Chapter II.


This compact made, my father roused himself from all his studies,
devoted his whole thoughts to me, sought with all his gentle wisdom to
wean me imperceptibly from my one fixed, tyrannical idea, ranged through
his wide pharmacy of books for such medicaments as might alter the
system of my thoughts. And little thought he that his very tenderness
and wisdom worked against him, for at each new instance of either my
heart called aloud, "Is it not that thy tenderness may be repaid, and
thy wisdom be known abroad, that I go from thee into the strange land, O
my father?"

And the two months expired, and my father saw that the magnet had turned
unalterably to the loadstone in the Great Australasian Bight; and he
said to me, "Go, and comfort your mother. I have told her your wish,
and authorized it by my consent, for I believe now that it is for your
good."

I found my mother in the little room she had appropriated to herself
next my father's study. And in that room there was a pathos which I
have no words to express; for my mother's meek, gentle, womanly soul
spoke there, so that it was the Home of Home. The care with which she
had transplanted from the brick house, and lovingly arranged, all the
humble memorials of old times dear to her affections,--the black
silhouette of my father's profile cut in paper, in the full pomp of
academics, cap and gown (how had he ever consented to sit for it?),