upon his ill-success with Mercy, he was wont to say that
undoubtedly Mistress Mercy was a very pretty lass, only she was troubled
with ill conditions. And then, when Mercy was confiding to Prudence all
about her possible husbands, she said that they were all such as did not
like her conditions. To which Prudence, keeping her countenance,
replied, that the men were but few in their day that could abide the
practice that was set forth by such conditions as those of Mercy. Well,
tossed out Mercy, if nobody will have me I will die a maid, or my
conditions shall be to me as a husband! As I came again and again across
that old seventeenth-century word "conditions," I said to myself, I feel
sure that Dr. Murray of the Oxford Scriptorium will have noted this
striking passage. And on turning up the Sixth Part of the _New English
Dictionary_, there, to be sure, was the old word standing in this present
setting. Five long, rich, closely packed columns stood under the head of
"Condition"; and amid a thousand illustrations of its use, the text:
"1684, Bunyan, Pilgr., ii. 84. He said that Mercy was a pretty lass, but
troubled with ill conditions." Poor illiterate John Bunyan stood in the
centre of a group of learned and famous men, composed of Chaucer, Wyclif,
Skelton, Palsgrave, Raleigh, Featly, Richard Steel, and Walter Scott--all
agreeing in their use of our word, and all supplying examples of its use
in the best English books. By Mercy's conditions, then, is just meant
her cast of mind, her moral nature, her temper and her temperament, her
dispositions and her inclinations, her habits of thought, habits of
heart, habits of life, and so on.

"Well," said Mercy proudly, "if nobody will have me, I will die a maid,
or my conditions shall be to me as a husband. For I cannot change my
nature, and to have one that lies cross to me in this,--that I purpose
never to admit of as long as I live." By this time, though she is still
little more than a girl, Mercy had her habits formed, her character cast,
and, more than all, her whole heart irrevocably set on her soul's
salvation. And everything--husband and children and all--must condition
themselves to that, else she will have none of them. She had sought
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and she will seek
nothing, she will accept nothing--no, not even a husband--who crosses her
choice in that. She has chosen her life, and her husband with it. Not
the man as yet,