"Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for it
before. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instil
into you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess that
I am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever,
no conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not only
persistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for many
months, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you were
secretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where this
determination of yours to have what you desire at any price will lead you
in the future. It is just such a desire that distinguishes wicked men
from good."

I will not linger upon a scene the very remembrance of which is painful
to this day.... I went from my father's presence in disgrace, in an agony
of spirit that was overwhelming, to lock the door of my room and drop
face downward on the bed, to sob until my muscles twitched. For he had,
indeed, put into me an awful fear. The greatest horror of my boyish
imagination was a wicked man. Was I, as he had declared, utterly depraved
and doomed in spite of myself to be one?

There came a knock at my door--Ella with my supper. I refused to open,
and sent her away, to fall on my knees in the darkness and pray wildly to
a God whose attributes and character were sufficiently confused in my
mind. On the one hand was the stern, despotic Monarch of the Westminster
Catechism, whom I addressed out of habit, the Father who condemned a
portion of his children from the cradle. Was I one of those who he had
decreed before I was born must suffer the tortures of the flames of hell?
Putting two and two together, what I had learned in Sunday school and
gathered from parts of Dr. Pound's sermons, and the intimation of my
father that wickedness was within me, like an incurable disease,--was not