childhood, did not with my very life believe in God?

I have wondered whether, if my father had lived to bring me up instead of
my uncle, I should have been very different; but the useless speculation
has only driven me to believe that the relations on the surface of life
are but the symbols of far deeper ties, which may exist without those
correspondent external ones. At the same time, now that, being old, I
naturally think of the coming change, I feel that, when I see my father,
I shall have a different feeling for him just because he is my father,
although my uncle did all the fatherly toward me. But we need not trouble
ourselves about our hearts, and all their varying hues and shades of
feeling. Truth is at the root of all existence, therefore everything must
come right if only we are obedient to the truth; and right is the deepest
satisfaction of every creature as well as of God. I wait in confidence.
If things be not as we think, they will both arouse and satisfy a better
_think_, making us glad they are not as we expected.




CHAPTER VI.


I LOSE MYSELF.

I have one incident more to relate ere my narrative begins to flow from a
quite clear memory.

I was by no means a small bookworm, neither spent all my time in the
enchanted ground of my uncle's study. It is true I loved the house, and