, for heroism, for knightly honor, for purer
triumph than his who falls foremost in the breach. Your enemy, Self,
goes with you from the cradle to the coffin; it is a hand-to-hand
struggle all the sad, slow way, fought in solitude,--a battle that began
with the first heart-beat, and whose victory will come only when the
drops ooze out, and sudden halt in the veins,--a victory, if you can
gain it, that will drift you not a little way upon the coasts of the
wider, stronger range of being, beyond death.

Let me roughly outline for you one or two lives that I have known, and
how they conquered or were worsted in the fight. Very common lives, I
know,--such as are swarming in yonder market-place; yet I dare to call
them voices of God,--all!

My reason for choosing this story to tell you is simple enough.

An old book, which I happened to find to-day, recalled it. It was a
ledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firm on the outside,--Knowles
& Co. You may have heard of the firm: they were large woollen
manufacturers: supplied the home market in Indiana for several years.
This ledger, you see by the writing, has been kept by a woman. That is
not unusual in Western trading towns, especially in factories where the
operatives are chiefly women. In such establishments, women can fill
every post successfully, but that of overseer: they are too hard with
the hands for that.

The writing here is curious: concise, square, not flowing,--very
legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who profess
to read character in chirography would decipher but little from these
cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably: that the woman, whoever she
was, had not the usual fancy of her sex for dramatizing her soul in her
writing, her dress, her face,--kept it locked up instead, intact; that
her words and looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere
absorbents by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her,
not flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that lay
within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the date, in red
letters, _October 2, 1860_, largely and clearly written. I am sure the
woman's hand trembled a little when she took up the pen; but there is no
sign of it here; for it was a new, desperate adventure to her, and she
was young, with no faith in herself. She did not look desperate, at
all,--a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed in brown.

There was not much light in the of