Feeble-mind, then, was of an old, a well-rooted and a wide-spread race.  The county of Indecision was full of that ancient stock.  They had intermarried in-and-in also till their small stature, their whitely look, the droop of their eye, and their weak leaky speech all made them to be easily recognised wherever they went.  It was Feeble-mind’s salvation that Death had knocked at his door every day from his youth up.  He was feeble in body as well as in mind; only the feebleness of his body had put a certain strength into his mind; the only strength he ever showed, indeed, was the strength that had its roots in a weak constitution at which sickness and death struck their dissolving blows every day.  To escape death, both the first and the second death, any man with a particle of strength left would run with all his might; and Feeble-mind had strength enough somewhere among his weak joints to make him say, “But this I have resolved on, to wit, to run when I can, to go when I cannot run, and to creep when I cannot go.  As to the main, I am fixed!”

2.  At the Wicket Gate pilgrim Feeble-mind met with nothing but the kindest and the most condescending entertainment.  It was the gatekeepers way to become all things to all men.  The gatekeeper’s nature was all in his name; for he was all Goodwill together.  No kind of pilgrim ever came wrong to Goodwill.  He never found fault with any.  Only let them knock and come in and he will see to all the rest.  The way is full of all the gatekeeper’s kind words and still kinder actions.  Every several pilgrim has his wager with all the rest that no one ever got such kindness at the gate as he got.  And even Feeble-mind gave the gatekeeper this praise—­“The Lord of the place,” he said, “did entertain me freely.  Neither objected he against my weakly looks nor against my feeble mind.  But he gave me such things as were necessary for my journey, and bade me hope to the end.”  All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise that Goodwill and his house ever earned.  For, to receive and to secure Feeble-mind as a pilgrim—­to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed beforehand—­to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all the house and in all its grounds so much as a straw over which he could stumble—­that was extraordinary attention, kindness, and condescension in Goodwill and all his good-willed house.  “Go on, go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind,” said Goodwill giving his hand to Mr. Fearing’s nephew, “go on:  keep your feeble mind open to the truth, and still hope to the end!”

3.  “As to the Interpreter’s House, I received much kindness there.”  That is all.  But in that short speech I think there must he hid no little shame and remorse.  No words could possibly be a severer condemnation of Feeble-mind than his own two or three so irrelevant words about the Interpreter’s house.  No doubt at all, Feeble-mind received kindness there;