belong to the adult judgment of the child and pertain to activity quite
outside the family life. Probably the distinctively family tragedy of
which we all catch glimpses now and then, is the assertion of this
authority through all the entanglements of wounded affection and
misunderstanding. We see parents and children acting from conscientious
motives and with the tenderest affection, yet bringing about a misery
which can scarcely be hidden.

Such glimpses remind us of that tragedy enacted centuries ago in Assisi,
when the eager young noble cast his very clothing at his father's feet,
dramatically renouncing his filial allegiance, and formally subjecting
the narrow family claim to the wider and more universal duty. All the
conflict of tragedy ensued which might have been averted, had the father
recognized the higher claim, and had he been willing to subordinate and
adjust his own claim to it. The father considered his son disrespectful
and hard-hearted, yet we know St. Francis to have been the most tender
and loving of men, responsive to all possible ties, even to those of
inanimate nature. We know that by his affections he freed the frozen
life of his time. The elements of tragedy lay in the narrowness of the
father's mind; in his lack of comprehension and his lack of sympathy
with the power which was moving his son, and which was but part of the
religious revival which swept Europe from end to end in the early part
of the thirteenth century; the same power which built the cathedrals of
the North, and produced the saints and sages of the South. But the
father's situation was nevertheless genuine; he felt his heart sore and
angry, and his dignity covered with disrespect. He could not, indeed,
have felt otherwise, unless he had been touched by the fire of the same
revival, and lifted out of and away from the contemplation of himself
and his narrower claim. It is another proof that the notion of a larger
obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest