heard of dogma or
creed. Our arguments were worse than wasted, though we both meant well,
for we were nearer neighbors when we began than when we left off.

I am not learned in such things. Perhaps I am wrong. No doubt dogmas are
useful--to wrap things in--but even then I would not tuck in the ends,
lest we hide the neighbor so that we cannot see him. After all, it is what
is _in_ the package that counts. To me it is the evidence of such as these
that God lives in human hearts--that we are molded in his image despite
flaws and failures in the casting--that keeps alive the belief that we
shall wake with the flowers to a fairer spring. Is it not so with all of
us?

THE CITY'S HEART

"Bosh!" said my friend, jabbing impatiently with his stick at a gaunt cat
in the gutter, "all bosh! A city has no heart. It's incorporated
selfishness; has to be. Slopping over is not business. City is all
business. A poet's dream, my good fellow; pretty but moonshine!"

We turned the corner of the tenement street as he spoke. The placid river
was before us, with the moonlight upon it. Far as the eye reached, up and
down the stream, the shores lay outlined by rows of electric lamps, like
strings of shining pearls; red lights and green fights moved upon the
water. From a roofed-over pier near by came the joyous shouts of troops
of children, and the rhythmic tramp of many feet to the strains of "Could
you be true to eyes of blue if you looked into eyes of brown?" A
"play-pier" in evening session.

I looked at my friend. He stood gazing out over the river, hat in hand,
the gentle sea-breeze caressing the lock at his temple that is turning
gray. Something he started to say had died on his lips. He was listening
to the laughter of the children. What thoughts of days long gone, before
the office and the market reports shut youth and sunshine out of his life,
came to soften the hard lines in his face, I do not know. As I watched,
the music on the pier died away in a great hush. The river with its lights
was gone; my friend was gone. The years were gone with their burden. The
world was young once more.

I was in a court-room full of men with pale, stern faces. I saw a child
brought in, carried in a horse-blanket, at the sight of which men wept
aloud. I saw it laid at the feet of the judge, who turned his face away,
and in the stillness of that court-room I heard a voice raised claiming
for the human child the protection men had denied i