as a consultation; and the relatives
decided so to arrange matters that Madame could have her own way."

"But why?"

"Because they knew that she found a sort of religious consolation--a
kind of religious comfort--in forgiving the wretch. She imagined that
it was her duty as a Christian, not only to forgive him, but to
take care of him. We thought that she was mistaken,--but we could
understand.... Well, there is an example of what religion can do."...

* * * * *

The surprise of a new fact, or the sudden perception of something
never before imagined, may cause an involuntary smile. Unconsciously
I smiled, while my friend was yet speaking; and the good notary's brow
darkened.

"Ah, you laugh!" he exclaimed,--"you laugh! That is wrong!--that is a
mistake!... But you do not believe: you do not know what it is,--the
true religion,--the real Christianity!"

Earnestly I made answer:--

"Pardon me! I do believe every word of what you have told me. If I
laughed unthinkingly, it was only because I could not help wondering"
...

"At what?" he questioned gravely.

"At the marvelous instinct of that negro."

"Ah, yes!" he returned approvingly. "Yes, the cunning of the animal
it was,--the instinct of the brute!... She was the only person in the
world who could have saved him."

"And he knew it," I ventured to add.

"No--no--no!" my friend emphatically dissented,--"he never could have
known it! He only _felt_ it!... Find me an instinct like that, and I
will show you a brain incapable of any knowledge, any thinking, any
understanding: not the mind of a man, but the brain of a beast!"

A LETTER FROM JAPAN

Tokyo, August 1, 1904.

Here, in this quiet suburb, where the green peace is broken only by
the voices of children at play and the shrilling of cicad[ae], it is
difficult to imagine that, a few hundred miles away, there is being
carried on one of the most tremendous wars of modern times, between
armies aggregating more than half a million of men, or that, on the
intervening sea, a hundred ships of war have been battling. This
contest, between the mightiest of Western powers and a people that
began to study Western science only within the recollection of many
persons still in vigorous life, is, on one side at least, a struggle
for national existence. It was inevitable, this struggle,--might
perhaps have been delayed, but certainly not averted. Japan has
boldly challenged an e