the
headquarters of the confessional, I opened my heart to Mr. Leopold.
Standing, as he does, at the head of his art, I follow him. Those who
prefer fancy to vigorous thought and imagination, the lovely and
familiar in Nature to the sublime, sometimes rank me above him. Time has
not evolved the genius which Miss Darry prophesied, yet I am as fully
convinced that I occupy my true position and do my appropriate work in
the world as though it had. Mrs. Leopold professes occasionally to me,
with a smile, that her opinion is unaltered, that my weakness was only
an additional proof of genius, but that her husband is a hero worth all
the geniuses in the world. She holds this subtile essence more lightly
in estimation now than formerly. Some think she possesses it; and her
groups of statuary fairly entitle her to more laurels than in her happy
domestic life she is likely to win. She laughs at my wife, and calls her
sentimental, because her Art instincts, like vines over a humble
dwelling, embroider only the common domestic life. Her many fanciful
ways of adorning our home, and her own sweet, sunny self, its perpetual
light and comfort, are to me just so many 'traps to catch the sunbeams'
of life, especially as I see beneath all this the earnest, developed
womanhood of the blacksmith's daughter. Do you ask me how I won her? I
can describe my passionate admiration, even the weakness and limitations
of my nature; but I will not unveil my love. Is it not enough that I am
a thorough democrat, have little faith in the hereditary transmission of
good or evil, and welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bray to my home and hearth? I am
not hurried now.

"You have only this lifetime to make a _man_ in, Sandy," Annie pleads
occasionally, when a call for service outside my profession presents
itself; "but any special power of mind, it seems to me, will have the
mending ages in which to unfold."

To love men, to labor for them and for the ideas which free and redeem
them, seems the special mission of our times; and my little wife has
caught its spirit, and so helps me to recognize the virtue which
eighteen hundred years ago was crucified to rise again, which has been
assailed in our country, and is rising again to be the life and
inspiration of Christendom, the death-blow to slavery and oppression,
the light of many a humble home and simple heart. Unselfishness!
keystone to the arch through which each pure soul looks heavenward!

KING JAMES THE FIR