answer, and a few incoherent fragments of others. Moreover, he
found his mind so confused and incapable of continuous or
concentrated effort, that he could not even keep "man's chief end"
and the rosined end between his fingers from twisting up together in
the most extraordinary manner. Yet if the child but "had the
question," he might get some good of it. The hour might come when
he would say, "My father taught me that!" -- who could tell? And he
knew he had the words correct, wherever he had dropped their
meaning. For the sake of Gibbie's immortal part, therefore, he
would repeat the answer to that first, most momentous of questions,
over and over as he worked, in the hope of insinuating something -- he
could not say what -- into the small mental pocket of the innocent.
The first, therefore, and almost the only words which Gibbie heard
from his father's lips that morning, were these, dozens of times
repeated -- "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for
ever." But so far was Gibbie from perceiving in them any meaning,
that even with his father's pronunciation of chief end as chifenn,
they roused in his mind no sense or suspicion of obscurity. The
word stuck there, notwithstanding; but Gibbie was years a man before
he found out what a chifenn was. Where was the great matter? How
many who have learned their catechism and deplore the ignorance of
others, make the least effort to place their chief end even in the
direction of that of their creation? Is it not the constant
thwarting of their aims, the rendering of their desires futile, and
their ends a mockery, that alone prevents them and their lives from
proving an absolute failure? Sir George, with his inveterate,
consuming thirst for whisky, was but the type of all who would gain
their bliss after the scheme of their own fancies, instead of the
scheme of their existence; who would build their house after their
own childish wilfulness instead of the ground-plan of their being.