Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/85

Rh devoted her life to her home and her children, washed, sewn, stinted, toiled for us all; until she has grown hard and old. Alas! my pretty sweetheart, poverty has broken us. As for me, I do not care to live. Live! I do not live—only when I sleep and dream. Then I have conquered, then I am strong. I tell you all, my son, that you may give up this dreaming; you must renounce your dreams, or they will become an agony to you. Take your place beside me, become commonplace, business-like, get on your office stool, marry a woman of your class, and have no other aim than to fill the mouths of her children, and rear them up to people the world. That is your lot."

"But I am going to marry Mollie," the boy said, whispering; for he did not understand.

"Marry no one," said the man, rising, "if you are a dreamer of dreams; but shut yourself away with them, and they will be sweeter than fame. The world cannot hurt you if you keep your dreams. But marry, and poverty will have her foot upon your neck and crush you."

"But I am going to be a great artist," the boy said, with the trill of tears in his voice;