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benevolence.

But the rich have their miracles, no doubt, even in that beautiful
empyrean of moneyed ease in which the poor place them. Their money
cannot buy all they enjoy, and God knows how much of their sorrow it
assuages. As it is, one hears now and then of accidents among them,
conversions to better thoughts, warding off of danger, rescue of life;
and heirs are sometimes born, and husbands provided, and fortunes
saved, in such surprising ways, that even the rich, feeling their
limitations in spite of their money, must ascribe it privately if not
publicly to other potencies than their own. These cathedral _tours
de force_, however, do not, if the truth be told, convince like the
miracles of the obscure little chapel.

There is always a more and a most obscure little miracle chapel, and
as faith seems ever to lead unhesitatingly to the latter one, there is
ever rising out of humility and obscurity, as in response to a demand,
some new shrine, to replace the wear and tear and loss of other
shrines by prosperity. For, alas! it is hard even for a chapel to
remain obscure and humble in the face of prosperity and popularity.
And how to prevent such popularity and prosperity? As soon as the
noise of a real miracle in it gets abroad, every one is for hurrying
thither at once with their needs and their prayers, their candles
and their picayunes; and the little miracle chapel, perhaps despite
itself, becomes with mushroom growth a church, and the church a
cathedral, from whose resplendent altars the cheap, humble ex-voto
tablets, the modest beginnings of its ecclesiastical fortunes, are
before long banished to dimly lighted lateral shrines.

The miracle chapel in question lay at the end of a very confusing but
still intelligible route. It is not in truth a chapel at all, but a
consecrated chamber in a very small, very lowly cottage, which stands,
or one might appropriately, if not with absolute novelty, say which
kneels, in the center of a large garden, a garden primeval in
rusticity and size, its limits being defined by no lesser boundaries
than the four intersecting streets outside, and its culture showing
only the careless, shiftless culture of nature. The streets outside
were miracles themselves in that, with their liquid contents, they
were streets and not bayous. However, they protected their island
chapel almost as well as a six-foot moat could have done. There was a
small paved space on the sidewalk that served