MY FATHER
And to this affection for the beautiful, this love of il pane degli spiriti gentili, I owe the supreme happiness of my life. Without his encouragement and assistance I might have been a slave of one of the professions—a slave as he was, in a sense, to duty. To be as free as I have been is rare, and I have gloried in freedom.
He was conservative to the backbone. He lived in the past and in the present, and he based his conduct and his thought upon the best traditions that he could find in literature. He believed in manhood, in womanhood, in childhood, and in Godhood; in patience and good-will, in faith and charity. An uppermost thought in his mind was "Will my neighbour be hurt by this, my act?" As a citizen he was loyal to the right, and intolerant of wrong. He had no doubt at all about what was right and what was wrong; that had been determined long ago by the sages. He was no friend of "progress," often miscalled nowadays, for he knew that human nature was deep-rooted, and could not be uprooted by visionaries and demagogues.
He was a strange man, very impressionable, with prejudices—but his prejudices were confined to Art and literature, never directed against people. Rachel, the great tragédienne, once visited Philadelphia, appearing at the Walnut Street Theatre. My father found her acting so perfect that he never went to the theatre again, for fear that the impression he had received might be effaced.
He was an unusually sane and just man. After Art he loved horses, and they returned his affection. He petted, coaxed, and teased them, and when in the country often groomed them himself, winning them by the choicest clumps of clover he could find, and by his manner, that was both firm and fond. Like all tactful men, he was extremely
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