now only a name: perhaps he is an angel; perhaps (for the old nurse has
said it when he was ugly--and now you hate her for it) he is with Satan!

But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that God, who made him
suffer, would not now quicken and multiply his suffering. It agrees with
your religion to think so; and just now you want your religion to help
you all it can.

You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that strange
thing--Death; and that perhaps it may overtake you before you are a man;
and you sob out those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to
keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear, that makes your little
prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling;--and so it is a holy
feeling,--the same feeling which makes a stricken child yearn for the
embrace and the protection of a Parent. But you will find there are
those canting ones trying to persuade you, at a later day, that it is a
mere animal fear, and not to be cherished.

You feel an access of goodness growing out of your boyish grief; you
feel right-minded; it seems as if your little brother in going to Heaven
had opened a path-way thither, down which goodness comes streaming over
your soul.

You think how good a life you will lead; and you map out great purposes,
spreading themselves over the school-weeks of your remaining boyhood;
and you love your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever
loved them before; and you forgive the boy who provoked you to that sad
fall from the oak, and you forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But
you cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that you have once
spoken to Charlie; still less can you forgive yourself for having once