o was six feet two, and as thin as a bean-pole. The thickly wadded
skirts swept the ground, or clung heavily about the lower limbs. The
garment combined every disadvantage of a Roman toga and a fashionable
swallow-tail.

Mrs. Romulus and Mr. Stellato, who had not scrupled to avail themselves
of the Doctor's prescription, were still noisily progressive. They at
once led a moral charge against Professor Owlsdarck and Colonel Prowley.

Miss Hurribattle, refusing such warmth as might be administered
internally, was pale and chilly. She separated herself from her
companions, and crossed the room to where I stood. Her face was radiant
with devout simplicity. To a soul so pure and brave and feminine may I
never be guilty of applying a hard and technical criticism! He is little
to be envied who reads Don Quixote's assault upon the windmills as a
chapter of mad buffoonery. An ideal knight, without fear or reproach,
subject to disaster and ridicule, august from his faith in God and the
manly consecration of his life,--is he not rather the type of a
Christian sanity? No doubt, such a character seems altogether mad to
you, my friend, who pass the window as I write these words. You have
huckstered away opportunity just upon the edge of indictable knavery;
your ambition has been to be well with the wealth and sleek
respectability of the day, to make your son begin life the sordid
worldling that you end it, to marry your daughter to the richest
fool,--and this you call sanity and common sense! Is it not some Devil's
subtlety that deludes you? If Man is an immortal soul, to be saved or
damned forever, then he only is sane who welcomes privation, toil,
contempt, for a spiritual idea. "Attacking windmills!" you say. That is,
they seem so to you. But it may be that your brother's clearer eye and
practised intelligence show them the giants which they truly are. But,
be they giants or windmills, mark you this: his life illustrates some
grade of manly worthiness which the world would be poorer without, while
to himself the gain of an unselfish activity is a certain blessedness. I
hold it, then, of small matter, that, for a time, Miss Hurribattle
mistook two charlatans, three-fifths knavery, the rest fanaticism, for
honest workers in the Lord's vineyard. Far better such over-faith than
the fatal languor which seemed to terminate Clifton's too close scrutiny
of life. A buoyant and never-failing enthusiasm is the divine requital
of faithful se