From the Bottom Up | Page 5

the bowl, she carried it steadily; when empty, she would swing it like a censer.
When I told my sister about these strange happenings of the heart, she looked very anxiously into my eyes, and said:
"'Deed, I just think ye're goin' mad."
Before leaving the farm, I experienced an incident which, although of a different character, equalled in its intensity and beauty my awakening to what, for lack of a better term, I called a religious life.
A young lady from the city was visiting at the home of the land steward, and, as I knew more about the woods and the inhabitants thereof than anybody else on the farm, I was often ordered to take visitors around. The land steward's daughter accompanied the young lady on her first visit to the roads; but afterward she came alone, and we traversed the ravine from one end to the other. We collected flowers and specimens, and watched the wild animals.
I had never seen such a beautiful human being. Her voice was soft and musical. She wore her hair loosely down her back, and was a perfect picture of health and beauty.
One day I lay at full length on my back, asleep by the edge of the wood. When I awoke, this city girl was standing at my side. I jumped to my feet and stood erect, and I remember distinctly the emotions that swept through me. I was startled at first, startled as I had been on a previous occasion when, at a sharp turn in the footpath in the ravine, I met a fawn. I remembered my first impulse then was for a word, a word of conciliation, for I was fascinated by the beauty of the graceful beast. Graceful as a nymph it stood there, nerves strained like a bow bent for the discharge of an arrow, its head poised in air, fire shooting from its eyes. It remained only for an instant, and then with a frightened plunge it cleared the clump of laurel bushes and disappeared.
When I stood before this beautiful city girl, I remembered the fawn, and expected the girl instantly to vanish out of my sight. There was something of the fawn in her graceful form, some of the fire in her blue eyes, and in her girlish laugh a suggestion of the freedom of the mountain and glen. I think it was in that moment of intensity that I crossed the bridge which separates the boy from the man. An impassable gulf was fixed between this girl's station in life and mine. She was the daughter of a florist, and I was the son of a cobbler.
She returned home shortly after this, and I was promoted from the potato field to be a groom's helper in the stables of "the master." We called his residence the "big house." It was like a castle on the Rhine. A very wonderful man was this Member of Parliament to the labourers around on his demesne. Not the least part of this wonder consisted in the tradition that he had a different suit of clothes for every day in the year. He was very fond of fine horses, and gloried in the fact that he owned a winner of the Derby. He kept a large stable of racing, hunting, and carriage horses.
This was the advent of a new life to me. I was taken in hand by the head groom and fitted out with two suits of clothes, and in this change the first great ambition of my life was satisfied. I became the possessor of a hard hat. For two years, I had instinctively longed for something on my head that I could politely remove to a lady. The first night I marched down that village street, shoes well polished, starched linen, and hard hat, I expected the whole town to be there to see me. I had made several attempts at this hat business before. They organized a flute band in the town and I joined it for the sake of the hat. But it was too nice a thing to be lying around when people were hungry, and, as it was in pawn most of the time, I finally redeemed it, returned it, and quit. But this time the hat had come to stay.
With my new vision still warm in my heart, I became very active in the parish Sunday School. My inability to read relegated me to the children's class; but I had a retentive memory, and before I was able to read, I memorized about three hundred texts from the Bible.
The first outworking of my vision was on a drunken stone mason of our town. His family, relatives, and friends had all given him up. He had given himself up. I went after him every night