or human ruin, defaced image of a woman, begrimed and buried soul,
unchaste, misshapen, incorrigible, no "juice of God's distilling" ever
"dropped into the core of her life," to such punishment she was doomed
by the tribunal of that saintly man, Bishop Thomas Wilson! She has met
him at another tribunal since then; not where she has crouched before
him, but where she has stood by his side. She has carried her great
account against him, to Him before whom the proudest are as chaff.

None spake when Wilson stood before
The Throne;
And He that sat thereon
Spake not; and all the presence-floor
Burnt deep with blushes, and the angels cast
Their faces downwards.--Then, at last,
Awe-stricken, he was ware
How on the emerald stair
A woman sat divinely clothed in white,
And at her knees four cherubs bright
That laid
Their heads within her lap. Then, trembling, he essayed
To speak--"Christ's mother, pity me!"
Then answered she,
"Sir, I am Katherine Kinrade." {*}

* Unpublished poem by the author of ''Fo'c's'le Yarns."

BISHOP WILSON'S LAST DAYS

Have I dashed your faith in my hero? Was he indeed the bitterest of
tyrants as well as the serenest of saints? Yet bethink you of the other
good men who have done evil deeds? King David and the wife of Uriah,
Mahomet and his adopted son; the gallery of memory is hung round with
many such portraits. Poor humanity, weak at the strongest, impure at
the purest; best take it as it is, and be content. Remember that a good
man's vices are generally the excess of his virtues. It was so with
Bishop Wilson. Remember, too, that it is not for what a man does, but
for what he means to do, that we love him or hate him in the end. And
in the end the Manx people loved Bishop Wilson, and still they bless his
memory.

We have a glimpse of his last days, and it is full of tender beauty.
True to his lights, simple and frugal of life, God-fearing and strong
of heart, he lived to be old. Very feeble, his beautiful face grown
mellower even as his heart was softer for his many years, tottering on
his staff, drooping like a white flower, he went in and out among his
people, laying his trembling hands on the children's heads and blessing
them, remembering their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Beloved by
the young, reverenced by the old, honoured by the great, worshipped by
the poor, l