f all lay business and speech. I
am sure they never heard of St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the
birds. What would they have said to it?

"You hope that Mr. Feldwick's experience will not be mine, and intimate
that if the Church fails me, nothing remains for me but the unbelief of
our friends in the cooperative house. Yes, I've long felt that between
Rome and rationalism there's no logical ground on which to rest. But I
have no fears.

"Mr. Feldwick told me once that having, while a Catholic, read
somewhere that St. Philip of Neri was so distressed at ecstasies that
befell him in public that he tried the reading, before saying mass, of
books on other than spiritual subjects, to divert the usual current of
his thoughts and love, he, Mr. Feldwick, conceived this to be an
authorization for him to read romances, speculative books, what not, by
way of preparing himself to receive Holy Communion--after which history
I never wondered that he had wandered out of the Father's House after
the husks of spiritism. But it is very difficult to conceive him
responsible. If reading qualified for heaven, how high up would he not
be! But he seems rather born to accumulate all manner of heterogeneous
information, and to echo the last 'Times' leader, the last clever paper
in the 'Contemporary' or 'Fortnightly,' than to live a man's life of
independent impression, expression, and will. I always hope that
invincible ignorance and invincible prejudice may cover so much!"

Anna Hedges and the porcelain widow being gone from London, I should
see little of the remaining confederates were it not for "little
Malaise." His mother, I am sure, has given me up as a possible
disciple. I have never been able to get beyond one suffrage meeting; I
couldn't somehow sign my name to a petition that women be eligible
pupils for the study of law, and I horrified her greatly by
enthusiastic support of a proposition that garroters, wife-beaters, and
committers of ruffianly assaults upon women and children be publicly
punished with the cat. "So inhumane!" she said. "Such an education of
the brutal instincts in the spectators! Surely I did not think what
such a sight would be for the young, how much more it would inculcate
in them revenge than the gentler virtues. And society was responsible
for these criminals. They were what her neglect and their conditions
had made them. They should not be punished for what was a misfortune
rather than a fault. Our busine