If it now be asked what prevented Horace Scudder from showing more fully this gift of higher literature and led to his acquiescing, through life, in a comparatively secondary function, I can find but one explanation, and that a most interesting one to us in New England, as illustrating the effect of immediate surroundings. His father, so far as I can ascertain, was one of those Congregationalists of the milder type who, while strict in their opinions, are led by a sunny temperament to be genial with their households and to allow them innocent amusements. The mother was a Congregationalist, firm but not severe in her opinions; but always controlled by that indomitable New England conscience of the older time, which made her sacrifice herself to every call of charity and even to refuse, as tradition says, to have window curtains in her house, inasmuch as many around her could not even buy blankets. Add to this the fact that Boston was then a great missionary centre, that several prominent leaders in that cause were of the Scudder family, and the house was a sort of headquarters for them, and that Horace Scudder’s own elder brother, whose memoirs he wrote, went as a missionary to India, dying at his post. Speaking of his father’s family in his memoir, he says of it, “In the conduct of the household, there was recognition of some more profound meaning in life than could find expression in mere enjoyment of living; while the presence of a real religious sentiment banished that counterfeit solemnity which would hang over innocent pleasure like a cloud” (Scudder’s “Life of David Coit Scudder,” page 4). By one bred in such an atmosphere of self-sacrifice, that quality may well be imbibed; it may even become a second nature, so that the instinctive demand for self-assertion may become subordinate until many a man ends in finding full contentment in doing perfectly the appointed work of every day. If we hold as we should that it is character, not mere talent, which ennobles life, we may well feel that there is something not merely pardonable, but ennobling, in such a habit of mind. Viewed in this light, his simple devotion to modest duty may well be to many of us rather a model than a thing to be criticised. XVII EDWARD ATKINSON EDWARD ATKINSON