"T' mornin' comes grand here, Miss Marg'et!" she said, lowering her voice.

Margaret said nothing in reply; the morning, she thought, was gray and cold, as her own life. She stood leaning on the low cart; some strange sympathy drew her to this poor wretch, dwarfed, alone in the world,—some tie of equality, which the odd childish face, nor the quaint air of content about the creature, did not lessen. Even when Lois shook down the patched skirt of her flannel frock straight, and settled the heaps of corn and tomatoes about her, preparatory for a start, Margaret kept her hand on the side of the cart, and walked slowly by it down the road. Once, looking at the girl, she thought with a half smile how oddly clean she was. The flannel skirt she arranged so complacently had been washed until the colors had run madly into each other in sheer desperation; her hair was knotted with a relentless tightness into a comb such as old women wear. The very cart, patched as it was, had a snug, cozy look; the masses of vegetables, green and crimson and scarlet, were heaped with a certain reference to the glow of color, Margaret noticed, wondering if it were accidental. Looking up, she saw the girl's brown eyes fixed on her face. They were singularly soft, brooding brown.

"Ye'r' goin' to th' mill, Miss Marg'et?" she asked, in a half whisper.

"Yes. You never go there now, Lois?"

"No, 'm."

The girl shuddered, and then tried to hide it in a laugh. Margaret walked on beside her, her hand on the cart's edge. Somehow this creature, that Nature had thrown impatiently aside as a failure, so marred, imperfect, that even the dogs were kind to her, came strangely near to her, claimed recognition by some subtile instinct.

Partly for this, and partly striving to forget herself, she glanced furtively at the childish face of the distorted little body, wondering what impression the shifting dawn made on the unfinished soul that was looking out so intently through the brown eyes. What artist sense had she,—what could she know—the ignorant huckster—of the eternal laws of beauty or grandeur? Nothing. Yet something in the girl's face made her think that these hills, this air and sky, were in fact alive to her,—real; that her soul, being lower, it might be, than ours, lay closer to Nature, knew the language of the changing day, of these earnest-faced hills, of the very worms crawling through the brown mould. It was an idle fancy; Margaret laughed at herself for it, and turned to watch the slow morning-struggle which Lois followed with such eager eyes.

The light was conquering, growing stronger. Up the gray arch the soft, dewy blue crept gently, deepening, broadening; below it, the level bars of light struck full on the sullen black of the west, and worked there undaunted, tinging it with crimson and imperial purple. Two or three coy mist-clouds, soon converted to the new allegiance, drifted giddily about, mere flakes of rosy blushes. The victory of the day came slowly, but sure, and then the full morning flushed out, fresh with moisture and light and delicate perfume. The bars of sunlight fell on the lower earth from the steep hills like pointed swords; the foggy swamp of wet vapor trembled and broke, so touched, rose at last, leaving patches of damp brilliance on the fields, and floated majestically up in radiant victor clouds, led by the conquering wind. Victory: it was in the cold, pure ether filling the heavens, in the solemn gladness of the hills. The great forests thrilling in the soft light, the very sleepy river wakening under the mist, chorded in with a grave bass to the rising anthem of welcome to the new life which God had freshly given to the world. From the sun himself, come forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, to the flickering raindrops on the road-side mullein, the world seemed to rejoice exultant in victory. Homely, cheerier sounds broke the outlined grandeur of the morning, on which Margaret looked wearily. Lois lost none of them; no morbid shadow of her own balked life kept their meaning from her.

The light played on the heaped vegetables in the old cart; the bony legs of the donkey trotted on with fresh vigor. There was not a lowing cow in the distant barns, nor a chirping swallow on the fence-bushes, that did not seem to include the eager face of the little huckster in their morning greetings. Not a golden dandelion on the road-side, not a gurgle of the plashing brown water from the well-troughs, which did not give a quicker pleasure to the glowing face. Its curious content stung the woman walking by her side. What secret of recompense had this poor wretch found?

"Your father is here, Lois," she said carelessly, to break the silence. "I saw him at the mill yesterday."

Her face kindled instantly.

"He's home, Miss Marg'et,—yes. An' it's all right wid him. Things allus do come right, some time," she added, in a reflective tone, brushing a fly off Sawney's ear.

Margaret smiled.

"Always? Who brings them right for you, Lois?"

"The Master," she said, turning with an answering smile.

Margaret was touched. The owner of the mill was not a more real verity to this girl than the Master of whom she spoke with such quiet knowledge.

"Are things right in the mill?" she said, testing her.

A shadow came on her face; her eyes wandered uncertainly, as if her weak brain were confused,—only for a moment.

"They'll come right!" she said, bravely. "The Master'll see to it!"

But the light was gone from her eyes; some old pain seemed to be surging through her narrow thought; and when she began to talk, it was in a bewildered, doubtful way.

"It's a black place, th' mill," she said, in a low voice. "It was a good while I was there: frum seven year old till sixteen. 'T seemed longer t' me 'n 't was. 'T seemed as if I'd been there allus,—jes' forever, yoh know. 'Fore I went in, I had the rickets, they say: that's what ails me. 'T hurt my head, they've told me,—made me different frum other folks."

She stopped a moment, with a dumb, hungry look in her eyes. After a while she looked at Margaret furtively, with a pitiful eagerness.

"Miss Marg'et, I think there is something wrong in my head. Did yoh ever notice it?"

Margaret put her hand kindly on the broad, misshapen forehead.

"Something is wrong everywhere, Lois," she said, absently.

She did not see the slow sigh with which the girl smothered down whatever hope had risen just then, nor the wistful look of the brown eyes that brightened into bravery after a while.

"It'll come right," she said, steadily, though her voice was lower than before.

"But the mill,"—Margaret recalled her.

"Th' mill,—yes. There was three of us,—father 'n' mother 'n' me,—'n' pay was poor. They said times was hard. They was hard times, Miss Marg'et!" she said, with a nervous laugh, the brown eyes strangely wandering.

"Yes, hard,"—she soothed her, gently.

"Pay was poor, 'n' many things tuk money." (Remembering the girl's mother, Margaret knew gin would have covered the "many things.") "Worst to me was th' mill. I kind o' grew into that place in them years: seemed to me like as I was part o' th' engines, somehow. Th' air used to be thick in my mouth, black wi' smoke 'n' wool 'n' smells. It 's better now there. I got stunted then, yoh know. 'N' th' air in th' alleys was worse, where we slep'. I think mebbe as 't was then I went wrong in my head. Miss Marg'et!"

Her voice went lower.

"'T isn't easy to think o' th' Master—down there, in them cellars. Things comes right—slow there,—slow."

Her eyes grew stupid, as if looking down into some dreary darkness.

"But the mill?"

The girl roused herself with a sharp sigh.

"In them years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th' work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,—allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th' hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin',—creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was,—very good. Ther' 's lots o' th' Master's people down there, out o' sight, that's so low they never heard His name: preachers don't go there. But He'll see to't. He'll not min' their cursin' o' Him, seein' they don't know His face, 'n' thinkin' He belongs to th' gentry. I knew it wud come right wi' me, when times was th' most bad. I knew"—

The girl was trembling now with excitement, her hands working together, her eyes set, all the slow years of ruin that had eaten into her brain rising before her, all the tainted blood in her veins of centuries of slavery and heathenism struggling to drag her down. But above all, the Hope rose clear, simple: the trust in the Master: and shone in her scarred face,—through her marred senses.

"I knew it wud come right, allus. I was alone then: mother was dead, and father was gone, 'n' th' Lord thought 't was time to see to me,—special as th' overseer was gettin' me an enter to th' poorhouse. So He sent Mr. Holmes along. Then it come right!"

Margaret did not speak. Even this mill-girl could talk of him, pray for him; but she never must take his name on her lips!

"He got th' cart fur me, 'n' this blessed old donkey, 'n' my room. Did yoh ever see my room, Miss Marg'et?"

Her face lighted suddenly with its peculiar childlike smile.

"No? Yoh'll come some day, surely? It's a pore place, yoh'll think; but it's got th' air,—th' air."

She stopped to breathe the cold morning wind, as if she thought to find in its fierce freshness the life and brains she had lost.

"Ther' 's places in them alleys 'n' dark holes, Miss Marg'et, like th' openin's to hell, with th' thick smells 'n' th' sights yoh'd see."

She went back with a terrible clinging pity to the Gehenna from which she had escaped. The ill of life was real enough to her,—a hungry devil down in those alleys and dens. Margaret listened, waking to the sense of a different pain in the world from her own,—lower deeps from which women like herself draw delicately back, lifting their gauzy dresses.

"Openin's to hell, they're like. People as come down to preach in them think that, 'pears to me,—'n' think we've but a little way to go, bein' born so near. It's easy to tell they thinks it,—shows in their looks. Miss Marg'et!"

Her face flashed.

"Well, Lois?"

