Lionel. "You knew his son? How Mr. Darrell has felt that loss!"
George. "Heaven often veils its most provident mercy in what to man seems its sternest inflictions. That poor boy must have changed his whole nature, if his life had not to a father, like Mr. Darrell, occasioned grief sharper than his death."
Lionel. "You amaze me. Mr. Darrell spoke of him as a boy of great promise."
George. "He had that kind of energy which to a father conveys the idea of promise, and which might deceive those older than himself—a fine bright-eyed bold-tongued boy, with just enough awe of his father to bridle his worst qualities before him."
Lionel. "What were those?"
George. "Headstrong arrogance—relentless cruelty! He had a pride which would have shamed his father out of pride had Guy Darrell detected its nature—purse-pride! I remember his father said to me with a half-laugh, 'My boy must not be galled and mortified as I was every hour at school—clothes patched and pockets empty.' And so, out of mistaken kindness, Mr. Darrell ran into the opposite extreme, and the son was proud, not of his father's fame, but of his father's money, and withal not generous, nor exactly extravagant, but using money as power—power that allowed him to insult an equal or to buy a slave. In a word, his nickname at school was 'Sir Giles Overreach.' His death was the result of his strange passion for tormenting others. He had a fag who could not swim, and who had the greatest terror of the water; and it was while driving this child into the river out of his depth that cramp seized himself, and he was drowned. Yes, when I think what that boy would have been as man, succeeding to Darrell's wealth—and had Darrell persevered (as he would, perhaps, if the boy had lived) in his public career—to the rank and titles he would probably have acquired and bequeathed—again I say, in man's affliction is often Heaven's mercy."
Lionel listened aghast. George continued, "Would that I could speak as plainly to Mr. Darrell himself! For we find constantly in the world that there is no error that misleads us like the error that is half a truth wrenched from the other half; and nowhere is such an error so common as when man applies it to the judgment of some event in his own life, and separates calamity from consolation."
Lionel. "True; but who could have the heart to tell a mourning father that his dead son was worthless?"
George. "Alas, my young friend, the preacher must some
