me to pass, in her distended and demoralised conscience,
that with all the things she despised in her life and all the things she
rather liked, between being worn out with her husband's inability to
earn a living and a kind of terror of his consistency (he had a theory
that they lived delightfully), it happened, I say, that the only very
definite criticism she made of him to-day was that he didn't know how to
speak. That was where the shoe pinched--that was where Selah was slim.
He couldn't hold the attention of an audience, he was not acceptable as
a lecturer. He had plenty of thoughts, but it seemed as if he couldn't
fit them into each other. Public speaking had been a Greenstreet
tradition, and if Mrs. Tarrant had been asked whether in her younger
years she had ever supposed she should marry a mesmeric healer, she
would have replied: "Well, I never thought I should marry a gentleman
who would be silent on the platform!" This was her most general
humiliation; it included and exceeded every other, and it was a poor
consolation that Selah possessed as a substitute--his career as a
healer, to speak of none other, was there to prove it--the eloquence of
the hand. The Greenstreets had never set much store on manual activity;
they believed in the influence of the lips. It may be imagined,
therefore, with what exultation, as time went on, Mrs. Tarrant found
herself the mother of an inspired maiden, a young lady from whose lips
eloquence flowed in streams. The Greenstreet tradition would not perish,
and the dry places of her life would, perhaps, be plentifully watered.
It must be added that, of late, this sandy surface had been irrigated,
in moderation, from another source. Since Selah had addicted himself to
the mesmeric mystery, their home had been a little more what the home of
a Greenstreet should be. He had "considerable many" patients, he got
about two dollars a sitting, and he had effected some most gratifying
cures. A lady in Cambridge had been so much indebted to him that she had
recently persuaded them to take a house near her, in order that Doctor
Tarrant might drop in at any time. He availed himself of this
convenience--they had taken so many houses that another, more or less,
didn't matter--and Mrs. Tarrant began to feel as if they really had
"struck" something.

Even to Verena, as we know, she was confused and confusing; the girl had
not yet had an opportunity to ascertain the principles on which her
mother's li