e.'"

Small wonder that peace reigned among the discalced Carmelites so
long as Teresa ruled. Practical and fearless (save when a lizard ran
up her sleeve, on which occasion she confesses she nearly "died of
fright,") her much-sought advice was always on the side of reason.
Asceticism she prized; dirt she abhorred. "For the love of Heaven,"
she wrote to the Provincial, Gratian, then occupied with his first
foundation of discalced friars, "let your fraternity be careful that
they have clean beds and tablecloths, even though it be more
expensive, for it is a terrible thing not to be cleanly." No
persuasion could induce her to retain a novice whom she believed to
be unfitted for her rule:--"We women are not so easy to know," was
her scornful reply to the Jesuit, Olea, who held his judgment in such
matters to be infallible; but nevertheless her practical soul
yearned over a well-dowered nun. When an "excellent novice" with a
fortune of six thousand ducats presented herself at the gates of the
poverty-stricken convent in Seville, Teresa, then in Avila, was
consumed with anxiety lest such an acquisition should, through some
blunder, be lost. "For the love of God," wrote the wise old saint
to the prioress in Seville, "if she enters, bear with a few defects,
for well does she deserve it."

This is not the type of anecdote which looms large in the volumes
of "minced saints" prepared for pious readers, and its absence has
accustomed us to dissever humour from sanctity. But a candid soul
is, as a rule, a humorous soul, awake to the tragi-comic aspect of
life, and immaculately free from self-deception. And to such souls,
cast like Teresa's in heroic mould, comes the perception of great
moral truths, together with the sturdy strength which supports
enthusiasm in the face of human disabilities. They are the
lantern-bearers of every age, of every race, of every creed, _les
ames bien nees_ whom it behooves us to approach fearlessly out of
the darkness, for so only can we hope to understand.

The Nervous Strain

"Which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this
night."--MRS. GAMP.

Anna Robeson Burr, in her scholarly analysis of the world's great
autobiographies, has found occasion to compare the sufferings of the
American woman under the average conditions of life with the
endurance of the woman who, three hundred years ago, confronted dire
vicissitudes with something closely akin to insensibility.
"To-day,"