John Trevor
Published: 2015-07-03
Total Pages: 328
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Excerpt from My Quest for God Frontispiece. - My Wife. From a photograph taken in New York a few months before our marriage. Page 1. - My Paternal Grandfather. These portraits of my grandparents are given to illustrate what I have said of my maternal and paternal heritage, which needs some qualification, however. For this grandfather was intensely sensitive to music, a sensitiveness which runs in his family, though with no developed ear for it. On the other hand, I am aware of no susceptibility to music in my mother's family. My inability to live alone may also be traced to this grandfather, who married again in his old age, because he found life with only the semblance of home unendurable, arrangements made for his comfort notwithstanding. As I think of myself, I feel grateful to this somewhat severe old man, that neither could he accept the lines which relatives so thoughtfully laid down for him. A spark of humour there must have been, after all, somewhere in the depths of him. Did he not shock his second wife with his inability to refrain from getting up from the tea-table and dancing to the music of a hurdy-gurdy - its strains so irresistible! A kind of unripened humour, I imagine, waiting for further development in later generations, who will laugh the more soundly for all this involved in him. Yet how shocked he was when he found us climbing over the bald head of our maternal grandfather, coming upon us suddenly in our riot, and lecturing us sternly on our want of respect for old age! It is all very funny. But how darkly and deeply we are rooted! - And I learn that my dear old grandmothers novel reading was carried to almost blamable extremes in one so pious! She was deaf, and made her deafness an excuse for reading even at meals, though grudging none the less to lose anything of the conversation, and being rather exacting in expecting people to turn their faces to her in talking. And her needlework was neglected, too! She would set herself about it - with a novel, innocently closed, not too far from her basket - would, after a few stitches, take it up, just to see what it was about - but the needlework would somehow slip from her hands, the novel thenceforth the real thing for her, absorbing her entirely. Dear old folk! I thank God for your failings, blended as they were with such virtues! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
