s, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with
the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,--saints for whom the
mystical terms _self-annihilation_ and _self-crucifixion_ had a real and
tangible meaning, all the stronger because their daily death was marked
by no outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them; no organ-music
burst forth in solemn rapture to welcome them; no habit of their order
proclaimed to themselves and the world that they were the elect of
Christ, the brides of another life: but small eating cares, daily
prosaic duties, the petty friction of all the littleness and all the
inglorious annoyances of every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and
grandeur of their calling even from themselves; they walked unknown even
to their households, unknown even to their own souls; but when the Lord
comes to build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white stone with
a new name thereon, and the record of deeds and words which only He that
seeth in secret knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that
the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust of daily life, has
blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.

"When I build my cathedral, _that_ woman," I said, pointing to a small
painting by the fire, "shall be among the first of my saints. You see
her there, in an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace border,
and with a very ordinary worked collar, fastened by a visible and
terrestrial breastpin. There is no nimbus around her head, no sign of
the cross upon her breast; her hands are clasped on no crucifix or
rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if it could sparkle with
mirthfulness, as in fact it could; there are in it both the subtile
flash of wit and the subdued light of humor; and though the whole face
smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that speaks the soul
immutable in good. That woman shall be the first saint in my cathedral,
and her name shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saintliness
in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain
quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the
circle of the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be truly
noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-day life, is a virtue
so rare as to be worthy of canonization,--and this virtue was hers. New
England Puritanism must be credited with the making of many such women.
Severe as was her discipline, and