father and the vicar had been objects of his youthful
admiration; but when there came the illuminating knowledge of the world
and the intimate contact with life which journalism brings to its young
professors--as they in their fond hearts fancy--both figures began to
recede into the background, in common with others that had once been
cherished; for, unwillingly it may have been, but still actually, the
cynic which is in us all was raised up in Henry by the touch of a master
cynic.

Frankly, he had been dangerously near the condition of a "superior
person"--of all human states the most contemptible. His father's
ignorant ways, the vicar's little affectations of learning, his mother's
curl-papers, his sisters' dowdiness of dress--these were the things that
caused them to recede to the background of the young man's mind when the
young man was in the first lust of his life-experience. And all the time
he was uneasily conscious that he himself was at fault, and they
wholesomer bits of God's handiwork than he.

But the tragic ending of the disturber of his mind, the almost certainty
of the cause, was a crushing commentary on all the philosophy which
Adrian Grant had preached. Art for the sake of art, and a dose of poison
when you take the fancy to be rid of your responsibilities. That was how
Henry's experience of the novelist summed itself up in his mind after
Mr. Needham's artless little human sermon. The vicar might be a
hide-bound thinker, a mere echo of ages of hide-bound Bible
interpreters, but he was a better and a bigger man than he who went out
with his 'cello between his knees, thought Henry. Oh, all this prattle
of those who were devoted to the arts! How futile it sounded when, as
with a new revelation, the young man saw and loved at sight the good,
rude health of his father and his sisters, living as bits of Nature, and
standing not up to rail at Fate, but without whimpering playing their
tiny parts in the drama of life.

"But all need not be vanity, don't you think, Mr. Needham?" said Henry,
when he called on the vicar next day. "All isn't vanity, I now feel
sure, if we can keep green a simple faith in God's goodness to us; and
surely if we only attempt to model our conduct on the life of Jesus we
shall be in the way of spiritual happiness."

"My boy, you have got the drift of what I said. There's nothing in life
to place above that. Surely to do these things is to fight the good
fight, and learning or want