The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet river-port and the vultures lay in the wastepaper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

Mr Tench

Draw a dog in one line without lifting the chalk—and the answer, of course, is a sausage.

He named a random village: he was absorbed in his own portrait. There he sat among the white-starched dresses of the first communicants. Somebody had put a ring round his face to pick it out. There was another picture on the wall too—the gringo from San Antonio, Texas, wanted for murder and bank robbery.

‘Of course,’ Mr Lehr said, ‘my sister and I are Lutherans. We don’t hold with your Church, father. Too much luxury, it seems to me, while the people starve.’ Miss Lehr said, ‘Now, dear, it isn’t the father’s fault.’ ‘Luxury?’ the priest asked. He stood by the earthenware jar, glass in hand, trying to collect his thoughts, staring out over the long peaceful glassy slopes. ‘You mean …’ Perhaps Mr Lehr was right; he had lived very easily once and here he was, already settling down to idleness again.

‘But I’m not a saint,’

What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead—soon he wouldn’t even be a memory—perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation—even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.