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 as to what passages I was so interested in. Ten minutes later, on my knees in my small, candle-lit bedroom, I was lying to my God of a tremendous love I had begun to feel for Him; but in spite of this I passed an abominable night. In the morning I continued my miserable hypocrisy, grovelling before this frightful Deity for Whom I had developed so sudden and demonstrative an affection, and Whom, at the same time, I begged naively not to come. Gradually, but not for several days, these terrors faded, receiving their death-blow when my father told me that all Jews must return to Jerusalem before the last day. Now there was a Jewish family living at Castlewellan, whom I thought I could keep my eye on, and as I had heard nothing of their moving I felt fairly safe.

Very quickly I became more emancipated as I began to think things out for myself, and a year later I could laugh at these early fears. My father told me a crude anecdote which he had read, I think, in Mark Pattison's "Memoirs." A man in a public-house in Leicestershire had used the oath, "God strike me blind," and instantly he had been struck blind by a flash of lightning. On becoming converted he had recovered his sight while taking the Sacrament. This edifying tale was, I believe, vouched for by a friend and disciple of Cardinal Newman's, but to me, I confess, it seemed as stupid and revolting as anything I had ever heard. My father declared it to be true, yet I secretly doubted it, and that afternoon, in my own room, standing by the window, I said aloud, and very deliberately," God strike me blind! God strike me blind!" I waited with a mingled trepidation and incredulity, as if I had thrown some mysterious bomb into the unknown. A sea-gull flew past the window, white against the dark autumn sky: the leaves of the Virginian creeper trembled and grew still. I said again and in a louder voice, "God strike me blind!