_Regarding His Son and Daughter_
My dear Cousin Wilton:--You have no idea how your letter took me back to
my merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, and
I was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I do
realize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did all
those early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of your
sensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of a
depressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and how
odd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents,
educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs or
methods of life than two people of a different race and era.
And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds of
generations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of both
father and mother contribute their different mentalities to the children
in a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation--the
truth of which impresses me more and more each year I live.
Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book on
reincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study the
theory?
You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damned
forever unless I turned to the way of salvation.
And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at your
birthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in a
waltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf,
much to the amusement of most of the company.
There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours.
You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazing
lake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket.