r. For the gloomiest occasion he
had some strengthening text, and one of the last things he did before he
left home was to make for her a little book which he called "Faith for
Cloudy Days," consisting of energising and sustaining phrases from
certain great writers,--as it were, a bottle of philosophical phosphates
against seasons of spiritual cowardice or debility. There one opened and
read: "_Sudden the worst turns best to the brave_" or Thoreau's "_I have
yet to hear a single word of wisdom spoken to me by my elders,_" or
again Matthew Arnold's

"_Tasks in hours of insight willed
May be through hours of gloom fulfilled_."

James Mesurier knew nothing of all this; but if he had, he might have
understood that after all his children were not so far from the kingdom
of heaven.

CHAPTER IV

OF THE PROFESSIONS THAT CHOOSE, AND
MIKE LAFLIN

However we may hint at its explanation by theories of inheritance, it
still remains curious with what unerring instinct a child of character
will from the first, and when it is so evidently ignorant of the field
of choice, select, out of all life's occupations and distinctions, one
special work it hungers to do, one special distinction that to it seems
the most desirable of earthly honours. That Mary Mesurier loved poetry,
and James Mesurier sermons, in face of the fact that so many mothers and
fathers have done the same with no such result, hardly seems adequate to
account for the peculiar glamour which, almost before he could read,
there was for Henry Mesurier in any form of print. While books were
still being read to him, there had already come into his mind,
unaccountably, as by outside suggestion, that there could be nothing so
splendid in the world as to write a book for one's self. To be either a
soldier, a sailor, an architect, or an engineer, would, doubtless, have
its fascinations as well; but to make a real printed book, with your
name in gilt letters outside, was real romance.

At that early day, and for a long while after, the boy had no preference
for any particular kind of book. It was an entirely abstract passion for
print and paper. To have been the author of "The Iliad" or of Beeton's
"Book of Household Recipes" would have given him almost the same
exaltation of authorship; and the thrill of worship which came over him
when, one early day, a man who had actually had an article on the sugar
bounties accepted by a commercial magazine was pointed