I gradually realized that many plans my father seemed to believe he would carry out could never come to pass. I knew that for a long time he had talked of building a new mill. True, he did not say when or how,—but he surely would sometime build the mill. At first I used to think he would; and we often talked of the mill, and just where it would stand, and how many run of stones the trade demanded, and whether we should have an engine to use when there was no water in the dam. But gradually I came to realize that my father never would live to build another mill, and that doubtless no one else would replace the one he had run so long. Yet he kept talking of the mill, as if it would surely come. Nature, after all, is not quite so brutal as she might be. However old and gray and feeble her children grow, she never lets them give up hope until the last spark of life has flown.
Even when my father talked with less confidence of the mill, he was sure to build a new water-wheel, for the old one had turned over and over so many times that there was scarce a sound place no matter where it turned. But this, too, I slowly found would never be; yet after a while I grew to encouraging him in his illusions of what he would sometime do, and even in his wilder and fonder illusions of what I would sometime do. Gradually I knew that he stooped more and rested oftener, and that his face was whiter; and I forgot his age, and never under any circumstances would let anyone tell me how old he was.
As I myself grew older, I came to have a stricter feeling of right and wrong,—to see clearly the sharp lines that separate the good and the bad, to grow hard and unforgiving and more intolerant of sin. But this, like the measles, whooping-cough, and other childish complaints, I luckily lived through. It is one of the errors of childhood to believe in sin, to see clearly the division between the good and the bad; and, strangely enough, teachers and parents encourage this illusion of the young. It is only as we grow into maturer years that we learn that there are no hard-and-fast laws of life, no straight clear lines between right and wrong. It is only our mistakes and failures and trials and sins that teach how really alike are all human souls, and how strong is the fate that overrides all earthly schemes. It is only life that makes us know that pity and charity and love are the chief virtues, and cruelty and hardness and selfishness the greatest sins.