For once before he had struggled and been so rewarded.
That was in his eighteenth year when he awoke to the glories of free thought, and knew himself a victim to the Moloch of the Sabbath, to which fathers sacrifice their children.

The proprietor of the fancy goods was a Jew, and moreover closed on Saturdays.

But for this anachronism of keeping Saturday holy when you had Sunday also to laze on, Daniel felt a hundred higher careers would have been open to him.
Later, when free thought waned (it was after Daniel had met Bessie), although he never returned to his father's narrowness, he found the abhorred Sabbath sanctifying his life.

It made life a conscious voluntary sacrifice to an ideal, and the reward was a touch of consecration once a week.

Daniel could not have described these things, nor did he speak of them, which was a pity.