“I know,” said his father gently, “thou art one of great projects.” “I had forgotten, O my father,” said the boy, a little timorously, “that I had not revealed them unto you.” “Pray do so, my beloved,” said the man softly. The boy faltered. A shy blush overspread the pallor of his cheeks. “I am to be one of the great ones of the earth, my father,” he said, with the sensitive gaze of a girl. “Truly,” said his father, with a glance of grave tenderness; “destiny declared it so in the hour that you were born. And I doubt not you will be called to great endeavours.” “Oh yes, my father,” said the boy, with strange simplicity. “I am to walk the path of heroes.” The white-haired man averted his glance. “It is for that reason I must be well found in knowledge, my father,” said the boy. “True, beloved one,” said the man through pale lips. “And the meaning of every thing, my father,” said the boy; “bird, beast and reptile, and the moon and stars, and why the street-persons walk the streets of the great city; and why the earth is so many-coloured; and why the sky is so near and yet so far off; and why when you clutch the air there is nothing in your hand. Must not such as I know all this, my father?” “True.” “And why a man has two legs, and a horse four, and a crocodile I know not how many, and why a serpent crawls upon its belly.” “True, true,” said his father. “But I fear, beloved one, that all this knowledge is not to be acquired in this little room of ours. If you wish to learn the meaning of all things, will you not have to go to school?” A shiver passed through the boy’s frame. His face had the pallor of great fear. “Dost thou mean, O my father,” he said, “that I must leave this little room of ours and go out among the street-persons in the endless streets of the great city?” “He who would understand the meaning of all things,” said his father, “must certainly go to school.” “Yet are not all things to be learned from the ancient authors, my father?” asked the boy eagerly. “Is not every secret contained in those hundreds of books in the shop that it is not yet given to my mind to grasp?” “There are many secrets, beloved, which no book has the power to reveal.” “Not even those among them, my father, which are wrought of the great souls of heroes?” said the boy in dismay. “Not even they.” “Yet have I not heard you say, my father, that there were few things they did not understand?” “True, beloved, but they had not the power to commit the whole of their knowledge to their writings.” “But did you not say, my father, that each of these great ones communed with his peers constantly and faithfully in his little inner room?” “What a prodigious memory is yours! But I ought to have made it clear to you that before these heroes could commune with their peers faithfully, they were compelled to leave their little rooms, adventure out among the streets of the great city and go to school.” “Then, my father, I also will go to school.”