The Impulses of Wounded Pride

But while his action did suggest hope, it also contained elements of discouragement. She did not find fault with what he proposed to do, but with the spirit in which he was entering on his most difficult task. His knowledge of the world was so crude and partial that he did not at all realize the herculean labor that he now became eager to attempt; and he was bent on accomplishing everything in a way that would minister to his own pride, and proposed to be under obligations to no one.

Mrs. Arnot, with her deep and long experience, knew how vitally important it is that human endeavor should be supplemented by divine aid, and she sighed deeply as she saw that the young man not only ignored this need, but did not even seem conscious of it. Religion was to him a matter of form and profession, to which he was utterly indifferent. The truth that God helps the distressed as a father helps and comforts his child, was a thought that then made no impression on him whatever. God and all relating to him were abstractions, and he felt that the emergency was too pressing, too imperative, for considerations that had no practical and immediate bearing upon his present success.

Indeed, such was his pride and self-confidence, that he refused to receive from Mrs. Arnot, and even from his mother, anything more than the privilege of going out empty-handed into the city which was to become the arena of his future exploits.