"Th' Master has His people 'mong them very lowest, that's not for such as yoh to speak to. He knows 'em: men 'n' women starved 'n' drunk into jails 'n' work-houses, that'd scorn to be cowardly or mean,—that shows God's kindness, through th' whiskey 'n' thievin', to th' orphints or—such as me. Ther 's things th' Master likes in them, 'n' it'll come right," she sobbed, "it'll come right at last; they'll have a chance—somewhere."

Margaret did not speak; let the poor girl sob herself into quiet. What had she to do with this gulf of pain and wrong? Her own higher life was starved, thwarted. Could it be that the blood of these her brothers called against her from the ground? No wonder that the huckster-girl sobbed, she thought, or talked heresy. It was not an easy thing to see a mother drink herself into the grave. And yet—was she to blame? Her Virginian blood was cool, high-bred; she had learned conservatism in her cradle. Her life in the West had not yet quickened her pulse. So she put aside whatever social mystery or wrong faced her in this girl, just as you or I would have done. She had her own pain to bear. Was she her brother's keeper? It was true, there was wrong; this woman's soul lay shattered by it; it was the fault of her blood, of her birth, and Society had finished the work. Where was the help? She was free,—and liberty, Dr. Knowles said, was the cure for all the soul's diseases, and——

Well, Lois was quiet now,—ready with her childish smile to be drawn into a dissertation on Barney's vices and virtues, or a description of her room, where "th' air was so strong, 'n' the fruit 'n' vegetables allus stayed fresh,—best in this town," she said, with a bustling pride.

They went on down the road, through the corn-fields sometimes, or on the riverbank, or sometimes skirting the orchards or barn-yards of the farms. The fences were well built, she noticed,—the barns wide and snug-looking: for this county in Indiana is settled by New England people, as a general thing, or Pennsylvanians. They both leave their mark on barns or fields, I can tell you! The two women were talking all the way. In all his life Dr. Knowles had never heard from this silent girl words as open and eager as she gave to the huckster about paltry, common things,—partly, as I said, from a hope to forget herself, and partly from a vague curiosity to know the strange world which opened before her in this disjointed talk. There were no morbid shadows in this Lois's life, she saw. Her pains and pleasures were intensely real, like those of her class. If there were latent powers in her distorted brain, smothered by hereditary vice of blood, or foul air and life, she knew nothing of it. She never probed her own soul with fierce self-scorn, as this quiet woman by her side did;—accepted, instead, the passing moment, with keen enjoyment. For the rest, childishly trusted "the Master."

This very drive, now, for instance,—although she and the cart and Barney went through the same routine every day, you would have thought it was a new treat for a special holiday, if you had seen the perfect abandon with which they all threw themselves into the fun of the thing. Not only did the very heaps of ruby tomatoes, and corn in delicate green casings, tremble and shine as though they enjoyed the fresh light and dew, but the old donkey cocked his ears, and curved his scraggy neck, and tried to look as like a high-spirited charger as he could. Then everybody along the road knew Lois, and she knew everybody, and there was a mutual liking and perpetual joking, not very refined, perhaps, but hearty and kind. It was a new side of life for Margaret. She had no time for thoughts of self-sacrifice, or chivalry, ancient or modern, watching it. It was a very busy ride,—something to do at every farmhouse: a basket of eggs to be taken in, or some egg-plants, maybe, which Lois laid side by side, Margaret noticed,—the pearly white balls close to the heap of royal purple. No matter how small the basket was that she stopped for, it brought out two or three to put it in; for Lois and her cart were the event of the day for the lonely farm-houses. The wife would come out, her face ablaze from the oven, with an anxious charge about that butter; the old man would hail her from the barn to know "ef she'd thought toh look in th' mail yes'rday"; and one or the other was sure to add, "Jes' time for breakfast, Lois." If she had no baskets to stop for, she had "a bit o' business," which turned out to be a paper she had brought for the grandfather, or some fresh mint for the baby, or "jes' to inquire fur th' fam'ly."

As to the amount that cart carried, it was a perpetual mystery to Lois. Every day since she and the cart went into partnership, she had gone into town with a dead certainty in the minds of lookers-on that it would break down in five minutes, and a triumphant faith in hers in its unlimited endurance. "This cart'll be right side up fur years to come," she would assert, shaking her head. "It's got no more notion o' givin' up than me nor Barney,—not a bit." Margaret had her doubts,—and so would you, if you had heard how it creaked under the load,—how they piled in great straw panniers of apples: black apples with yellow hearts,—scarlet veined, golden pippin apples, that held the warmth and light longest,—russet apples with a hot blush on their rough brown skins,—plums shining coldly in their delicate purple bloom,—peaches with the crimson velvet of their cheeks aglow with the prisoned heat of a hundred summer days.

I wish with all my heart some artist would paint me Lois and her cart! Mr. Kitts, the artist in the city then, used to see it going past his room out by the coal-pits every day, and thought about it seriously. But he had his grand battle-piece on hand then,—and after that he went the way of all geniuses, and died down into colorer for a photographer. He met them, that day, out by the stone quarry, and touched his hat as he returned Lois's "Good-morning," and took a couple of great papaws from her. She was a woman, you see, and he had some of the schoolmaster's old-fashioned notions about women. He was a sickly-looking soul. One day Lois had heard him say that there were papaws on his mother's place in Ohio; so after that she always brought him some every day. She was one of those people who must give, if it is nothing better than a Kentucky banana.

After they passed the stone quarry, they left the country behind them, going down the stubble-covered hills that fenced in the town. Even in the narrow streets, and through the warehouses, the strong, dewy air had quite blown down and off the fog and dust. Morning (town morning, to be sure, but still morning) was shining in the red window-panes, in the tossing smoke up in the frosty air, in the very glowing faces of people hurrying from market with their noses nipped blue and their eyes watering with cold. Lois and her cart, fresh with country breath hanging about them, were not so out of place, after all. House-maids left the steps half-scrubbed, and helped her measure out the corn and beans, gossiping eagerly; the newsboys "Hi-d!" at her in a friendly, patronizing way; women in rusty black, with sharp, pale faces, hoisted their baskets, in which usually lay a scraggy bit of flitch, on to the wheel, their whispered bargaining ending oftenest in a low "Thank ye, Lois!"—for she sold cheaper to some people than they did in the market.

Lois was Lois in town or country. Some subtile power lay in the coarse, distorted body, in the pleading child's face, to rouse, wherever they went, the same curious, kindly smile. Not, I think, that dumb, pathetic eye, common to deformity, that cries, "Have mercy upon me, O my friend, for the hand of God hath touched me!"—a deeper, mightier charm, rather: a trust down in the fouled fragments of her brain, even in the bitterest hour of her bare, wretched life,—a faith, faith in God, faith in her fellow-man, faith in herself. No human soul refused to answer its summons. Down in the dark alleys, in the very vilest of the black and white wretches that crowded sometimes about her cart, there was an undefined sense of pride in protecting this wretch whose portion of life was more meagre and low than theirs. Something in them struggled up to meet the trust in the pitiful eyes,—something which scorned to betray the trust,—some Christ-like power, smothered, dying, under the filth of their life and the terror of hell. Not lost. If the Great Spirit of love and trust lives, not lost!

Even in the cold and quiet of the woman walking by her side the homely power of the poor huckster was not weak to warm or to strengthen. Margaret left her, turning into the crowded street leading to the part of the town where the factories lay. The throng of anxious-faced men and women jostled and pushed, but she passed through them with a different heart from yesterday's. Somehow, the morbid fancies were gone; she was keenly alive; the homely real life of this huckster had fired her, touched her blood with a more vital stimulus than any tale of crusader. As she went down the crooked maze of dingy lanes, she could hear Lois's little cracked bell far off: it sounded like a Christmas song to her. She half smiled, remembering how sometimes in her distempered brain the world had seemed a gray, dismal Dance of Death. How actual it was to-day,—hearty, vigorous, alive with honest work and tears and pleasure! A broad, good world to live and work in, to suffer or die, if God so willed it,—God, the good! She entered the vast, dingy factory; the woollen dust, the clammy air of copperas were easier to breathe in; the cramped, sordid office, the work, mere trifles to laugh at; and she bent over the ledger with its hard lines in earnest good-will, through the slow creeping hours of the long day. She noticed that the unfortunate chicken was making its heart glad over a piece of fresh earth covered with damp moss. Dr. Knowles stopped to look at it when he came, passing her with a surly nod.

"So your master's not forgotten you," he snarled, while the blind old hen cocked her one eye up at him.

Pike, the manager, had brought in some bills.

"Who's its master?" he said, curiously, stopping by the door.

"Holmes,—he feeds it every morning."

The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the quiet, cold face bending over the desk, meantime.

Pike laughed.

"Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men."

Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip.

The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify.

"Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'"

The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled.

"If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here."

She looked up now, attentive.

"He came here to take my place in the mills,—buy me out,—articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,—no,—not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he's sold them at a high figure,—threw his heart in,—the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,—starved out, long ago."

The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Miss Herne is the lady,—my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit."

