I am hardly furnished with counsel fitting the circumstances." Of course, I had not expected he would be; but the mere relief of communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet consecrated--the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not be again diffused--had done me good.

I was already solaced.
"Must I go, father ?" I asked of him as he sat silent.
"My daughter," he said kindly--and I am sure he was a kind man: he had a compassionate eye--"for the present you had better go: but I assure you your words have struck me.

Confession, like other things, is apt to become formal and trivial with habit.

You have come and poured your heart out; a thing seldom done.

I would fain think your case over, and take it with me to my oratory.