Religion grew deep roots in me in the solitude of Africa, so that it became my mentor in civilization, my director, my spiritual guide. With religious conviction we can make real and substantial progress; it gives body, pith, and marrow; without it, so-called progress is empty and impermanent,--for without the thought of God we are tossed about on a sea of uncertainty; for what is our earth compared with the vast universe of worlds in immeasurable space? But above all the vastness of infinity, of which the thoughts of the wisest men can extend to but an infinitesimal fraction, is the Divine and Almighty Intellect which ordered all this; and to Him I turn,--the Source of the highest energy, the Generator of the principle of duty. In the adults’ ward at St. Asaph was a harmless imbecile, named John Holywell, who had been a resident of the house for about a score of years. He was now over fifty, and was likely to remain until his body was conveyed to a pauper’s grave. As his fate, so mine promised, except that I could pray and read. Tyranny of the grossest kind lashed and scowled at us every waking hour, but even Will Thomas possessed something that I had not. He had relations who occasionally visited him with gifts; but I was alone, none ever came to see me. I must have been twelve ere I knew that a mother was indispensable to every child. To most boys of twelve such a simple fact must have been obvious, but as my grandsire and nurse had sufficed for my earliest wants, the necessity for a mother had not been manifest to me. Now that I was told my mother had entered the house with two children, my first feeling was one of exultation that I also had a mother, and a half-brother and a half-sister, and the next was one of curiosity to know what they were like, and whether their appearance portended a change in my condition. Francis came up to me during the dinner-hour, when all the inmates were assembled, and, pointing out a tall woman with an oval face, and a great coil of dark hair behind her head, asked me if I recognised her. ‘No, Sir,’ I replied. ‘What, do you not know your own mother?’ I started, with a burning face, and directed a shy glance at her, and perceived she was regarding me with a look of cool, critical scrutiny. I had expected to feel a gush of tenderness towards her, but her expression was so chilling that the valves of my heart closed as with a snap. ‘Honour thy father and mother,’ had been repeated by me a thousand times, but this loveless parent required no honour from me. After a few weeks’ residence my mother departed, taking her little boy with her, but the girl was left in the institution; and, such is the system prevailing, though we met in the same hall for months, she remained as a stranger to me.