cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh. Gregory loved
Basil, revered him, and laughed at him. Does Basil complain, not
unnaturally, that Tiberina is cold, damp, and muddy, Gregory writes
to him unsympathetically that he is a "clean-footed, tip-toeing,
capering man." Does Basil promise a visit, Gregory sends word to
Amphilochus that he must have some fine pot-herbs, "lest Basil should
be hungry and cross." Does Gregory visit Basil in his solitude at
Pontus, he expresses in no measured terms his sense of the discomfort
he endures. It would be hard to find, in all the annals of
correspondence, a letter written with a more laudable and
well-defined intention of teasing its recipient, than the one
dispatched to Basil by Gregory after he has made good his escape from
the austerities of his friend's housekeeping.

"I have remembrance of the bread and of the broth,--so they were
named,--and shall remember them; how my teeth stuck in your hunches,
and lifted and heaved themselves as out of paste. You, indeed, will
set it out in tragic style, taking a sublime tone from your own
sufferings; but for me, unless that true Lady Bountiful, your mother,
had rescued me quickly, showing herself in my need like a haven to
the tempest-tossed, I had been dead long ago, getting myself little
honour, though much pity, from Pontic hospitality."

This is not precisely the tone in which the lives of the saints (of
any saints of any creeds) are written. Therefore is it better to read
what the saints say for themselves than what has been said about them.
This is not precisely the point of view which is presented unctuously
for our consideration, yet it makes all other points of view
intelligible. It is contrary to human nature to court privations.
We know that the saints did court them, and valued them as avenues
to grace. It is in accord with human nature to meet privations
cheerfully, and with a whimsical sense of discomfiture. When we hear
the echo of a saint's laughter ringing down the centuries, we have
a clue to his identity; not to his whole and heroic self, but to that
portion of him which we can best understand, and with which we claim
some humble brotherhood. We ourselves are not hunting assiduously
for hardships; but which one of us has not summoned up courage enough
to laugh in the face of disaster?

There is no reading less conducive to good spirits than the recitals
of missionaries, or than such pitiless records as thos