"
We buried him quietly in the churchyard at Arreton, the kind rector
not asking for a baptismal certificate, for he knew that I was not
a churchman, and Russie had never been baptized. In these things we
follow prejudices. Mine were Baptist; his mother was an advanced
Unitarian, and had been born in the Brook Farm community, of which her
father was a member, so that we had no sympathy with paedobaptism,
while the terrible effect of my own religious education forbade me to
encumber the boy's mind with religious dogmas, and from the beginning
I had forbidden any one in the house to teach him the name of God
until he was old enough to understand what "God" meant; but one day
during his illness I found him, when he should have been sleeping,
weeping bitterly, and to my inquiry as to the cause of his trouble,
he replied, "Do you think, Papa, that, if I went to sleep saying my
prayers, God would be satisfied if I finished them after I woke?" That
terrible hereditary conscience could not be laid, and perhaps the boy
was fortunate in his early death.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MONTENEGRINS AND THEIR PRINCE
To me Russie's death was a crushing disaster. The care and constant
preoccupation of my life was taken away, and nothing moved me to
activity. I missed him every moment that I was awake, and in my
condition I could not rally from the depression caused by the mental
void and grief.
Pages:
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141