Percivale was at the
house every day, always ready to make himself useful. My wife bore up
wonderfully. As yet the much greater catastrophe had come far short of the
impression made by the less. When quieter hours should come, however, I
could not help fearing that the place would be dreadfully painful to
all but the younger ones, who, of course, had the usual child-gift of
forgetting. The servants--even Walter--looked thin and anxious.
That Saturday night I found myself, as I had once or twice found myself
before, entirely unprepared to preach. I did not feel anxious, because I
did not feel that I was to blame: I had been so much occupied. I had again
and again turned my thoughts thitherward, but nothing recommended itself to
me so that I could say "I must take that;" nothing said plainly, "This is
what you have to speak of."
As often as I had sought to find fitting matter for my sermon, my mind
had turned to death and the grave; but I shrunk from every suggestion, or
rather nothing had come to me that interested myself enough to justify me
in giving it to my people.
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