But I found that a difference was made between my privileges in this matter and theirs, and this led to many discussions.  My parents said:  ’Whatever you need, tell Him and He will grant it, if it is His will.’  Very well; I had need of a large painted humming-top which I had seen in a shop-window in the Caledonian Road.  Accordingly, I introduced a supplication for this object into my evening prayer, carefully adding the words:  ‘If it is Thy will.’  This, I recollect, placed my Mother in a dilemma, and she consulted my Father.  Taken, I suppose, at a disadvantage, my Father told me I must not pray for ’things like that’.  To which I answered by another query, ‘Why?’ And I added that he said we ought to pray for things we needed, and that I needed the humming-top a great deal more than I did the conversion of the heathen or the restitution of Jerusalem to the Jews, two objects of my nightly supplication which left me very cold.

I have reason to believe, looking back upon this scene conducted by candlelight in the front parlour, that my Mother was much baffled by the logic of my argument.  She had gone so far as to say publicly that no ’things or circumstances are too insignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth’.  I persisted that this covered the case of the humming-top, which was extremely significant to me.  I noticed that she held aloof from the discussion, which was carried on with some show of annoyance by my Father.  He had never gone quite so far as she did in regard to this question of praying for material things.  I am not sure that she was convinced that I ought to have been checked; but he could not help seeing that it reduced their favourite theory to an absurdity for a small child to exercise the privilege.  He ceased to argue, and told me peremptorily that it was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, and that I must do it no more.  His authority, of course, was Paramount, and I yielded; but my faith in the efficacy of prayer was a good deal shaken.  The fatal suspicion had crossed my mind that the reason why I was not to pray for the top was because it was too expensive for my parents to buy, that being the usual excuse for not getting things I wished for.

It was about the date of my sixth birthday that I did something very naughty, some act of direct disobedience, for which my Father, after a solemn sermon, chastised me, sacrificially, by giving me several cuts with a cane.  This action was justified, as everything he did was justified, by reference to Scripture ’Spare the rod and spoil the child’.  I suppose that there are some children, of a sullen and lymphatic temperament, who are smartened up and made more wide-awake by a whipping.  It is largely a matter of convention, the exercise being endured (I am told) with pride by the infants of our aristocracy, but not tolerated by the lower classes.  I am afraid that I proved my inherent vulgarity by being made, not contrite or humble, but furiously angry by this caning.