ue enough,"
answered Markland, with some coldness and abstraction of manner. The
doctrine was neither flattering to his reason, nor agreeable to his
feelings. He was too confirmed a lover of himself to receive
willingly teaching like this. A type of the mass around him, he was
content to look down the dim future for signs of the approaching
millennium, instead of into his own heart. He could give hundreds of
dollars in aid of missions to convert the heathen, and to bring in
the islands of the sea, as means of hastening the expected time; but
was not ready, as a surer means to this end, to repress a single
selfish impulse of his nature.

The conversation was still further prolonged, with but slight change
in the subject. At parting with his neighbour, Markland found
himself more disturbed than before. A sun ray had streamed suddenly
into the darkened chambers of his mind, disturbing the night birds
there, and dimly revealing an inner world of disorder, from which
his eyes vainly sought to turn themselves. If the mental disease
from which he was suffering had its origin in the causes indicated
by Mr. Allison, there seemed little hope of a cure in his case. How
was he, who all his life long had regarded himself, and those who
were of his own flesh and blood, as only to be thought of and cared
for, to forget himself, and seek, as the higher end of his
existence, the good of others? The thought created no quicker
heart-beat--threw no warmer tint on the ideal future toward which
his eyes of late had so fondly turned themselves. To live for others
and not for himself--this was to extinguish his very life. What were
others to him? All of his world was centred in his little
home-circle. Alas! that its power to fill the measure of his desires
was gone--its brightness dimmed--its attraction a binding-spell no
longer!

And so Markland strove to shut out from his mind the light shining
in through the little window opened by Mr. Allison; but the effort
was in vain. Steadily the light came in, disturbing the owls and
bats, and revealing dust, cankering mould, and spider-web
obstructions. All on the outside was fair to the world; and as fair,
he had believed, within. To be suddenly shown his error, smote him
with a painful sense of humiliation.

"What is the highest and noblest attribute of manhood?" Mr. Allison
had asked of him during their conversation.

Markland did not answer the question.

"The highest excellence--the grea