ool. I think it is only
temporary.... He remained after the others some weeks ago, and said to
me quite coldly:

"They have decided to make me go back to school----"

"Sit down," I answered.

As I look back, I think that was said because I, too, felt the need of
sitting down. He had been with me nearly a year. I had found him at
first, immersed in brooding silence. In a way, that silence was chaotic;
full day was far from rising upon it. He is without ambition in the
worldly sense. Ambition is a red devil of a horse, but he gets you
somewhere. One overcomes Inertia in riding far and long on that mount.
He takes you to the piled places where the self may satisfy for the
moment all its ravishing greeds. This is not a great thing to do. One
sickens of this; all agony and disease comes of this. The red horse
takes you as far as you will let him, on a road that must be retraced,
but he gets you somewhere! Inertia does not. The point is, one must not
slay the red horse of ambition until one has another mount to ride.

The Abbot caught the new mount quickly. He seemed to have had his hand
on the tether when he came. The name of the red horse is Self. The white
breed that we delight to ride here might be called generically Others.
The Abbot was astride a fine individual at once--and away.... He is but
fifteen now. With utmost impartiality I should say that wonderful
things have happened to him.

They said at his home that he has become orderly; that he rises early
and regularly, a little matter perhaps, but one that was far from
habitual before. They told me that he works with a fiery zeal that is
new in their house; that he is good-tempered and helpful. I knew what he
was doing here from day to day, and that he was giving me a great deal
of that joy which cannot be bought, and to which the red horse never
runs.

But the town kept hammering at his parents' ears, especially his former
teachers, his pastor and Sabbath-school teacher, the hardware man. I
asked his father to bring the critics for a talk in the Study, but they
did not come. A friend of the family came, a pastor from Brooklyn. The
appointment was made in such a way that I did not know whether he was
for or against the Abbot's wish to remain in the work here. I told the
story of the Abbot's coming, of his work and my ideas for him; that I
would be glad to keep him by me until he was a man, because I thought he
was a very great man within and believed the traini