e, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that
know it isn't so. There is not a mind present among this multitude of
verdict-deliverers that is the superior of the minds that persuade and
represent the rest of the divisions of the multitude. Yet this sarcastic
fact does not humble the arrogance nor diminish the know-it-all bulk of
a single verdict-maker of the lot by so much as a shade. Mind is plainly
an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out, no doubt. Why
do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever lived? I
swear I don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well--that is different.

APPENDIX W

LITTLE BESSIE WOULD ASSIST PROVIDENCE

(See Chapter cclxxxii)

[It is dull, and I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I
will go lightly excursioning along the primrose path of theology.]

Little Bessie was nearly three years old. She was a good child, and not
shallow, not frivolous, but meditative and thoughtful, and much given
to thinking out the reasons of things and trying to make them harmonize
with results. One day she said:

"Mama, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering? What is it
all for?"

It was an easy question, and mama had no difficulty in answering it:

"It is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord sends us
these afflictions to discipline us and make us better."

"Is it He that sends them?"

"Yes."

"Does He send all of them, mama?"

"Yes, dear, all of them. None of them comes by accident; He alone sends
them, and always out of love for us, and to make us better."

"Isn't it strange?"

"Strange? Why, no, I have never thought of it in that way. I have not
heard any one call it strange before. It has always seemed natural and
right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful."

"Who first thought of it like that, mama? Was it you?"

"Oh no, child, I was taught it."

"Who taught you so, mama?"

"Why, really, I don't know--I can't remember. My mother, I suppose; or
the preacher. But it's a thing that everybody knows."

"Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy Norris the
typhus?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"Why, to discipline him and make him good."

"But he died, mama, and so it couldn't make him good."

"Well, then, I suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was a
good reason, whatever it was."

"What do you think it was, mama?"

"Oh, you ask so many questions! I think it