ng here would enable
him to get himself out.

My main effort with the Abbot, as I explained, was to help him develop
an instrument commensurate in part with his big inner energies. I told
them how I had specialised in his case to cultivate a positive and
steadily-working brain-grip; how I had sought to install a system of
order through geometry, which I wasn't equipped to teach, but that one
of the college men was leading him daily deeper into this glassy and
ordered plane.

The fact is, the Abbot had my heart because he loved his dreams, but I
used to tell him every day that a man is not finished who has merely
answered a call to the mountain; that Jesus himself told his disciples
that they must not remain to build a temple on the mountain of
Transfiguration. Going up to Sinai is but half the mystery; the gifted
one must bring stone tablets down. If in impatience and anger at men, he
shatter the tablets, he has done ill toward himself and toward men, and
must try once more.

It appears that I did most of the talking and with some energy,
believing that the Abbot had my best coming, since the hostility against
his work here had long been in the wind from the town.... It was the
next day that the boy told me that the decision had gone against us. I
cannot quite explain how dulled it made me feel. The depression was of a
kind that did not quickly lift. I was willing to let any one who liked
hold the impression that the obligation was all my way, but there was
really nothing to fight. I went to see the Abbot's father shortly
afterward. We touched just the edges of the matter. As I left he assured
me:

"The minister said that he didn't think the boy would come to any harm
in your Study."

There was no answer to that.... And yet, as I have said, we have come up
in different ways from the townspeople. The manuscripts that go forth
from this Study are not designed to simplify matters for them, and the
books we read in the main are not from the local library. One should
really rise to a smile over a matter like this. The fact is, I said to
the Abbot:

"Go and show them your quality. There's no danger of your falling into
competitive study. Show them that you can move in and around and through
the things they ask of you. We're always open when you want to come.
You're the first and always one of us. You've got the philosophy--live
it. This is just a mission. Take it this way, Abbot. Take it as an
honour--a hard task for