Once introduced, of course, the subject remained with us, and one after the other the dogmas were voted down as the mistaken ideas of men of a less enlightened age.  I forget who first started us with a second axiom.  It was one we often dwelt upon:  “A forgiving God would be the noblest work of man.”  We accepted as proven that each stage of civilization creates its own God, and that as man ascends and becomes better his conception of the Unknown likewise improves.  Thereafter we all became less theological, but I am sure more truly religious.  The crisis passed.  Happily we were not excluded from Mrs. McMillan’s society.  It was a notable day, however, when we resolved to stand by Miller’s statement, even if it involved banishment and worse.  We young men were getting to be pretty wild boys about theology, although more truly reverent about religion.

The first great loss to our circle came when John Phipps was killed by a fall from a horse.  This struck home to all of us, yet I remember I could then say to myself:  “John has, as it were, just gone home to England where he was born.  We are all to follow him soon and live forever together.”  I had then no doubts.  It was not a hope I was pressing to my heart, but a certainty.  Happy those who in their agony have such a refuge.  We should all take Plato’s advice and never give up everlasting hope, “alluring ourselves as with enchantments, for the hope is noble and the reward is great.”  Quite right.  It would be no greater miracle that brought us into another world to live forever with our dearest than that which has brought us into this one to live a lifetime with them.  Both are equally incomprehensible to finite beings.  Let us therefore comfort ourselves with everlasting hope, “as with enchantments,” as Plato recommends, never forgetting, however, that we all have our duties here and that the kingdom of heaven is within us.  It also passed into an axiom with us that he who proclaims there is no hereafter is as foolish as he who proclaims there is, since neither can know, though all may and should hope.  Meanwhile “Home our heaven” instead of “Heaven our home” was our motto.

During these years of which I have been writing, the family fortunes had been steadily improving.  My thirty-five dollars a month had grown to forty, an unsolicited advance having been made by Mr. Scott.  It was part of my duty to pay the men every month.[19] We used checks upon the bank and I drew my salary invariably in two twenty-dollar gold pieces.  They seemed to me the prettiest works of art in the world.  It was decided in family council that we could venture to buy the lot and the two small frame houses upon it, in one of which we had lived, and the other, a four-roomed house, which till then had been occupied by my Uncle and Aunt Hogan, who had removed elsewhere.  It was through the aid of my dear Aunt Aitken that we had been placed in the small house above the weaver’s shop, and it was now our turn to be able to ask her to return to