The Confirmation seemed at the time a very short and perfunctory result of our preparation; and, as things were conducted or misconducted then, involved so much crowding and distress that I recollect very little but clinging to Clarence’s arm under a strong sense of my infirmities,—the painful attempt at kneeling, and the big outstretched lawn sleeves while the blessing was pronounced over six heads at once, and then the struggle back to the pew, while the silver-pokered apparitor looked grim at us, as though the maimed and halt had no business to get into the way. Yet this was a great advance upon former Confirmations, and the Bishop met my father afterwards, and inquired most kindly after his lame son. We were disappointed, and felt that we could not attain to the feelings in the Confirmation poem in the _Christian Year_—Mr. Castleford’s gift to me. Still, I believe that, though encumbered with such a drag as myself, Clarence, more than I did, ‘Felt Him how strong, our hearts how frail, And longed to own Him to the death.’ But the evangelical belief that dejection ought to be followed by a full sense of pardon and assurance of salvation somewhat perplexed and dimmed our Easter Communion. For one short moment, as Clarence turned to help my father lift me up from the altar-rail, I saw his face and eyes radiant with a wonderful rapt look; but it passed only too fast, and the more than ordinary glimpse his spiritual nature had had made him all the more sad afterwards, when he said, ‘I would give everything to know that there was any steadfastness in my purpose to lead a new life.’ ‘But you are leading a new life.’ ‘Only because there is no one to bully me,’ he said. Still, there had been no reproach against him all the time he had been at Frith and Castleford’s, when suddenly we had a great shock. Parties were running very high, and there were scurrilous papers about, which my father perfectly abhorred; and one day at dinner, when declaiming against something he had seen, he laid down strict commands that none should be brought into the house. Then, glancing at Clarence, something possessed him to say, ‘You have not been buying any.’ ‘No, sir,’ Clarence answered; but a few minutes later, when we were alone together, the others having left him to help me upstairs, he exclaimed, ‘Edward, what is to be done? I didn’t buy it; but there is one of those papers in my great-coat pocket. Pollard threw it on my desk; and there was something in it that I thought would amuse you.’ ‘Oh! why didn’t you say so?’ ‘There I am again! I simply could not, with his eye on me! Miserable being that I am! Oh, where is the spirit of ghostly strength?’