iend and stopped to chat with him. I considered this act to
have dissolved the bond; I skipped lightly from his side,
examined several shop-windows which I had been forbidden to look
into, made several darts down courts and up passages, and
finally, after a delightful morning, returned home, having known
my directions perfectly. My official conductor, in a shocking
condition of fear, was crouching by the area-rails looking up and
down the street. He darted upon me, in a great rage, to know
'what I meant by it?' I drew myself up as tall as I could, hissed
'Blind leader of the blind!' at him, and, with this inappropriate
but very effective Parthian shot, slipped into the house.

When it was quite certain that no alleviations and no medical
care could prevent, or even any longer postpone the departure of
my Mother, I believe that my future conduct became the object of
her greatest and her most painful solicitude. She said to my
Father that the worst trial of her faith came from the feeling
that she was called upon to leave that child whom she had so
carefully trained from his earliest infancy for the peculiar
service of the Lord, without any knowledge of what his further
course would be. In many conversations, she most tenderly and
closely urged my Father, who, however, needed no urging, to watch
with unceasing care over my spiritual welfare. As she grew nearer
her end, it was observed that she became calmer, and less
troubled by fears about me. The intensity of her prayers and
hopes seemed to have a prevailing force; it would have been a sin
to doubt that such supplications, such confidence and devotion,
such an emphasis of will, should not be rewarded by an answer
from above in the affirmative. She was able, she said, to leave
me 'in the hands of her loving Lord', or, on another occasion,
'to the care of her covenant God'.

Although her faith was so strong and simple, my Mother possessed
no quality of the mystic. She never pretended to any visionary
gifts, believed not at all in dreams or portents, and encouraged
nothing in herself or others which was superstitious or
fantastic. In order to realize her condition of mind, it is
necessary, I think, to accept the view that she had formed a
definite conception of the absolute, unmodified and historical
veracity, in its direct and obvious sense, of every statement
contained within the covers of the Bible. For her, and for my
Father, nothing was symbolic, nothing allegoric