at the mind of the boy pleading, insisting, demanding, not that Christ's
simple message that men love one another to the end, that they work
together for the common good, be accepted, but that their own complex
interpretation of his word be taken to the end that souls be saved.

In the end the boy of Caxton got to the place where he had a dread of the
word soul. It seemed to him that the mention of the word in conversation
was something shameful and to think of the word or the shadowy something
for which the word stood an act of cowardice. In his mind the soul became
a thing to be hidden away, covered up, not thought of. One might be
allowed to speak of the matter at the moment of death, but for the healthy
man or boy to have the thought of his soul in his mind or word of it on
his lips--one might better become blatantly profane and go to the devil
with a swagger. With delight he imagined himself as dying and with his
last breath tossing a round oath into the air of his death chamber.

In the meantime Sam continued to have inexplicable longings and hopes. He
kept surprising himself by the changing aspect of his own viewpoint of
life. He found himself indulging in the most petty meannesses, and
following these with flashes of a kind of loftiness of mind. Looking at a
girl passing in the street, he had unbelievably mean thoughts; and the
next day, passing the same girl, a line caught from the babbling of John
Telfer came to his lips and he went his way muttering, "June's twice June
since she breathed it with me."

And then into the complex nature of this boy came the sex motive. Already
he dreamed of having women in his arms. He looked shyly at the ankles of
women crossing the street, and listened eagerly when the crowd about the
stove in Wildman's fell to telling smutty stories. He sank to unbelievable
depths of triviality in sordidness, looking shyly into dictionaries for