' I wanted to be
liked, but the gift o' making myself liked was denied me. Yet, except
for being cast down into sin, I should have got over _that_
difficulty. I was on the right road there too. By enlarging my mind
I'd become more sympathetic. Though always a shy man really and truly,
I was learning to smother the false effects of my shyness."
Thinking thus of his mind, and his long-continued efforts to improve
its powers, he felt: "To go and extinguish all this is an awful thing
to have to do."
Still his determination was not altered. The mystery of that great
pageant, the mental life of William Dale, could not be permitted to
unfold itself any further. It must cease with a snap and a jerk, much
as when the electric current becomes too strong for a small
incandescent lamp and the bulb bursts, the filaments fuse, and all
that the lamp was showing disappears in darkness.
Yes, darkness without a glimmer of hope.
The finger of God--one can't get away from it. If it pushes you toward
the light, then rejoice exceedingly and with a loud voice; if it
pushes you into the dark, then swallow your tongue and go silently. It
seemed to Dale that he comprehended the whole scope and purport of his
doom, and that God's tremendous logic made the justice of his doom
unanswerable.
Pages:
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495