From the moment it was agreed to part for a while, my father lost no opportunity to fill me with practical counsel, which, had my memory been a knapsack, I could have extracted at will for consolation and guidance. Unfortunately, for some things my memory was like a sieve: it retained the larger rules, but dropped the lesser ones; it preserved certain principles that had an affinity with my nature, but the multitude of minor ones that he had attempted to graft on my nature fell away, one by one. I was to be industrious, orderly, honourable, and steady, patient, and obliging. But something of these I would naturally have shown under any circumstances; but contact with real life discovers that these virtues are insufficient to keep us serene and immaculate, that the spirit of youth requires its sensibilities to be disciplined in many ways before it endures with sweetness and patience the spurns, and gibes, and mocks, of a rude world. It frequently meets conditions wherein nothing will avail but force, of a most strenuous kind. When the hour came for my father’s departure, Major Ingham and I accompanied him on board the Havana steamer. The last parting occurred in the state-room. At that moment, there was a wild fluttering of the heart; and something like an ugly cloud of presentiments, vague shadows of unknown evils to come, which started strong doubts of the wisdom of parting, came over me all at once. But, as usual, when clear expression was most needed, I was too tongue-tied for much speech, so many ideas thronged for utterance, and I turned away as though stricken dumb. Half an hour later, the steamer was only discernible by its trail of smoke. After he had gone, the flood-gates were opened, the feelings relieved themselves by torrents of words, and my loss and loneliness pressed hard upon the senses. Much as I had valued him, it needed this time of anguish to reveal fully what he had been to me. Then, pang after pang of poignant contrition pierced me through and through. I was dissatisfied with the sum of my conduct, with his own professions that I had been to him what he had hoped and wished. If he had but returned there and then, with the clear light that fell on my deficiencies now, how I should have striven to satisfy my own exact ideas of what was due to him! This little absence, with its unutterable remorse, had been more efficacious in showing me my own inwardness than all his unselfish generosity.