Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/185

Rh and Plato, and was broad enough to feel that he did Christ's words no dishonor when he read side by side with them at our morning prayers, the bravest and most religious words of men who, dying before Christ was born, yet saw and preached and lived the truths for whose sake Christ died. Ah, never did two boys sit at the feet of a wiser, stronger, sweeter teacher than Parson Allen. Our winter with him was worth more to us than all our after years in college. The lessons which we recited to him from text-books were the smallest part of the education he gave us. The Plato that I read to him I have forgotten. The Plato that he read to us is part of my life.

No less rare than his power of compelling us unconsciously to assimilate intellectual truths was his wife's power of giving us spiritual tests, and arousing in us a need of the highest living. We did not know, as the noiseless and gentle days slipped by, how much beauty they bore. We did not know in what their charm lay; but when we went into the presence of those who lived on a lower plane, for smaller ends, and with a less love of beauty, less depth of insight and feeling, we recognized the change in the atmosphere, as one does who comes suddenly from pure, outside air, into the confined and impure air of a house. I might write pages in the endeavor to explain this fact; to analyze the fine flavor which Dorothy Allen knew how to give, or, rather, could not help giving, to life; but my