Nothing could be read on the cold still face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—worse than Orleans slaves. Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

"It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

"Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. He comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that—

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,—a clergyman, whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves," said the clergyman, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in West," said the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"—with a mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,—after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the quiet face of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If they're made out of the top of society, they get so refined, so idealized, that every particle flies off on its own special path to the sun, and the Community's broke; and if they're made of the lower mud, they keep going down, down together, —they live to drink and eat, and make themselves as near the brutes as they can. It isn't easy to believe, Sir, but it's true. I have seen it. I've seen every one of them the United States can produce. It's facts, Sir; and facts, as Lord Bacon says, are the basis of every sound speculation.'"

The last sentence was slowly brought out, as quotations were not exactly his forte, but, as he said afterwards,—"You see, that nailed the parson."

The parson nodded gravely.

"You'll find no such experiment in the Bible," threw in the young doctor, alluding to "serious things" as a peace-offering to his reverend friend.

"One, I believe," dryly.

"Well," broke in the farmer, folding up his wool, "that's neither here nor there. This experiment of Knowles's is like nothing known since the Creation. Plan of his own. He spends his days now hunting out the gallows-birds out of the dens in town here, and they're all to be transported into the country to start a new Arcadia. A few men and women like himself, but the bulk is from the dens, I tell you. All start fair, level ground, perpetual celibacy, mutual trust, honor, rise according to the stuff that's in them,—pah! it makes me sick!"

"Knowles's inclination to that sort of people is easily explained," spitefully lisped the doctor. "Blood, Sir. His mother was a half-breed Creek, with all the propensities of the redskins to fire-water and 'itching palms.' Blood will out."

"Here he is," maliciously whispered the wool-man. "No, it's Holmes," he added, after the doctor had started into a more respectful posture, and glanced around frightened.

He, the doctor, rose to meet Holmes's coming footstep,—"a low fellah, but always sure to be the upper dog in the fight, goin' to marry the best catch," etc., etc. The others, on the contrary, put on their hats and sauntered away into the street.

So the day broadened hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old schoolmaster in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on the "Sirventes de Bertrand de Born." The day passed for him as did his life, half in simple-hearted deed, half in vague visions of a dead world, never to be real again. Joel, up in the barn by himself, worked through the long day in the old fashion,—pondering gravely (being of a religious turn) upon a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Clinche, reported in the "Gazette"; wherein that disciple of the meek Teacher invoked, as he did once a week, the curses of the law upon his political opponents, praying the Lord to sweep them immediately from the face of the earth. Which rendering of Christian doctrine was so much relished by Joel, and the other leading members of Mr. Clinche's church, that they hinted to him it might be as well to continue choosing his texts from Moses and the Prophets until the excitement of the day was over. The New Testament was,—well,—hardly suited for the emergency; did not, somehow, chime in with the lesson of the hour. I may remark, in passing, that this course of conduct so disgusted the High-Church rector of the parish, that he not only ignored all new devils, (as Mr. Carlyle might have called them,) but talked as if the millennium, were un fait accompli, and he had leisure to go and hammer at the poor dead old troubles of Luther's time. One thing, though, about Joel: while he was joining in Mr. Clinche's prayer for the "wiping out" of some few thousands, he was using up all the fragments of the hot day in fixing a stall for a half-dead old horse he had found by the road-side. Let us hope, that, even if the listening angel did not grant the prayer, he marked down the stall at least, as a something done for eternity.

Margaret, through the heat and stifling air, worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound came between,—a slow, quiet tread, passing through the long wooden corridor,—so firm and measured that it sounded like the monotonous beatings of a clock. She heard it through the noise in the far distance; it came slowly nearer, up to the door without,—passed it, going down the echoing plank walk. The girl sat quietly, looking out at the dead brick wall. The slow step fell on her brain like the sceptre of her master; if Knowles had looked in her face then, he would have seen bared the secret of her life. Holmes had gone by, unconscious of who was within the door. She had not seen him; it was nothing but a step she heard. Yet a power, the power of the girl's life, shook off all outward masks, all surface cloudy fancies, and stood up in her with a terrible passion at the sound; her blood burned fiercely; her soul looked out from her face, her soul as it was, as God knew it,—God and this man. No longer a cold, clear face; you would have thought, looking at it, what a strong spirit the soul of this woman would be, if set free in heaven or in hell. The man who held it in his power went on carelessly, not knowing that the mere sound of his step had raised it as from the dead. She, and her right, and her pain, were nothing to him now, she remembered, staring out at the taunting hot sky. Yet so vacant was the sudden life opened before her when he was gone, that, in the desperation of her weakness, her mad longing to see him but once again, she would have thrown herself at his feet, and let the cold, heavy step crush her life out,—as he would have done, she thought, choking down the icy smother in her throat, if it had served his purpose, though it cost his own heart's life to do it. He would trample her down, if she kept him back from his end; but be false to her, false to himself, that he would never be!

So the hot, long day wore on,—the red bricks, the dusty desk covered with wool, the miserable chicken peering out, growing sharper and more real in the glare. Life was no morbid nightmare now; her weak woman's heart found it actual and near. There was not a pain nor a want, from the dumb hunger in the dog's eyes that passed her on the street, to her father's hopeless fancies, that did not touch her sharply through her own loss, with a keen pity, a wild wish to help to do something to save others with this poor life left in her hands.

So the hot day wore on in the town and country; the old sun glaring down like some fierce old judge, intolerant of weakness or shams,—baking the hard earth in the streets harder for the horses' feet, drying up the bits of grass that grew between the boulders of the gutter, scaling off the paint from the brazen faces of the interminable brick houses. He looked down in that city as in every American town, as in these where you and I live, on the same countless maze of human faces going day by day through the same monotonous routine. Knowles, passing through the restless crowds, read with keen eye among them strange meanings by this common light of the sun,—meanings such as you and I might read, if our eyes were clear as his,—or morbid, it may be. A commonplace crowd like this in the street without: women with cold, fastidious faces, heavy-brained, bilious men, dapper 'prentices, draymen, prize-fighters, negroes. Knowles looked about him as into a seething caldron, in which the people I tell you of were atoms, where the blood of uncounted races was fused, but not mingled,—where creeds, philosophies, centuries old, grappled hand to hand in their death-struggle,—where innumerable aims and beliefs and powers of intellect, smothered rights and triumphant wrongs, warred together, struggling for victory.

Vulgar American life? He thought it a life more potent, more tragic in its history and prophecy, than any that has gone before. People called him a fanatic. It may be that he was one: yet the uncouth old man, sick in soul from some gnawing pain of his own life, looked into the depths of human loss with a mad desire to set it right. On the very faces of those who sneered at him he found some traces of failure or pain, something that his heart carried up to God with a loud and exceeding bitter cry. The voice of the world, he thought, went up to heaven a discord, unintelligible, hopeless,—the great blind world, astray since the first ages! Was there no hope, no help?

The hot sun shone down, as it had done for six thousand years; it shone on open problems in the lives of these men and women who walked the streets, problems whose end and beginning no eye could read. There were places where it did not shine: down in the fetid cellars, in the slimy cells of the prison yonder: what riddles of human life lay there he dared not think of. God knows how the man groped for the light,—for any voice to make earth and heaven clear to him.

So the hot, long day wore on, for all of them. There was another light by which the world was seen that day, rarer than the sunshine, purer. It fell on the dense crowds,—upon the just and the unjust. It went into the fogs of the fetid dens from which the coarser light was barred, into the deepest mires where a human soul could wallow, and made them clear. It lighted the depths of the hearts whose outer pain and passion men were keen to read in the unpitying sunshine, and bared in those depths the feeble gropings for the right, the loving hope, the unuttered prayer. No kindly thought, no pure desire, no weakest faith in a God and heaven somewhere could be so smothered under guilt that this subtile light did not search it out, glow about it, shine through it, hold it up in full view of God and the angels,—lighting the world other than the sun had done for six thousand years. We have no name for the light: it has a name,—yonder. Not many eyes were clear to see its shining that day; and if they did, it was as through a glass, darkly. Yet it belonged to us also, in the old time, the time when men could "hear the voice of the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the day." It is God's light now alone.

Yet poor Lois caught faint glimpses, I think, sometimes, of its heavenly clearness. I think it was this light that made the burning of Christmas fires warmer for her than for others, that showed her all the love and outspoken honesty and hearty frolic which her eyes saw perpetually in the old warm-hearted world. That evening, as she sat on the step of her brown frame shanty, knitting at a great blue stocking, her scarred face and misshapen body very pitiful to the passers-by, it was this light that gave to her face its homely, cheery smile. It made her eyes quick to know the message in the depths of color in the evening sky, or even the flickering tints of the green creeper on the wall with its crimson cornucopias filled with hot sunshine. She liked clear, vital colors, this girl,—the crimsons and blues. They answered her, somehow. They could speak. There were things in the world that like herself were marred,—did not understand,—were hungry to know: the gray sky, the mud swamps, the tawny lichens. She cried sometimes, looking at them, hardly knowing why: she could not help it, with a vague sense of loss. It seemed at those times so dreary for them to be alive,—or for her. Other things her eyes were quicker to see than ours: delicate or grand lines, which she perpetually sought for unconsciously,—in the homeliest things, the very soft curling of the woollen yarn in her fingers, as in the eternal sculpture of the mountains. Was it the disease of her injured brain that made all things alive to her,—that made her watch, in her ignorant way, the grave hills, the flashing, victorious rivers, look pitifully into the face of some dingy mushroom trodden in the mud before it scarce had lived, just as we should look into human faces to know what they would say to us? Was it the weakness and ignorance that made everything she saw or touched nearer, more human to her than to you or me? She never got used to living as other people do; these sights and sounds did not come to her common, hackneyed. Why, sometimes, out in the hills, in the torrid quiet of summer noons, she had knelt by the shaded pools, and buried her hands in the great slumberous beds of water-lilies, her blood curdling in a feverish languor, a passioned trance, from which she roused herself, weak and tired.

