It was not the sweet, simple child innocently beseeching that to-morrow might be fine for its holiday, or that Santa Claus would be generous; it was the cunning trader, fawning, flattering, propitiating, bribing with fulsome, sycophantic praise (an insult in itself), as well as burnt-offerings, working for his own success here and hereafter, and his enemy's confounding. It was the grovelling of the dog, without the dog's single-hearted love, stronger than even its fear or its sense of self-interest. What an attitude for one whom God had made after His own image--even towards his Maker! * * * * * The only permissible prayer was a prayer for courage or resignation; for that was a prayer turned inward, an appeal to what is best in ourselves--our honor, our stoicism, our self-respect. And for a small detail, grace before and after meals seemed to me especially self-complacent and iniquitous, when there were so many with scarcely ever a meal to say grace for. The only decent and proper grace was to give half of one's meal away--not, indeed, that I was in the habit of doing so! But at least I had the grace to reproach myself for my want of charity, and that was my only grace. * * * * * Fortunately, since we had no free-will of our own, the tendency that impelled us was upward, like the sparks, and bore us with it willy-nilly--the good and the bad, and the worst and the best. By seeing this clearly, and laying it well to heart, the motive was supplied to us for doing all we could in furtherance of that upward tendency--_pour aider le bon Dieu_--that we might rise the faster and reach Him the sooner, if He were! And when once the human will has been set going, like a rocket or a clock or a steam-engine, and in the right direction, what can it not achieve? We should in time control circumstance instead of being controlled thereby; education would day by day become more adapted to one consistent end; and, finally, conscience-stricken, we should guide heredity with our own hands instead of leaving it to blind chance; unless, indeed, a well-instructed paternal government wisely took the reins, and only sanctioned the union of people who were thoroughly in love with each other, after due and careful elimination of the unfit. Thus, cruelty should at least be put into harness, and none of its valuable energy wasted on wanton experiments, as it is by Nature. And thus, as the boy is father to the man, should the human race one day be father to--what? That is just where my speculations would arrest themselves; that was the X of a sum in rule of three, not to be worked out by Peter Ibbetson, Architect and Surveyor, Wharton Street, Pentonville. As the orang-outang is to Shakespeare, so is Shakespeare to ... X? As the female chimpanzee is to the Venus of Milo, so is the Venus of Milo to ... X? Finally, multiply these two X's by each other, and try to conceive the result!