My father, being a Roman Catholic convert from the
Episcopalian Church, sent me to Notre Dame, Indiana, to be educated;
and there, to be sure, I read the "Lives of the Saints," aspired to be
a saint, and put pebbles in my small shoes to "mortify the flesh,"
because I was told that a good priest, Father Hudson--whom I all but
worshipped--used to do so. But even at Notre Dame, and much more in
Denver, I was homesick for the farm; and at last I was allowed to
return to Jackson to be cared for by my Protestant relatives. They
sent me to a Baptist school till I was seventeen. And when I was
recalled to Denver, because of the failure of my father's health, I
went to work to help earn for the household, with no strong attachment
for any church and with no recognized membership in any.
I suppose there is no one who does not look back upon his past and
wonder what he should have become in life if this or that crucial event
had not occurred to set his destiny. It seems to me that if it had not
been for the sudden death of my father I, too, might have found our
jungle beast a domestic tabby, and have fed it its prey without
realizing what I was about.
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