She had no self-poised artist sense, this Lois,—knew nothing of Nature's laws. Yet sometimes, watching the dun sea of the prairie rise and fall in the crimson light of early morning, or, in the farms, breathing the blue air trembling up to heaven exultant with the life of bird and forest, she forgot the poor coarse thing she was, some coarse weight fell off, and something within, not the sickly Lois of the town, went out, free, like an exile dreaming of home.

You tell me, that, doubtless, in the wreck of the creature's brain, there were fragments of some artistic insight that made her thus rise above the level of her daily life, drunk with the mere beauty of form and color. I do not know,—not knowing how sham or real a thing you mean by artistic insight. But I do know that the clear light I told you of shone for this girl dimly through this beauty of form and color; and ignorant, with no words for her thoughts, she believed in it as the Highest that she knew. I think it came to her thus an imperfect language, (not an outward show of tints and lines, as to some artists,)—a language, the same that Moses heard when he stood alone, with nothing between his naked soul and God, but the desert and the mountain and the bush that burned with fire. I think the weak soul of the girl staggered from its dungeon, and groped through these heavy-browed hills, these color-dreams, through even the homely kind faces on the street, to find the God that lay behind. So the light showed her the world, and, making its beauty and warmth divine and near to her, the warmth and beauty became real in her, found their homely shadows in her daily life. So it showed her, too, through her vague childish knowledge, the Master in whom she believed,—showed Him to her in everything that lived, more real than all beside. The waiting earth, the prophetic sky, the coarsest or fairest atom that she touched was but a part of Him, something sent to tell of Him,—she dimly felt; though, as I said, she had no words for such a thought. Yet even more real than this. There was no pain nor temptation down in those dark cellars where she went that He had not borne,—not one. Nor was there the least pleasure came to her or the others, not even a cheerful fire, or kind words, or a warm, hearty laugh, that she did not know He sent it and was glad to do it. She knew that well! So it was that He took part in her humble daily life, and became more real to her day by day. Very homely shadows her life gave of His light, for it was His: homely, because of her poor way of living, and of the depth to which the heavy foot of the world had crushed her. Yet they were there all the time, in her cheery patience, if nothing more. To-night, for instance, how differently the surging crowd seemed to her from what it did to Knowles! She looked down on it from her high wood-steps with an eager interest, ready with her weak, timid laugh to answer every friendly call from below. She had no power to see them as types of great classes; they were just so many living people, whom she knew, and who, most of them, had been kind to her. Whatever good there was in the vilest face, (and there was always something,) she was sure to see it. The light made her poor eyes strong for that.

She liked to sit there in the evenings, being alone, yet never growing lonesome; there was so much that was pleasant to watch and listen to, as the cool brown twilight came on. If, as Knowles thought, the world was a dreary discord, she knew nothing of it. People were going from their work now,—they had time to talk and joke by the way,—stopping, or walking slowly down the cool shadows of the pavement; while here and there a lingering red sunbeam burnished a window, or struck athwart the gray boulder-paved street. From the houses near you could catch a faint smell of supper: very friendly people those were in these houses; she knew them all well. The children came out with their faces washed, to play, now the sun was down: the oldest of them generally came to sit with her and hear a story.

After it grew darker, you would see the girls in their neat blue calicoes go sauntering down the street with their sweethearts for a walk. There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from the coal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on their caps. After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps. Most likely they would call Lois down, or come over themselves, for they were the most sociable, coziest old couple you ever knew. There was a great stopping at Lois's door, as the girls walked past, for a bunch of the flowers she brought from the country, or posies, as they called them, (Sam never would take any to Jenny but "old man" and pinks,) and she always had them ready in broken jugs inside. They were good, kind girls, every one of them,—had taken it in turn to sit up with Lois last winter all the time she had the rheumatism. She never forgot that time,—never once.

Later in the evening you would see an old man coming along, close by the wall, with his head down,—a very dark man, with gray, thin hair,—Joe Yare, Lois's old father. No one spoke to him,—people always were looking away as he passed; and if old Mr. or Mrs. Polston were on the steps when he came up, they would say, "Good-evening, Mr. Yare," very formally, and go away presently. It hurt Lois more than anything else they could have done. But she bustled about noisily, so that he would not notice it. If they saw the marks of the ill life he had lived on his old face, she did not; his sad, uncertain eyes may have been dishonest to them, but they were nothing but kind to the misshapen little soul that he kissed so warmly with a "Why, Lo, my little girl!" Nobody else in the world ever called her by a pet name.

Sometimes he was gloomy and silent, but generally he told her of all that had happened in the mill, particularly any little word of notice or praise he might have received, watching her anxiously until she laughed at it, and then rubbing his hands cheerfully. He need not have doubted Lois's faith in him. Whatever the rest did, she believed in him; she always had believed in him, through all the dark, dark years, when he was at home, and in the penitentiary. They were gone now, never to come back. It had come right. She, at least, thought his repentance sincere. If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that they did, that would come right some day too, she would think, as she looked at the tired, sullen face of the old man bent to the window-pane, afraid to go out. They had very cheerful little suppers there by themselves in the odd, bare little room, as homely and clean as Lois herself.

Sometimes, late at night, when he had gone to bed, she sat alone in the door, while the moonlight fell in broad patches over the quiet square, and the great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the far sounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up her knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of the poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral in the city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far off into the blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, the warm, bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were, seemed to fade into the deep music, and make a part of it.

Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poor child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it. It humbled her. It made her meanness, her low, weak life so real to her! There was no pain nor hunger she had known that did not find a voice in its inarticulate cry. She! what was she? All the pain and wants of the world must be going up to God in that sound, she thought. There was something more in it,—an unknown meaning that her shattered brain struggled to grasp. She could not. Her heart ached with a wild, restless longing. She had no words for the vague, insatiate hunger to understand. It was because she was ignorant and low, perhaps; others could know. She thought her Master was speaking. She thought the unknown meaning linked all earth and heaven together, and made it plain. So she hid her face in her hands, and listened while the low harmony shivered through the air, unheeded by others, with the message of God to man. Not comprehending, it may be,—the poor girl,—hungry still to know. Yet, when she looked up, there were warm tears in her eyes, and her scarred face was bright with a sad, deep content and love.

So the hot, long day was over for them all,—passed as thousands of days have done for us, gone down, forgotten: as that long, hot day we call life will be over some time, and go down into the gray and cold. Surely, whatever of sorrow or pain may have made darkness in that day for you or me, there were countless openings where we might have seen glimpses of that other light than sunshine: the light of the great Tomorrow, of the land where all wrongs shall be righted. If we had but chosen to see it,—if we only had chosen!



CONCERNING PEOPLE WHO CARRIED WEIGHT IN LIFE.

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON THOSE WHO NEVER HAD A CHANCE.

You drive out, let us suppose, upon a certain day. To your surprise and mortification, your horse, usually lively and frisky, is quite dull and sluggish. He does not get over the ground as he is wont to do. The slightest touch of whip-cord, on other days, suffices to make him dart forward with redoubled speed; but upon this day, after two or three miles, he needs positive whipping, and he runs very sulkily with it all. By-and-by his coat, usually smooth and glossy and dry through all reasonable work, begins to stream like a water-cart. This will not do. There is something wrong. You investigate; and you discover that your horse's work, though seemingly the same as usual, is in fact immensely greater. The blockheads who oiled your wheels yesterday have screwed up your patent axles too tightly; the friction is enormous; the hotter the metal gets, the greater grows the friction; your horse's work is quadrupled. You drive slowly home, and severely upbraid the blockheads.

There are many people who have to go through life at an analogous disadvantage. There is something in their constitution of body or mind, there is something in their circumstances, which adds incalculably to the exertion they must go through to attain their ends, and which holds them back from doing what they might otherwise have done. Very probably that malign something exerted its influence unperceived by those around them. They did not get credit for the struggle they were going through. No one knew what a brave fight they were making with a broken right arm; no one remarked that they were running the race, and keeping a fair place in it, too, with their legs tied together. All they do, they do at a disadvantage. It is as when a noble race-horse is beaten by a sorry hack; because the race-horse, as you might see, if you look at the list, is carrying twelve pounds additional. But such men, by a desperate effort, often made silently and sorrowfully, may (so to speak) run in the race, and do well in it, though you little think with how heavy a foot and how heavy a heart. There are others who have no chance at all. They are like a horse set to run a race, tied by a strong rope to a tree, or weighted with ten tons of extra burden. That horse cannot run even poorly. The difference between their case and that of the men who are placed at a disadvantage is like the difference between setting a very near-sighted man to keep a sharp look-out and setting a man who is quite blind to keep that sharp look-out. Many can do the work of life with difficulty; some cannot do it at all. In short, there are PEOPLE WHO CARRY WEIGHT IN LIFE, and there are some WHO NEVER HAVE A CHANCE.

