But, no matter how much he considered the question, he came no nearer to a solution of it.
He would go out to the fields that lay on the shores of the Lough, going one day to this side, and another day to that, and lie down in the sunshine and dream of a brilliant career. He might go into parliament and become a great statesman, like that man, Lord Salisbury, who had come to Belfast once during the Home Rule agitation. Or he might turn Nationalist and divert himself by roaring in the House of Commons against the English! He wished that he could write poetry ... if he could write poetry, he might become famous. There was an old exercise book at home, full of poems that he had made up when he was much younger, about Ireland and the Pope and Love and Ballyards ... but they were poor things, he knew, although Mr. Cairnduff, to whom he had shown them, had said that, considering the age John was when he wrote them, they might have been a great deal worse. Mr. Cairnduff had given generous praise to a long poem on the election of a Nationalist for the city of Derry, beginning with this wail:
_Oh, Derry, Derry, what have you done? Sold your freedom to Home Rule's son!_
but neither Uncle William nor Uncle Matthew had had much to say for it. Uncle William said that his father would not have liked to think of his son writing a poem full of sentiments of that sort, and Uncle Matthew went upstairs to the attic and brought down, a copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ and presented it to him. But Mrs. MacDermott was pleased in a queer way. She hoped he was not going to take up politics, but she was glad that he was not a Home Ruler!
Sometimes, when he had been much younger than he now was ... John always thought of himself as a man of great age ... he had resolved that he would become a writer; but although he began many stories and solemn books ... there was one called, _The Errors of Rome_ in which the Papists were to be finally and conclusively exposed ... none of them were ever finished. Then had come a phase of preaching. His mother read the _Christian Herald_ every week, and John would get a table cloth, and wrap it round himself to represent a surplice ... for the Church of Ireland was more decorative than the Presbyterian Church ... and deliver the sermons of Dr. Talmage and Mr. Spurgeon in a loud sing-song voice that greatly delighted Mrs. MacDermott. That, too, had passed, very swiftly indeed, because of the alarming discovery that he was an atheist! He would never forget the sensation he had created in school when he had suddenly turned to Willie Logan and said, "Willie, I don't believe there's a God at all. It's all a catch!..."