opelessly lost, and will go from bad
to worse. But really I don't see that I am wholly responsible. I
advised her to go home, I could do no more. But I will get her aunt's
address and write to her. Or I will inform some of the philanthropic
people."

A few days after, he came in contact with some. Their fervour
awakened some faint interest in him, and now, as weary of playing at
Mephistopheles as he was of playing at Faust, he followed the
occupation of his new friends. But his attempts at reformation were
vain, they wore out the soul, and left it only more hopeless than
before; and he remembered John Norton's words, that faith is a gift
from God which we must cherish, or He will take it from us utterly;
and sighing, Mike recognized the great truth underlying a primitive
mode of expression. He had drifted too far into the salt sea of
unfaith and cynicism, ever to gain again the fair if illusive shores
of aspiration--maybe illusive, but no more illusive than the cruel
sea that swung him like a wreck in its current, feeding upon him as
the sea feeds. Nor could he make surrender of his passion of life,
saying--

"I see into the heart of things, I know the truth, and in the calm
possession of knowledge am able to divest myself of my wretched
individuality, and so free myself of all evils, seeking in
absorption, rather than by violent ends, to rid myself of
consciousness."

But this, the religion of the truly wise, born in the sublime East,
could find no roothold in Mike Fletcher--that type and epitome of
Western grossness and lust of life. Religions being a synthesis of
moral aspirations, developed through centuries, are mischievous and
untrue except in the circumstances and climates in which they have
grown up, and native races are decimated equally by the importation
of a religion or a disease. True it is that Christianity was a
product of the East, but it was an accidental and inferior offshoot
from the original religion of the race, not adapted to their needs,
and fitted only for exportation. And now, tainted and poisoned by a
thousand years of habitation in the West, Christianity returns to the
East, virulent and baneful as small-pox, a distinctly demoralizing
influence, having power only to change excellent Buddhists into
prostitutes and thieves. And in such a way, according to the same
laws, Mike had observed, since he had adopted pessimism, certain
unmistakable signs in himself of moral degeneracy.

He had no