And you, my friend, who are doing the work of life well and creditably,—you who are running in the front rank, and likely to do so to the end, think kindly and charitably of those who have broken down in the race. Think kindly of him who, sadly overweighted, is struggling onwards away half a mile behind you; think more kindly yet, if that be possible, of him who, tethered to a ton of granite, is struggling hard and making no way at all, or who has even sat down and given up the struggle in dumb despair. You feel, I know, the weakness in yourself which would have made you break down, if sorely tried like others. You know there is in your armor the unprotected place at which a well-aimed or a random blow would have gone home and brought you down. Yes, you are nearing the winning-post, and you are among the first; but six pounds more on your back, and you might have been nowhere. You feel, by your weak heart and weary frame, that, if you had been sent to the Crimea in that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel, too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution, that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation. Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain great and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man that was a sinner. As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who was not!

* * * * *

There is no reckoning up the manifold impedimenta by which human beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified under the two heads of unfavorable influences arising out of the mental or physical nature of the human beings themselves, and unfavorable influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings are placed. You have known men who, setting out from a very humble position, have attained to a respectable standing, but who would have reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife. You have known men of lowly origin who had in them the makings of gentlemen, but whom this single malign influence has condemned to coarse manners and a frowzy, repulsive home for life. You have known many men whose powers are crippled and their nature soured by poverty, by the heavy necessity for calculating how far each shilling will go, by a certain sense of degradation that comes of sordid shifts. How can a poor parson write an eloquent or spirited sermon when his mind all the while is running upon the thought how he is to pay the baker or how he is to get shoes for his children? It will be but a dull discourse which, under that weight, will be produced even by a man who, favorably placed, could have done very considerable things. It is only a great genius here and there who can do great things, who can do his best, no matter at what disadvantage he may be placed; the great mass of ordinary men can make little headway with wind and tide dead against them. Not many trees would grow well, if watered daily (let us say) with vitriol. Yet a tree which would speedily die under that nurture might do very fairly, might even do magnificently, if it had fair play, if it got its chance of common sunshine and shower. Some men, indeed, though always hampered by circumstances, have accomplished much; but then you cannot help thinking how much more they might have accomplished, had they been placed more happily. Pugin, the great Gothic architect, designed various noble buildings; but I believe he complained that he never had fair play with his finest,—that he was always weighted by considerations of expense, or by the nature of the ground he had to build on, or by the number of people it was essential the building should accommodate. And so he regarded his noblest edifices as no more than hints of what he could have done. He made grand running in the race; but, oh, what running he could have made, if you had taken off those twelve additional pounds! I dare say you have known men who labored to make a pretty country-house on a site which had some one great drawback. They were always battling with that drawback, and trying to conquer it; but they never could quite succeed. And it remained a real worry and vexation. Their house was on the north side of a high hill, and never could have its due share of sunshine. Or you could not reach it but by climbing a very steep ascent; or you could not in any way get water into the landscape. When Sir Walter was at length able to call his own a little estate on the banks of the Tweed he loved so well, it was the ugliest, bleakest, and least interesting spot upon the course of that beautiful river; and the public road ran within a few yards of his door. The noble-hearted man made a charming dwelling at last; but he was fighting against Nature in the matter of the landscape round it; and you can see yet, many a year after he left it, the poor little trees of his beloved plantations contrasting with the magnificent timber of various grand old places above and below Abbotsford. There is something sadder in the sight of men who carried weight within themselves, and who, in aiming at usefulness or at happiness, were hampered and held back by their own nature. There are many men who are weighted with a hasty temper; weighted with a nervous, anxious constitution; weighted with an envious, jealous disposition; weighted with a strong tendency to evil speaking, lying, and slandering; weighted with a grumbling, sour, discontented spirit; weighted with a disposition to vaporing and boasting; weighted with a great want of common sense; weighted with an undue regard to what other people may be thinking or saying of them; weighted with many like things, of which more will be said by-and-by. When that good missionary, Henry Martyn, was in India, he was weighted with an irresistible drowsiness. He could hardly keep himself awake. And it must have been a burning earnestness that impelled him to ceaseless labor, in the presence of such a drag-weight as that. I am not thinking or saying, my friend, that it is wholly bad for us to carry weight,—that great good may not come of the abatement of our power and spirit which may be made by that weight. I remember a greater missionary than even the sainted Martyn, to whom the Wisest and Kindest appointed that he should carry weight, and that he should fight at a sad disadvantage. And the greater missionary tells us that he knew why that weight was appointed him to carry; and that he felt he needed it all to save him from a strong tendency to undue self-conceit. No one knows, now, what the burden was which he bore; but it was heavy and painful; it was "a thorn in the flesh." Three times he earnestly asked that it might be taken away; but the answer he got implied that he needed it yet, and that his Master thought it a better plan to strengthen the back than to lighten the burden. Yes, the blessed Redeemer appointed that St. Paul should carry weight in life; and I think, friendly reader, that we shall believe that it is wisely and kindly meant, if the like should come to you and me.

We all understand what is meant, when we hear it said that a man is doing very well, or has done very well, considering. I do not know whether it is a Scotticism to stop short at that point of the sentence. We do it, constantly, in this country. The sentence would be completed by saying, considering the weight he has to carry, or the disadvantage at which he works. And things which are very good, considering, may range very far up and down the scale of actual merit. A thing which is very good, considering, may be very bad, or may be tolerably good. It never can be absolutely very good; for, if it were, you would cease to use the word considering. A thing which is absolutely very good, if it have been done under extremely unfavorable circumstances, would not be described as very good, considering; it would be described as quite wonderful, considering, or as miraculous, considering. And it is curious how people take a pride in accumulating unfavorable circumstances, that they may overcome them, and gain the glory of having overcome them. Thus, if a man wishes to sign his name, he might write the letters with his right hand; and though he write them very clearly and well and rapidly, nobody would think of giving him any credit. But if he write his name rather badly with his left hand, people would say it was a remarkable signature, considering; and if he write his name very ill indeed with his foot, people would say the writing was quite wonderful, considering. If a man desire to walk from one end of a long building to the other, he might do so by walking along the floor; and though he did so steadily, swiftly, and gracefully, no one would remark that he had done anything worth notice. But if he choose for his path a thick rope, extended from one end of the building to the other, at a height of a hundred feet, and if he walk rather slowly and awkwardly along it, he will be esteemed as having done something very extraordinary: while if, in addition to this, he is blindfolded, and has his feet placed in large baskets instead of shoes, he will, if in any way he can get over the distance between the ends of the building, be held as one of the most remarkable men of the age. Yes, load yourself with weight which no one asks you to carry; accumulate disadvantages which you need not face, unless you choose; then carry the weight in any fashion, and overcome the disadvantages in any fashion; and you are a great man, considering: that is, considering the disadvantages and the weight. Let this be remembered: if a man is so placed that he cannot do his work, except in the face of special difficulties, then let him be praised, if he vanquish these in some decent measure, and if he do his work tolerably well. But a man deserves no praise at all for work which he has done tolerably or done rather badly, because he chose to do it under disadvantageous circumstances, under which there was no earthly call upon him to do it. In this case he probably is a self-conceited man, or a man of wrong-headed independence of disposition; and in this case, if his work be bad absolutely, don't tell him that it is good, considering. Refuse to consider. He has no right to expect that you should. There was a man who built a house entirely with his own hands. He had never learned either mason-work or carpentry: he could quite well have afforded to pay skilled workmen to do the work he wanted; but he did not choose to do so. He did the whole work himself. The house was finished; its aspect was peculiar. The walls were off the perpendicular considerably, and the windows were singular in shape; the doors fitted badly, and the floors were far from level. In short, it was a very bad and awkward-looking house: but it was a wonderful house, considering. And people said that it was so, who saw nothing wonderful in the beautiful house next it, perfect in symmetry and finish and comfort, but built by men whose business it was to build. Now I should have declined to admire that odd house, or to express the least sympathy with its builder. He chose to run with a needless hundred-weight on his back: he chose to walk in baskets instead of in shoes. And if, in consequence of his own perversity, he did his work badly, I should have refused to recognize it as anything but bad work. It was quite different with Robinson Crusoe, who made his dwelling and his furniture for himself, because there was no one else to make them for him. I dare say his cave was anything but exactly square; and his chairs and table were cumbrous enough; but they were wonderful, considering certain facts which he was quite entitled to expect us to consider. Southey's Cottonian Library was all quite right; and you would have said that the books were very nicely bound, considering; for Southey could not afford to pay the regular binder's charges; and it was better that his books should be done up in cotton of various hues by the members of his own family than that they should remain not bound at all. You will think, too, of the poor old parson who wrote a book which he thought of great value, but which no publisher would bring out. He was determined that all his labor should not be lost to posterity. So he bought types and a printing-press, and printed his precious work, poor man: he and his man-servant did it all. It made a great many volumes; and the task took up many years. Then he bound the volumes with his own hands; and carrying them to London, he placed a copy of his work in each of the public libraries. I dare say he might have saved himself his labor. How many of my readers could tell what was the title of the work, or what was the name of its author? Still, there was a man who accomplished his design, in the face of every disadvantage.

