niverse are NOT chance. It is not chance that the heavenly bodies swing
clear of each other, that the seed is furnished with the apparatus which
will drift it to a congenial soil, that the creature is adapted to its
environment. Show me a whale with its great-coat of fat, and I want no
further proof of design. But logically, as it seems to me, ALL must be
design, or all must be chance. I do not see how one can slash a line
right across the universe, and say that all to the right of that is
chance, and all to the left is pre-ordained. You would then have to
contend that things which on the face of them are of the same class, are
really divided by an impassable gulf, and that the lower are regulated,
while the higher are not. You would, for example, be forced to contend
that the number of articulations in a flea's hind leg has engaged the
direct superintendence of the Creator, while the mischance which killed
a thousand people in a theatre depended upon the dropping of a wax vesta
upon the floor, and was an unforeseen flaw in the chain of life. This
seems to me to be unthinkable.

It is a very superficial argument to say that if a man holds the
views of a fatalist he will therefore cease to strive, and will wait
resignedly for what fate may send him. The objector forgets that among
the other things fated is that we of northern blood SHOULD strive and
should NOT sit down with folded hands. But when a man has striven, when
he has done all he knows, and when, in spite of it, a thing comes to
pass, let him wait ten years before he says that it is a misfortune. It
is part of the main line of his destiny then, and is working to an end.
A man loses his fortune; he gains earnestness. His eyesight goes; it
leads him to a spirituality. The girl loses her beauty; she becomes more
sympathetic. We think we are pushing our own way bravely, but there is a
great Hand in ours all the time.

You'll wonder what has taken me off on this line. Only that I seem
to see it all in action in my own life. But, as usual, I have started
merrily off with an appendix, so I shall go back and begin my report
as nearly as possible where I ended the last. First of all, I may
say generally that the clouds were thinning then, and that they broke
shortly afterwards. During the last few months we have never once quite
lost sight of the sun.

You remember that we (Paul and I) had just engaged a certain
Miss Williams to come and keep house for us. I felt that