.
Nature's law is unchanging; but if not even a tree can mature without
harm coming to it, how much less can a human soul be expected to do so.
We have lived to see naught but what is good and proper in our son
Richard. His development is so natural and consistent. In his earliest
youth, he decided to devote himself to science. He has steadily
advanced, swerving neither to the right nor the left, and has always
been full of the conscious power of the clear and temperate mind that
grasps the laws underlying the phenomena presented by the world of
thought and of action.

We can neither take credit to ourselves, in the one instance, nor
acknowledge that we were in fault in the other.

My wife had been true to herself, and yet full of resignation in the
first shock of this bitter grief; but now there came an insurmountable
desire to quarrel with her lot, and the puzzling question, "Why should
this happen just to us?" was again awakened.

I dislike to admit it, but truth forces me to say that this was brought
about by the arrival of my daughter Johanna.

Johanna also had her troubles. Her husband was sickly, her son was in
the army, and she seemed chosen for suffering; but chosen by reason of
a higher faith. With inconsiderate zeal, she attempted to awaken the
same faith in us. At that very moment, she thought, when we were
crushed and bowed down by sorrow, our redemption should take place. She
assigned the impiety of our household as the cause of our son's
disobedience.

The education which my wife had received from her father was, as some
would call it, a heathen one; for she had received more instruction
from the classics than from the Bible.

We were seated in our statue gallery. The door that led to the garden
was open; my wife had been eagerly reading from a book, which she now
laid aside with the remark, "That does one good."

"What were you reading?" inquired Johanna.

My wife made no answer, and Johanna repeated her question, when she
said, "I have been reading the Antigone of Sophocles, and I find that I
am right."

"In what respect?"

"It has renewed my recollection of an idea of my father's. When I was
reading the Antigone aloud to him for the first time, he said, If a
woman acted in this way, she would be doing right; but a brother should
not have done so. With a sister, or with a mother, the natural law of
love of kindred is above that of the state, which would have treated
the brother as a traito