The most painful thing connected with his own superior culture was the spiritual distance it produced between him and his honest parents. Their relative positions were reversed. Father and mother looked up with wondering deference to their children. Like hens that have hatched ducks, they knew not what to make of their progeny, thus launching out on a fluid element, which they had never tried. But he perceived the distance between them far more clearly than they could. He could receive the whole of _their_ thought, but was constantly obliged to check the utterance of his own, from a consciousness that allusions the most common to him, would be quite unintelligible to them. “The butterfly may remember the grub, but the grub has no knowledge of the butterfly.” With Esther he had unalloyed pleasure of companionship; for though ignorant of the world, and deficient in culture, she was an intelligent listener, and it charmed him to see her grow continually under the influence of the sunshine he could bring to her. How he loved to teach her! How he longed to prove his gratitude by the consecration of all his faculties and means to her use! In little more than a year after he left college, a delightful change came over his prospects. A brother of the widow in whose family he had been tutor, was appointed ambassador to Spain, and through her influence he selected John Golding for his private secretary. Esther, true to her unselfish nature, urged him by all means to accept the offer. “When you were a little boy,” said she, “you were always eager to know about countries a great way off. But we little thought then that our cackling hens would ever bring you such a golden opportunity.” John’s satisfaction would have been complete, if he could have taken Esther with him to that balmy clime. But she had many objections to offer. She said her rustic manners unfitted her for the elegant circles in which he would move; and he replied that she would catch the tone of polished society far more readily than he could. She reminded him that their parents needed his assistance to repair the old dilapidated homestead, and to purchase cows; and that he had promised to devote to their use the first money he could spare. He sighed, and made no answer; for he felt that his pecuniary resources were altogether inadequate to his generous wishes. Again the question returned, “Why cannot women go abroad, and earn their own way in the world, as well as men?” The coming ages answered him, but he did not hear the prophecy.