“We were climbing the little hill that like a crescent surrounded the green hollow, where lie the sleepers in their last sleep. On the summit, beneath the tall sighing pines, beside Emerson’s grave and within a stone’s throw of the graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau, we sat down and looked over the broad valley on the other side with the hills beyond. It was so quiet, so peaceful, just where a tired soul would love to have his last resting-place. “Mr. Everett was silent for a moment, as if to collect his thought; then, not looking at me, but afar off at the glimpses of blue between the swaying boughs, he began to speak, while I listened intently, every word fairly burning itself upon my memory. I did not rest that night until I had transmitted it all to my diary, to be read and reread over and over again. “‘You say that your mother’s religion is good enough for you,’ he began. ‘Well, Miss Brewster, when I think of the love and devotion, of the tender prayers and wise counsels that guided my boyish waywardness, when I think of the saintliness and unselfishness of my own sainted mother, I feel like saying that, too. If I could ever have one half her spirituality and Christlikeness, I should count my life a grand success. But I cannot say, and I know that truth and justice cannot compel me to say, that my mother’s theology would be enough for me, for her life was not the outcome of much in her theology. Her unquestioning faith in a literal Adam and Eve had nothing to do with her sweetness and devotion to duty. Nor was her unwavering belief in the sacredness of everything in the sixty-six Hebrew and Christian books the cause of her infinite patience and self-sacrifice. No; I want my mother’s religion, but I cannot accept all of her theology. I should count it a sin against God if I were to so stultify my intelligence as to do it. “‘You say, “Don’t you think all these people here had better be doing something practical?” What is more practical, I ask you, than for a human soul, to whom life is something more than meat and drink, to learn of that which more than all else concerns that soul’s welfare? And what can more help to this than the study of the wisest thought of all the ages on just these very problems of life and death, things present and things to come? As Novalis says, “Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, and Immortality.” I count that the most practical as well as the most precious help that can be offered to any questioning human soul who has come to see that man cannot live by bread alone, and whose sorest need is to know the meaning and the end of this life of ours.’ “‘But the Bible tells us that,’ I cried impatiently; ‘what more do we need?’