Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/289

One's views of life are not got from books alone, even if these—as I admit they may—contribute largely to preparing the mind for personal influence, or help to form it.… Of course,"—he stopped suddenly and continued his walk—"I understand … your home … your mother were not without influence on your development. I remember you mentioned something of the kind to me when I prepared you for ordination. Yes, your mother was a remarkable woman, full of enthusiastic self-sacrifice and zeal. I knew her, as I daresay I told you before, very well in my youth; we belonged to the same set. I felt her death very much. She was one of those people who are too good for this world; and what broke her heart was the lack, at a decisive point in her life, of that power of resistance, or doggedness, which is so often wanting in noble and self-sacrificing spirits. I am talking in this open way to you, because I know that you are aware of all this; I remember you mentioned unhappiness at home as one of the reasons for wishing to take up clerical work in the country. Nor do I suppose that I am betraying any secret when I say it was—only after the continued entreaties, nay, perhaps even threats—and during a moment of feminine depression—that your mother gave way on the question of her marriage, which must have gone against her whole nature; and it was doubtless the feeling that she had been faithless to her ideal, which threw an ever-