There is a great point of difference between our feeling towards the human being who runs his race much overweighted and our feeling towards the inferior animal that does the like. If you saw a poor horse gamely struggling in a race, with a weight of a ton extra, you would pity it. Your sympathies would all be with the creature that was making the best of unfavorable circumstances. But it is a sorrowful fact, that the drag-weight of human beings not unfrequently consists of things which make us angry rather than sympathetic. You have seen a man carrying heavy weight in life, perhaps in the form of inveterate wrong-headedness and suspiciousness; but instead of pitying him, our impulse would rather be to beat him upon that perverted head. We pity physical malformation or unhealthiness; but our bent is to be angry with intellectual and moral malformation or unhealthiness. We feel for the deformed man, who must struggle on at that sad disadvantage; feeling it, too, much more acutely than you would readily believe. But we have only indignation for the man weighted with far worse things, and things which, in some cases at least, he can just as little help. You have known men whose extra pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, flying out of a sudden into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and falsehood: or a special disposition to envy and evil-speaking: or a very strong tendency to morbid complaining about their misfortunes and troubles: or an invincible bent to be always talking of their sufferings through the derangement of their digestive organs. Now, you grow angry at these things. You cannot stand them. And there is a substratum of truth to that angry feeling. A man can form his mind more than he can form his body. If a man be well-made, physically, he will, in ordinary cases, remain so: but he may, in a moral sense, raise a great hunchback where Nature made none. He may foster a malignant temper, a grumbling, fretful spirit, which by manful resistance might be much abated, if not quite put down. But still, there should often be pity, where we are prone only to blame. We find a person in whom a truly disgusting character has been formed: well, if you knew all, you would know that the person had hardly a chance of being otherwise: the man could not help it. You have known people who were awfully unamiable and repulsive: you may have been told how very different they once were,—sweet-tempered and cheerful. And surely the change is a far sadder one than that which has passed upon the wrinkled old woman who was once (as you are told) the loveliest girl of her time. Yet many a one who will look with interest upon the withered face and the dimmed eyes, and try to trace in them the vestiges of radiant beauty gone, will never think of puzzling out in violent spurts of petulance the perversion of a quick and kind heart; or in curious oddities and pettinesses the result of long and lonely years of toil in which no one sympathized; or in cynical bitterness and misanthropy an old disappointment never got over. There is a hard knot in the wood, where a green young branch was lopped away. I have a great pity for old bachelors. Those I have known have for the most part been old fools. But the more foolish and absurd they are, the more pity is due them. I believe there is something to be said for even the most unamiable creatures. The shark is an unamiable creature. It is voracious. It will snap a man in two. Yet it is not unworthy of sympathy. Its organization is such that it is always suffering the most ravenous hunger. You can hardly imagine the state of intolerable famine in which that unhappy animal roams the ocean. People talk of its awful teeth and its vindictive eye. I suppose it is well ascertained that the extremity of physical want, as reached on rafts at sea, has driven human beings to deeds as barbarous as ever shark was accused of. The worse a human being is, the more he deserves our pity. Hang him, if that be needful for the welfare of society; but pity him even as you hang. Many a poor creature has gradually become hardened and inveterate in guilt who would have shuddered at first, had the excess of it ultimately reached been at first presented to view. But the precipice was sloped off: the descent was made step by step. And there is many a human being who never had a chance of being good: many who have been trained, and even compelled, to evil from very infancy. Who that knows anything of our great cities, but knows how the poor little child, the toddling innocent, is sometimes sent out day by day to steal, and received in his wretched home with blows and curses, if he fail to bring back enough? Who has not heard of such poor little things, unsuccessful in their sorry work, sleeping all night in some wintry stair, because they durst not venture back to their drunken, miserable, desperate parents? I could tell things at which angels might shed tears, with much better reason for doing so than seems to me to exist in some of those more imposing occasions on which bombastic writers are wont to describe them as weeping. Ah, there is One who knows where the responsibility for all this rests! Not wholly with the wretched parents: far from that. They, too, have gone through the like: they had as little chance as their children. They deserve our deepest pity, too. Perhaps the deeper pity is not due to the shivering, starving child, with the bitter wind cutting through its thin rags, and its blue feet on the frozen pavement, holding out a hand that is like the claw of some beast; but rather to the brutalized mother who could thus send out the infant she bore. Surely the mother's condition, if we look at the case aright, is the more deplorable. Would not you, my reader, rather endure any degree of cold and hunger than come to this? Doubtless, there is blame somewhere, that such things should be: but we all know that the blame of the most miserable practical evils and failures can hardly be traced to particular individuals. It is through the incapacity of scores of public servants that an army is starved. It is through the fault of millions of people that our great towns are what they are: and it must be confessed that the actual responsibility is spread so thinly over so great a surface that it is hard to say it rests very blackly upon any one spot. Oh that we could but know whom to hang, when we find some flagrant, crying evil! Unluckily, hasty people are ready to be content, if they can but hang anybody, without minding much whether that individual be more to blame than many beside. Laws and kings have something to do here: but management and foresight on the part of the poorer classes have a great deal more to do. And no laws can make many persons managing or provident. I do not hesitate to say, from what I have myself seen of the poor, that the same short-sighted extravagance, the same recklessness of consequences, which are frequently found in them, would cause quite as much misery, if they prevailed in a like degree among people with a thousand a year. But it seems as if only the tolerably well-to-do have the heart to be provident and self-denying. A man with a few hundreds annually does not marry, unless he thinks he can afford it: but the workman with fifteen shillings a week is profoundly indifferent to any such calculation. I firmly believe that the sternest of all self-denial is that practised by those who, when we divide mankind into rich and poor, must be classed (I suppose) with the rich. But I turn away from a miserable subject, through which I cannot see my way clearly, and on which I cannot think but with unutterable pain. It is an easy way of cutting the knot, to declare that the rich are the cause of all the sufferings of the poor; but when we look at the case in all its bearings, we shall see that that is rank nonsense. And on the other hand, it is unquestionable that the rich are bound to do something. But what? I should feel deeply indebted to any one who would write out, in a few short and intelligible sentences, the practical results that are aimed at in the "Song of the Shirt." The misery and evil are manifest: but tell us whom to hang; tell us what to do!

