could bestow on its mother. It is often argued that filial and conjugal affection are feelings of a very different nature. But my impression has been just the reverse. Here again I may differ from my reader. What the lover is to youth the parents are to childhood—the object of worship and affection, the idol of the heart. It has always seemed to me that a parent is protector and lover blended in one. Towards both we are drawn by the same desire, to make the beloved a part of ourselves, to have complete possession. The disappointment is the same in each case when love is not reciprocated, and we feel an equal readiness to embrace pain and adversity in order to promote the happiness of the beloved.
I had a sister but we had become somewhat estranged from each other. She was four or five years older than I, and lived with our father's sister in Calcutta for her education. I loved my sister dearly, and was delighted whenever she came home on a visit, but if she took up too much of my father's attention, if she claimed his affection in too great a degree, I ceased to appreciate her. After dinner my father was in the habit of lying down to enjoy his "gur-
