despond, all morasses of
moodiness. People cannot successfully or profitably serve two masters.
That is eminently true; not because it is scriptural, but _vice
versa_; because it is so obviously true it could not escape a place in
the Bible. Half work pays poor wages, and it is not surprising that
neither God nor Mammon will patiently submit to it. I suppose the time
has come when I must bargain myself to one or the other; for,
hitherto, I have declared in favor of neither. I am not altogether
sanctified, nor yet desperately wicked, but I hate Satan, who ruined
my father, infinitely more than I dislike the restrictions of
religion. I owe him a grudge for all the shame and suffering of my
childhood,--which, if God did not interfere to prevent, at least there
is strong presumptive evidence that he took no pleasure in witnessing.
I don't suppose I have any faith; I scarcely know what it means; but
perhaps if I try to serve God instead of myself, it will come to me
as it came to Paul and Thomas. I wonder whether mere abstract love of
righteousness and of the Lord drives half as many persons into
Christian churches as the fear of eternal perdition. I don't deny that
I am afraid of Satan, for if he contrives to smuggle so much sin and
sorrow into this world what must his own kingdom be? If there be any
truth in the tradition that every human being is afflicted by some
besetting sin that crouches at the door of the soul, lying in ambush
to destroy it, then my own 'Dweller of the Threshold,' is love of mine
ease. Time was when I would have bartered my eternal heritage for a
good-sized mess of earthly pottage, provided only it was well spiced
and garnished; but to-day I have no inclination to be swindled like
Esau. Idleness has well-nigh ruined me, so I shall take industry by
the horns, and laying thereon all my sins of indolence, drive it
before me as the Jews drove Apopompoeus."

She walked on in the direction of the town, turning her head neither
to right nor left, and keeping her eyes fixed on the blue air before
her, where imagination built a home, through whose spacious halls
Stanley and Jessie sported at will. On the principal street stood a
fashionable dress-making and millinery establishment, and thither
Salome bent her steps, resolved that the sun should not set without
having witnessed some effort to redeem the pledge given to Jessie.

Panoplied in Miss Jane's patronage, she demanded and obtained
admission to the in