ference to the charges against him of being "an infidel," or
guilty of "infidelity," he himself, with that straightforward and
happy confidence which made some men call him a braggart, wrote:

"They have not yet accused Providence of Infidelity. Yet,
according to their outrageous piety, she (Providence) must
be as bad as Thomas Paine; she has protected him in all his
dangers, patronised him in all his undertakings, encouraged
him in all his ways...."

It is true, as Mr. van der Weyde points out in an article in _The
Truth Seeker_ (N.Y.), that a most extraordinary and beneficent
luck,--or was it rather a guardian angel?--stood guard over Paine. His
narrow escapes from death would make a small book in themselves. I
will only mention one here.

During his imprisonment in the Luxembourg Prison in Paris, Thomas
Paine was one of the many who were sentenced to be guillotined at
that period when the moral temperature of France was many degrees
above the normal mark, and men doled out death more freely than
_sous_. It was the custom among the jailers to make a chalk mark upon
the door of each cell that held a man condemned. Paine was one of a
"consignment" of one hundred and sixty-eight prisoners sentenced to be
beheaded at dawn, and the jailer made the fateful chalk mark upon his
door along with the others, that the guards would know he was destined
for the tumbrel that rolled away from the prison hour by hour all
through the night. _But his door chanced to be open_, so that the
mark, hastily made, turned out to be on the wrong side! When the door
was closed it was inside, and no one knew of it; so the guard passed
on, and Paine lived.

It is interesting but difficult to write about Thomas Paine.

The trouble about him is that his personality is too overwhelming to
be cut and measured in proper lengths by any writer. He does not lend
himself, like lesser historical figures, to continuous or
disinterested narrative. The authors who have been rash enough to try
to tell something about him can no more pick and choose the incidents
of his career that will make the most effective "stuff" than they
could reduce the phenomena of a cyclone or the aurora borealis to a
consistent narrative form.

Thus: One starts to speak of Paine's experiences in Paris, and brings
up in New Rochelle; one endeavours to anchor him in Greenwich, only to
find oneself trailing his weary but stubborn footsteps in the war! And