“But I thought Heaven was a place where you went to,” I answered; “not where you comed from.” I know I said “comed,” for I remember that at this period my irregular verbs were a bewildering anxiety to my poor mother. “Comed” and “goned,” which I had worked out for myself, were particular favourites of mine. Mrs. Fursey passed over my grammar in dignified silence. She had been pointedly requested not to trouble herself with that part of my education, my mother holding that diverging opinions upon the same subject only confused a child. “You came from Heaven,” repeated Mrs. Fursey, “and you'll go to Heaven--if you're good.” “Do all little boys and girls come from Heaven?” “So they say.” Mrs. Fursey's tone implied that she was stating what might possibly be but a popular fallacy, for which she individually took no responsibility. “And did you come from Heaven, Mrs. Fursey?” Mrs. Fursey's reply to this was decidedly more emphatic. “Of course I did. Where do you think I came from?” At once, I am ashamed to say, Heaven lost its exalted position in my eyes. Even before this, it had puzzled me that everybody I knew should be going there--for so I was always assured; now, connected as it appeared to be with the origin of Mrs. Fursey, much of its charm disappeared. But this was not all. Mrs. Fursey's information had suggested to me a fresh grief. I stopped not to console myself with the reflection that my fate had been but the fate of all little boys and girls. With a child's egoism I seized only upon my own particular case. “Didn't they want me in Heaven then, either?” I asked. “Weren't they fond of me up there?” The misery in my voice must have penetrated even Mrs. Fursey's bosom, for she answered more sympathetically than usual. “Oh, they liked you well enough, I daresay. I like you, but I like to get rid of you sometimes.” There could be no doubt as to this last. Even at the time, I often doubted whether that six o'clock bedtime was not occasionally half-past five. The answer comforted me not. It remained clear that I was not wanted either in Heaven nor upon the earth. God did not want me. He was glad to get rid of me. My mother did not want me. She could have done without me. Nobody wanted me. Why was I here? And then, as the sudden opening and shutting of the door of a dark room, came into my childish brain the feeling that Something, somewhere, must have need of me, or I could not be, Something I felt I belonged to and that belonged to me, Something that was as much a part of me as I of It. The feeling came back to me more than once during my childhood, though I could never put it into words. Years later the son of the Portuguese Jew explained to me my thought. But all that I myself could have told was that in that moment I knew for the first time that I lived, that I was I. The next instant all was dark again, and I once more a puzzled little boy, sitting by a nursery fire, asking of a village dame questions concerning life.