One heavy burden with which many men are weighted for the race of life is depression of spirits. I wonder whether this used to be as common in former days as it is now. There was, indeed, the man in Homer who walked by the seashore in a very gloomy mood; but his case seems to have been thought remarkable. What is it in our modern mode of life and our infinity of cares, what little thing is it about the matter of the brain or the flow of the blood, that makes the difference between buoyant cheerfulness and deep depression? I begin to think that almost all educated people, and especially all whose work is mental rather than physical, suffer more or less from this indescribable gloom. And although a certain amount of sentimental sadness may possibly help the poet, or the imaginative writer, to produce material which may be very attractive to the young and inexperienced, I suppose it will be admitted by all that cheerfulness and hopefulness are noble and healthful stimulants to worthy effort, and that depression of spirits does (so to speak) cut the sinews with which the average man must do the work of life. You know how lightly the buoyant heart carries people through entanglements and labors under which the desponding would break down, or which they never would face. Yet, in thinking of the commonness of depressed spirits, even where the mind is otherwise very free from anything morbid, we should remember that there is a strong temptation to believe that this depression is more common and more prevalent than it truly is. Sometimes there is a gloom which overcasts all life, like that in which James Watt lived and worked, and served his race so nobly,—like that from which the gentle, amiable poet, James Montgomery, suffered through his whole career. But in ordinary cases the gloom is temporary and transient. Even the most depressed are not always so. Like, we know, suggests like powerfully. If you are placed in some peculiar conjuncture of circumstances, or if you pass through some remarkable scene, the present scene or conjuncture will call up before you, in a way that startles you, something like itself which you had long forgotten, and which you would never have remembered but for this touch of some mysterious spring. And accordingly, a man depressed in spirits thinks that he is always so, or at least fancies that such depression has given the color to his life in a very much greater degree than it actually has done so. For this dark season wakens up the remembrance of many similar dark seasons which in more cheerful days are quite forgot; and these cheerful days drop out of memory for the time. Hearing such a man speak, if he speak out his heart to you, you think him inconsistent, perhaps you think him insincere. You think he is saying more than he truly feels. It is not so; he feels and believes it all at the time. But he is taking a one-sided view of things; he is undergoing the misery of it acutely for the time, but by-and-by he will see things from quite a different point. A very eminent man (there can be no harm in referring to a case which he himself made so public) wrote and published something about his miserable home. He was quite sincere, I do not doubt. He thought so at the time. He was miserable just then; and so, looking back on past years, he could see nothing but misery. But the case was not really so, one could feel sure. There had been a vast deal of enjoyment about his home and his lot; it was forgotten then. A man in very low spirits, reading over his diary, somehow lights upon and dwells upon all the sad and wounding things; he involuntarily skips the rest, or reads them with but faint perception of their meaning. In reading the very Bible, he does the like thing. He chances upon that which is in unison with his present mood. I think there is no respect in which this great law of the association of ideas holds more strictly true than in the power of a present state of mind, or a present state of outward circumstances, to bring up vividly before us all such states in our past history. We are depressed, we are worried; and when we look back, all our departed days of worry and depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the exclusion of anything else; so that we are ready to think that we have never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will bring back the depression vividly as when we felt it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness, it is the result of an inevitable law of mind, that people in happy circumstances should resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for, looking back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. And so, if any ordinary man, who is not a distempered genius or a great fool, tells you that he is always miserable, don't believe him. He feels so now, but he does not always feel so. There are periods of brightening in the darkest lot. Very, very few live in unvarying gloom. Not but that there is something very pitiful (by which I mean deserving of pity) in what may be termed the Micawber style of mind,—in the stage of hysteric oscillations between joy and misery. Thoughtless readers of "David Copperfield" laugh at Mr. Micawber, and his rapid passages from the depth of despair to the summit of happiness, and back again. But if you have seen or experienced that morbid condition, you would know that there is more reason to mourn over it than to laugh at it. There is acute misery felt now and then; and there is a pervading, never-departing sense of the hollowness of the morbid mirth. It is but a very few degrees better than "moody madness, laughing wild, amid severest woe." By depression of spirits I understand a dejection without any cause that could be stated, or from causes which in a healthy mind would produce no such degree of dejection. No doubt, many men can remember seasons of dejection which was not imaginary, and of anxiety and misery whose causes were only too real. You can remember, perhaps, the dark time in which you knew quite well what it was that made it so dark. Well, better days have come. That sorrowful, wearing time, which exhausted the springs of life faster than ordinary living would have done, which aged you in heart and frame before your day, dragged over, and it is gone. You carried heavy weight, indeed, while it lasted. It was but poor running you made, poor work you did, with that feeble, anxious, disappointed, miserable heart. And you would many a time have been thankful to creep into a quiet grave. Perhaps that season did you good. Perhaps it was the discipline you needed. Perhaps it took out your self-conceit, and made you humble. Perhaps it disposed you to feel for the griefs and cares of others, and made you sympathetic. Perhaps, looking back now, you can discern the end it served. And now that it has done its work, and that it only stings you when you look back, let that time be quite forgotten!

* * * * *

There are men, and very clever men, who do the work of life at a disadvantage, through this, that their mind is a machine fitted for doing well only one kind of work,—or that their mind is a machine which, though doing many things well, does some one thing, perhaps a conspicuous thing, very poorly. You find it hard to give a man credit for being possessed of sense and talent, if you hear him make a speech at a public dinner, which speech approaches the idiotic for its silliness and confusion. And the vulgar mind readily concludes that he who does one thing extremely ill can do nothing well, and that he who is ignorant on one point is ignorant on all. A friend of mine, a country parson, on first going to his parish, resolved to farm his glebe for himself. A neighboring farmer kindly offered the parson to plough one of his fields. The farmer said that he would send his man John with a plough and a pair of horses, on a certain day. "If ye're goin' about," said the farmer to the clergyman, "John will be unco' weel pleased, if you speak to him, and say it's a fine day, or the like o' that; but dinna," said the farmer, with much solemnity, "dinna say onything to him aboot ploughin' and sawin'; for John," he added, "is a stupid body, but he has been ploughin' and sawin' all his life, and he'll see in a minute that ye ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin'. And then," said the sagacious old farmer, with extreme earnestness, "if he comes to think that ye ken naething aboot ploughin' and sawin', he'll think that ye ken naething aboot onything!" Yes, it is natural to us all to think, that, if the machine breaks down at that work in which we are competent to test it, then the machine cannot do any work at all.

If you have a strong current of water, you may turn it into any channel you please, and make it do any work you please. With equal energy and success it will flow north or south; it will turn a corn-mill, or a threshing-machine, or a grindstone. Many people live under a vague impression that the human mind is like that. They think,—Here is so much ability, so much energy, which may be turned in any direction, and made to do any work; and they are surprised to find that the power, available and great for one kind of work, is worth nothing for another. A man very clever at one thing is positively weak and stupid at another thing. A very good judge may be a wretchedly bad joker; and he must go through his career at this disadvantage, that people, finding him silly at the thing they are able to estimate, find it hard to believe that he is not silly at everything. I know, for myself, that it would not be right that the Premier should request me to look out for a suitable Chancellor. I am not competent to appreciate the depth of a man's knowledge of equity; by which I do not mean justice, but chancery law. But, though quite unable to understand how great a Chancellor Lord Eldon was, I am quite able to estimate how great a poet he was, also how great a wit. Here is a poem by that eminent person. Doubtless he regarded it as a wonder of happy versification, as well as instinct with the most convulsing fun. It is intended to set out in a metrical form the career of a certain judge, who went up as a poor lad from Scotland to England, but did well at the bar, and ultimately found his place upon the bench. Here is Lord Chancellor Eldon's humorous poem:—

"James Allan Parke Came naked stark From Scotland: But he got clothes, Like other beaux, In England!"

Now the fact that Lord Eldon wrote that poem, and valued it highly, would lead some folk to suppose that Lord Eldon was next door to an idiot. And a good many other things which that Chancellor did, such as his quotations from Scripture in the House of Commons, and his attempts to convince that assemblage (when Attorney-General) that Napoleon I. was the Apocalyptic Beast or the Little Horn, certainly point towards the same conclusion. But the conclusion, as a general one, would be wrong. No doubt, Lord Eldon was a wise and sagacious man as judge and statesman, though as wit and poet he was almost an idiot. So with other great men. It is easy to remember occasions on which great men have done very foolish things. There never was a truer hero nor a greater commander than Lord Nelson; but in some things he was merely an awkward, overgrown midshipman. But then, let us remember that a locomotive engine, though excellent at running, would be a poor hand at flying. That is not its vocation. The engine will draw fifteen heavy carriages fifty miles in an hour; and that remains as a noble feat, even though it be ascertained that the engine could not jump over a brook which would be cleared easily by the veriest screw. We all see this.

But many of us have a confused idea that a great and clever man is (so to speak) a locomotive that can fly; and when it is proved that he cannot fly, then we begin to doubt whether he can even run. We think he should be good at everything, whether in his own line or not. And he is set at a disadvantage, particularly in the judgment of vulgar and stupid people, when it is clearly ascertained that at some things he is very inferior. I have heard of a very eminent preacher who sunk considerably (even as regards his preaching) in the estimation of a certain family, because it appeared that he played very badly at bowls. And we all know that occasionally the Premier already mentioned reverses the vulgar error, and in appointing men to great places is guided by an axiom which amounts to just this: this locomotive can run well, therefore it will fly well. This man has filled a certain position well, therefore let us appoint him to a position entirely different; no doubt, he will do well there too. Here is a clergyman who has edited certain Greek plays admirably; let us make him a bishop.

It may be remarked here, that the men who have attained the greatest success in the race of life have generally carried weight. Nitor in adversum might be the motto of many a man besides Burke. It seems to be almost a general rule, that the raw material out of which the finest fabrics are made should look very little like these, to start with. It was a stammerer, of uncommanding mien, who became the greatest orator of graceful Greece. I believe it is admitted that Chalmers was the most effective preacher, perhaps the most telling speaker, that Britain has seen for at least a century; yet his aspect was not commanding, his gestures were awkward, his voice was bad, and his accent frightful. He talked of an oppning when be meant an opening, and he read out the text of one of his noblest sermons, "He that is fulthy, let him be fulthy stall." Yet who ever thought of these things after hearing the good man for ten minutes? Ay, load Eclipse with what extra pounds you might, Eclipse would always be first! And, to descend to the race-horse, he had four white legs, white to the knees; and he ran more awkwardly than racer ever did, with his head between his forelegs, close to the ground, like a pig. Alexander, Napoleon, and Wellington were all little men, in places where a commanding presence would have been of no small value. A most disagreeably affected manner has not prevented a barrister with no special advantages from rising with general approval to the highest places which a barrister can fill. A hideous little wretch has appeared for trial in a criminal court, having succeeded in marrying seven wives at once. A painful hesitation has not hindered a certain eminent person from being one of the principal speakers in the British Parliament for many years. Yes, even disadvantages never overcome have not sufficed to hold in obscurity men who were at once able and fortunate. But sometimes the disadvantage was thoroughly overcome. Sometimes it served no other end than to draw to one point the attention and the efforts of a determined will; and that matter in regard to which Nature seemed to have said that a man should fall short became the thing in which he attained unrivalled perfection.

