suggested by the inequalities of the human lot. Only as we
neared the church door did I venture to ask what could be done
about it, receiving the reply that it might never be righted so
far as clothes went, but that people might be equal in things
that mattered much more than clothes, the affairs of education
and religion, for instance, which we attended to when we went to
school and church, and that it was very stupid to wear the sort
of clothes that made it harder to have equality even there.

It must have been a little later when I held a conversation with
my father upon the doctrine of foreordination, which at one time
very much perplexed my childish mind. After setting the
difficulty before him and complaining that I could not make it
out, although my best friend "understood it perfectly," I settled
down to hear his argument, having no doubt that he could make it
quite clear. To my delighted surprise, for any intimation that
our minds were on an equality lifted me high indeed, he said that
he feared that he and I did not have the kind of mind that would
ever understand fore-ordination very well and advised me not to
give too much time to it; but he then proceeded to say other
things of which the final impression left upon my mind was, that
it did not matter much whether one understood foreordination or
not, but that it was very important not to pretend to understand
what you didn't understand and that you must always be honest
with yourself inside, whatever happened. Perhaps on the whole as
valuable a lesson as the shorter catechism itself contains.

My memory merges this early conversation on religious doctrine
into one which took place years later when I put before my father
the situation in which I found myself at boarding school when