And that seems the real.
But the same child caught up on the hands of chance is carried into another atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habit fastens on him--fair, decent, and temperate habit--and he grows up like the Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron.

Which is the real?
Is the instinct for the gin killed, or covered?
Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is it the real life?
"Who knows! Here am I, born with a question in my mouth, with the ever-present 'non possumus' in me.

Here am I, to whom life was one poor futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed; to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; to whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction, an intimation, into my soul--not one.

To me God always seemed a being of dreams, the creation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing cry of the victims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a sling into this field where men believe in God as a present and tangible being; who reply to all life's agonies and joys and exultations with the words 'C'est le bon Dieu.' And what shall I become?
Will habit do its work, and shall I cease to be me?
Shall I, in the permanency of habit, become like unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole cause; whose only wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of forgiveness and safety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind belief or an inherited predisposition--which?
This stingy, hard, unhappy man--how should he know what I am denied! Or does he know?
Is it all illusion?
If there is a God who receives such devotion, to the exclusion of natural demand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor 'let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify his Father which is in heaven ?' That is it.

Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man?
Therefore, wherefore, God?
Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" Seated on his bench in the shop, with his eyes ever and anon raised towards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words.
Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailor came in to supper.