Inside of the Cup, the — Volume 06 by Winston Churchill
page 26 of 91 (28%)
page 26 of 91 (28%)
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never heard. He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you. A few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result of careful saving and systematic self-denial. "Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name. This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you. He looked up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a poor boy to a position of power and trust in the community. He saw you a prominent layman in the Church of God. He was dazzled by the brilliancy of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such opportunities. He recognized that he himself had not the brains for such an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his boy." At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain. He tightened his lips. "That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says, and every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him laughing as he romped in the yard with his father. When I first saw him this summer, it was two days before his father committed suicide. The child was lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those desolate lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost wasted away. "While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches, because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had |
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