I Never Breathed A Word Of My Doubts And Mental Agonizing To My Mother; I Spoke To Her Only Of My Bodily Sufferings; Yet She Knew It All, And I Knew That She Knew.

And because she knew and understood the temper of my mind as well, she never questioned, never probed, but

Invariably when alone with me she would with infinite tenderness in her manner touch on spiritual things and tell me of her own state, the consolations of her faith which gave her peace and strength in all our reverses and anxieties.

I knew, too, that her concern at my state was the greater because it was not her first experience of a trouble of this kind. My elder long- absent brother had scarcely ceased to be a boy before throwing off all belief in the Christian creed and congratulating himself on having got rid of old wives' fables, as he scornfully expressed it. But never a word did he say to her of this change, and without a word she knew it, and when she spoke to us on the subject nearest to her heart and he listened in respectful silence, she knew the thought and feeling - that was in him-that he loved her above everybody but was free of her creed.

He had been able to cast it off with a light heart because of his perfect health, since in that condition death is not in the mind - the mind refuses to admit the thought of it, so remote is it in that state that we regard ourselves as practically immortal.

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