that it might have much to do with his extraordinary anxiety about my religious and moral life. He was afraid, and I lay awake for a long time trying to puzzle out what it was he was afraid of.
It was quite impossible for him to make me religious. For one thing, it was not in my nature. It was not so much that I disbelieved what I was taught of religion, as that these instructions aroused in me an implacable antagonism. I did not Uke the notion of an all-seeing God, for instance. Imperfectly grasped, this conception represented to my mind a kind of tyranny, a kind of espionage, which I strongly resented. Moreover, I detested Sundays and everything connected with them. When I went to church it was with a face like a thunder-cloud, and once there, with an in- credible obstinacy, I would shut my ears to all that went on, prayers, hymns, and sermon. This fact, combined with so many others, tended, as time passed, to make my relations with my father more and more strained, for he was religious in the narrowest and severest fashion. I remember his taking me, one Sunday evening, when I was between twelve and thirteen, to hear a preacher who had come from a considerable distance to hold two special services. The occasion stands out from all others, because it was the only one upon which I was startled out of my habitual attitude of sulky defiance. For the first three-quarters of an hour all went as usual, and when the sermon was about to begin I prepared myself to think of other things. But the text, or texts, delivered in a quiet, impressive voice, arrested my attention.
"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences ; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. . . . . Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see