A heavy drag-weight upon the powers of some men is the uncertainty of their powers. The man has not his powers at command. His mind is a capricious thing, that works when it pleases, and will not work except when it pleases. I am not thinking now of what to many is a sad disadvantage: that nervous trepidation which cannot be reasoned away, and which often deprives them of the full use of their mental abilities just when they are most needed. It is a vast thing in a man's favor, that whatever he can do he should be able to do at any time, and to do at once. For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his. How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought to have said, but which would not come at the time! But very frequently the thing is of no value, unless it come at the time when it is wanted. Coming next day, it is like the offer of a thick fur great-coat on a sweltering day in July. You look at the wrap, and say, "Oh, if I could but have had you on the December night when I went to London by the limited mail, and was nearly starved to death!" But it seems as if the mind must be, to a certain extent, capricious in its action. Caprice, or what looks like it, appears of necessity to go with complicated machinery, even material. The more complicated a machine is, the liker it grows to mind, in the matter of uncertainty and apparent caprice of action. The simplest machine—say a pipe for conveying water—will always act in precisely the same way. And two such pipes, if of the same dimensions, and subjected to the same pressure, will always convey the self-same quantities. But go to more advanced machines. Take two clocks or two locomotive engines, and though these are made in all respects exactly alike, they will act (I can answer at least for the locomotive engines) quite differently. One locomotive will swallow a vast quantity of water at once; another must be fed by driblets; no one can say why. One engine is a fac-simile of the other; yet each has its character and its peculiarities as truly as a man has. You need to know your engine's temper before driving it, just as much as you need to know that of your horse, or that of your friend. I know, of course, there is a mechanical reason for this seeming caprice, if you could trace the reason. But not one man in a thousand could trace out the reason. And the phenomenon, as it presses itself upon us, really amounts to this: that very complicated machinery appears to have a will of its own,—appears to exercise something of the nature of choice. But there is no machine so capricious as the human mind. The great poet who wrote those beautiful verses could not do that every day. A good deal more of what he writes is poor enough; and many days he could not write at all. By long habit the mind may be made capable of being put in harness daily for the humbler task of producing prose; but you cannot say, when you harness it in the morning, how far or at what rate it will run that day.

Go and see a great organ of which you have been told. Touch it, and you hear the noble tones at once. The organ can produce them at any time. But go and see a great man; touch him,—that is, get him to begin to talk. You will be much disappointed, if you expect, certainly, to hear anything like his book or his poem. A great man is not a man who is always saying great things, or who is always able to say great things. He is a man who on a few occasions has said great things; who on the coming of a sufficient occasion may possibly say great things again; but the staple of his talk is commonplace enough. Here is a point of difference from machinery, with all machinery's apparent caprice. You could not say, as you pointed to a steam-engine, "The usual power of that engine is two hundred horses; but once or twice it has surprised us all by working up to two thousand." No; the engine is always of nearly the power of two thousand horses, if it ever is. But what we have been supposing as to the engine is just what many men have done. Poe wrote "The Raven"; he was working then up to two thousand horse power. But he wrote abundance of poor stuff, working at about twenty-five. Read straight through the volumes of Wordsworth, and I think you will find traces of the engine having worked at many different powers, varying from twenty-five horses or less up two thousand or more. Go and hear a really great preacher, when he is preaching in his own church upon a common Sunday, and possibly you may hear a very ordinary sermon. I have heard Mr. Melvill preach very poorly. You must not expect to find people always at their best. It is a very unusual thing that even the ablest men should be like Burke, who could not talk with an intelligent stranger for five minutes without convincing the stranger that he had talked for five minutes with a great man. And it is an awful thing, when some clever youth is introduced to some local poet who has been told how greatly the clever youth admires him, and what vast expectations the clever youth has formed of his conversation, and when the local celebrity makes a desperate effort to talk up to the expectations formed of him. I have witnessed such a scene; and I can sincerely say that I could not previously have believed that the local celebrity could have made such a fool of himself. He was resolved to show that he deserved his fame, and to show that the mind which had produced those lovely verses in the country newspaper could not stoop to commonplace things.

* * * * *

Undue sensitiveness, and a too lowly estimate of their own powers, hang heavily upon some men,—probably upon more men than one would imagine. I believe that many a man whom you would take to be ambitious, pushing, and self-complacent, is ever pressed with a sad conviction of inferiority, and wishes nothing more than quietly to slip through life. It would please and satisfy him, if he could but be assured that he is just like other people. You may remember a touch of nature (that is, of some people's nature) in Burns; you remember the simple exultation of the peasant mother, when her daughter gets a sweetheart: she is "well pleased to see her bairn respeckit like the lave," that is, like the other girls round. And undue humility, perhaps even befitting humility, holds back sadly in the race of life. It is recorded that a weaver in a certain village in Scotland was wont daily to offer a singular petition; he prayed daily and fervently for a better opinion of himself. Yes, a firm conviction of one's own importance is a great help in life. It gives dignity of bearing; it does (so to speak) lift the horse over many a fence at which one with a less confident heart would have broken down. But the man who estimates himself and his place humbly and justly will be ready to shrink aside, and let men of greater impudence and not greater desert step before him. I have often seen, with a sad heart, in the case of working people that manner, difficult to describe, which comes of being what we in Scotland sometimes call sair hadden down. I have seen the like in educated people, too. And not very many will take the trouble to seek out and to draw out the modest merit that keeps itself in the shade. The energetic, successful people of this world are too busy in pushing each for himself to have time to do that. You will find that people with abundant confidence, people who assume a good deal, are not unfrequently taken at their own estimate of themselves. I have seen a Queen's Counsel walk into court, after the case in which he was engaged had been conducted so far by his junior, and conducted as well as mortal could conduct it. But it was easy to see that the complacent air of superior strength with which the Queen's Counsel took the management out of his junior's hands conveyed to the jury, (a common jury,) the belief that things were now to be managed in quite different and vastly better style. And have you not known such a thing as that a family, not a whit better, wealthier, or more respectable than all the rest in the little country town or the country parish, do yet, by carrying their heads higher, (no mortal could say why,) gradually elbow themselves into a place of admitted social superiority? Everybody knows exactly what they are, and from what they have sprung; but somehow, by resolute assumption, by a quiet air of being better than their neighbors, they draw ahead of them, and attain the glorious advantage of one step higher on the delicately graduated social ladder of the district. Now it is manifest, that, if such people had sense to see their true position, and the absurdity of their pretensions, they would assuredly not have gained that advantage, whatever it may be worth.

But sense and feeling are sometimes burdens in the race of life; that is, they sometimes hold a man back from grasping material advantages which he might have grasped, had he not been prevented by the possession of a certain measure of common sense and right feeling. I doubt not, my friend, that you have acquaintances who can do things which you could not do for your life, and who by doing these things push their way in life. They ask for what they want, and never let a chance go by them. And though they may meet many rebuffs, they sometimes make a successful venture. Impudence sometimes attains to a pitch of sublimity; and at that point it has produced a very great impression upon many men. The incapable person who started for a professorship has sometimes got it. The man who, amid the derision of the county, published his address to the electors, has occasionally got into the House of Commons. The vulgar half-educated preacher, who without any introduction asked a patron for a vacant living in the Church, has now and then got the living. And however unfit you may be for a place, and however discreditable may have been the means by which you got it, once you have actually held it for two or three years people come to acquiesce in your holding it. They accept the fact that you are there, just as we accept the fact that any other evil exists in this world, without asking why, except on very special occasions. I believe, too, that, in the matter of worldly preferment, there is too much fatalism in many good men. They have a vague trust that Providence will do more than it has promised. They are ready to think, that, if it is God's will that they are to gain such a prize, it will be sure to come their way without their pushing. That is a mistake. Suppose you apply the same reasoning to your dinner. Suppose you sit still in your study and say, "If I am to have dinner to-day, it will come without effort of mine; and if I am not to have dinner to-day, it will not come by any effort of mine; so here I sit still and do nothing." Is not that absurd? Yet that is what many a wise and good man practically says about the place in life which would suit him, and which would make him happy. Not Turks and Hindoos alone have a tendency to believe in their Kismet. It is human to believe in that. And we grasp at every event that seems to favor the belief. The other evening, in the twilight, I passed two respectable-looking women who seemed like domestic servants; and I caught one sentence which one said to the other with great apparent faith. "You see," she said, "if a thing's to come your way, it'll no gang by ye!" It was in a crowded street; but if it had been in my country parish, where everyone knew me, I should certainly have stopped the women, and told them, that, though what they said was quite true, I feared they were understanding it wrongly, and that the firm belief we all hold in God's Providence which reaches to all events, and in His sovereignty which orders all things, should be used to help us to be resigned, after we have done our best and failed, but should never be used as an excuse for not doing our best. When we have set our mind on any honest end, let us seek to compass it by every honest means; and if we fail after having used every honest means, then let us fall back on the comfortable belief that things are ordered by the Wisest and Kindest; then is the time for the Fiat Voluntas Tua.