealing
with the past, with each event, indeed, as it occurs, is thus nothing
but interpretation, an earnest e