the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made
to be launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has
been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the
water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who
should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side
because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the great
vessel never gelling afloat with its freight of nations and their
rulers;--and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet
of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been
saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your
bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old
rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it
where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope
float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is
lying!"

It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan
wasn't deep enough, and the Tiber wasn't deep enough, and the Rhone
wasn't deep enough, and the Thames wasn't deep enough,--and perhaps the
Charles isn't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I
love to hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and
making the ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know,
Sir,--but I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and
when I think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted
mother of American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the
greatest cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little
Boston!

--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,
especially when it finished with the last two words.

And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which
always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the
great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the
part which, as he pleases himself with believing, his own city is to
take in that consummation of human development to which he looks
forward.

Presently she looked into his face with a changed expression,--the
anxiety of a mother that sees her child suffering.

You are not well,--she said.

I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the
death's-head ring he wore on his right hand. She took his hand as if it
ha