the polar frosts--to-day in the temperate zone--to-morrow
beneath the fires of the tropics--but often, alas! at the moment when
my presence might save them, the invisible hand impels me, the whirlwind
carries me away, and the voice speaks in my ear: 'GO ON! GO ON!'

"Oh, that I might only finish my task!--'GO ON!'--A single hour--only
a single hour of repose!--'GO ON!'--Alas! I leave those I love on the
brink of the abyss!--'GO ON! GO ON!'

"Such is my punishment. If it is great, my crime was greater still! An
artisan, devoted to privations and misery, my misfortunes had made me
cruel.

"Oh, cursed, cursed be the day, when, as I bent over my work, sullen
with hate and despair, because, in spite of my incessant labor, I and
mine wanted for everything, the Saviour passed before my door.

"Reviled, insulted, covered with blows, hardly able to sustain the
weight of his heavy cross, He asked me to let Him rest a moment on my
stone bench. The sweat poured from His forehead, His feet were bleeding,
He was well-nigh sinking with fatigue, and He said to me, in a mild,
heart piercing voice: 'I suffer!' 'And I too suffer,' I replied, as with
harsh anger I pushed Him from the place; 'I suffer, and no one comes to
help me! I find no pity, and will give none. Go on! go on!' Then, with
a deep sigh of pain, He answered, and spake this sentence: 'Verily,
thou shalt go on till the day of thy redemption, for so wills the Father
which art in heaven!'

"And so my punishment began. Too late I opened these eyes to the light,
too late I learned repentance and charity, too late I understood those
divine words of Him I had outraged, words which should be the law of the
whole human race. 'LOVE YE ONE ANOTHER.'

"In vain through successive ages, gathering strength and eloquence from
those celestial words, have I labored to earn my pardon, by filling
with commiseration and love hearts that were overflowing with envy and
bitterness, by inspiring many a soul with a sacred horror of oppression
and injustice. For me the day of mercy has not yet dawned!

"And even as the first man, by his fall, devoted his posterity to
misfortune, it would seem as if I, the workman, had consigned the whole
race of artisans to endless sorrows, and as if they were expiating my
crime: for they alone, during these eighteen centuries, have not yet
been delivered.

"For eighteen centuries, the powerful and the happy of this world have
said to the toiling people what