losophy
may have ruined my life, you know."

"Of course I know what you mean," said I; "but I'm convinced, and so are
all your friends, that if you fail, it'll be your own lack of nerve, and
nothing else, that you'll owe the disaster to. You should--"

"I should have refrained from trampling under foot the dearest ideals of
the only girl-- However, I can't talk of these things to any one,
Barslow. But I have some hope now. Antonia and Josie have both been very
kind lately--and say, Barslow, I see now how little foundation there is
for that old gag about the women hating each other!"

"I've always felt," said I, anxious to draw him out so that I might see
what the conspirators had been doing, "that there's nothing in _that_
idea. But what has changed your view?"

"Antonia, and Josie, and even your wife," said he, "have been keeping up
a regular lobby in my behalf with Laura. They think they've got the deal
plugged up now, so that she'll give me a show again, and--"

"Why, surely," said I; "in my opinion, there never was any need for you
to feel downcast."

"Barslow," he said, with the air of a man who has endured to the limit,
"you are a good fellow, but you make me tired when you talk like that.
Why, four weeks ago I had no more show than a snowball in--in the
crater of Vesuvius. But now I'm encouraged. These girls have been doing
me good, as I just said, and I'm convinced that my series of editorials
on 'The Influence of Christianity on Civilization,' in which I've given
the Church the credit of being the whole thing, has helped some."

"They ought to do good somewhere," said I, "they certainly haven't
boomed Lattimore any."

"Damn Lattimore!" said he bitterly. "When a man's very life--But see
here, Barslow, I know you're not in earnest about this. And I'll be all
right in a day or two, or I'll be eternally wrong. I'm going to make one
final cast of the die. I may go down to bottomless perdition, or I may
be caught up to the battlements of heaven; but such a mass of doubts and
miseries as I've been lately, I'll no longer be! Pray for me, Barslow,
pray for me!"

This despairing condition of Giddings's was a sort of continuing
sensation with us at that time. We discussed it quite freely in all its
aspects, humorous and tragic. It was so unexpected a development in the
young man's character, and, with all due respect to the discretion and
resisting powers of Miss Addison, so entirely gratuitous and factitious.