instance, Polly's intense
love for her invalid mother has kept her from being selfish. The
straitened circumstances in which she has been compelled to live have
prevented her from yielding to self-indulgence or frivolity. Even her
hunger for the beautiful has been a discipline; for since beautiful
things were never given to her ready-made, she has been forced to
create them. Her lot in life, which she has always lamented, has given
her a self-control, a courage, a power, which she never would have had
in the world had she grown up in luxury. She is too young to see it,
but it is very clear to me that Polly Oliver is a glorious product of
circumstances."

"But," objected Edgar, "that is not fair. You are giving all the
credit to circumstances, and none to Polly's own nature."

"Not at all. If there had not been the native force to develop,
experience would have had nothing to work upon. As it is, her lovely
childish possibilities have become probabilities, and I look to see the
girlish probabilities blossom into womanly certainties."

Meanwhile Polly, it must be confessed, was not at the present time
quite justifying the good opinion of her friends.

She had few of the passive virtues. She could bear sharp stabs of
misfortune, which fired her energy and pride, but she resented pin
pricks. She could carry heavy, splendid burdens cheerfully, but she
fretted under humble cares. She could serve by daring, but not by
waiting. She would have gone to the stake or the scaffold, I think,
with tolerable grace; but she would probably have recanted any article
of faith if she had been confronted with life-imprisonment.

Trouble that she took upon herself for the sake of others, and out of
love, she accepted sweetly. Sorrows that she did not choose, which
were laid upon her without her consent, and which were "just the ones
she did _not_ want, and did _not_ need, and would _not_ have, and could
_not_ bear,"--these sorrows found her unwilling, bitter, and impatient.

Yet if life is a school and we all have lessons to learn in it, the
Great Teacher will be unlikely to set us tasks which we have already
finished. Some review there must be, for certain things are specially
hard to keep in mind, and have to be gone over and over, lest they fade
into forgetfulness. But there must be continued progress in a life
school. There is no parrot repetition, sing-song, meaningless, of
words that have ceased to be vital. New le