nate scheme of things only as hotly as we loved the juster Hand of
a future time.

It is curious that we, offsprings of parvenue success, should be capable
of such repudiation. Barbara accepts the Management without the trouble
of a question. "What do you know? What do you know?" the girl demands, a
radiant little angel in white, and a conservative. "You must know
yourselves in the wrong, else would you smite your way through the
world."

Ah, Barbara has yet to learn that it is hard to live. It is not so hard
to fight, and it is easy to rest neutral, but to be fighter and bearer
both, to stand staunch, holding ever to the issue, and yet, without
tameness, to take rebuff and wait, there's the true course and the
heroic. It is difficult when one has been conquered to know it. It is
difficult to honour an outgrown ideal, which cost us, nevertheless,
comfort and prestige--prizes which youth scorns and which oncoming age,
pathetically enough, holds dear. It is difficult to pull up when driving
too fast and too far, when galloping towards fanaticism, and it is
impossible to whip oneself into passion and martyrdom. It is difficult
to live, little Barbara.

For me it is also difficult to report a social function. At this one
Browning presided, for Melville took up "Caponsacchi" and read it to us.
That voice of his is in itself an interpretation, but Browning needs
interpreting less than any other man who wrote great poems, because he
wrote the greatest. It was four in the morning when the "O great, just,
good God! Miserable me!" of the soldier-saint fell upon our ears. How we
had listened! Earl steadily paced the floor, Barbara leaned her cheek
upon my hand. Her soul was doing battle, and so was mine. We were all
fighting the gallant fight. Read "Pompilia" and you are filled with
reverence, read "Caponsacchi" and you are caught up by the spirit of
action. You must rise and forth to burn your way like he, though you may
have been too weary in spirit before to answer to your name when
opportunity called roll.

It was Earl who broke the silence caused by the inner tumult. In a
dreamy voice, his eyes very eager and intent, he told us how at one time
he had gone up a hill that faced the house in which he lived. A hard
rain was driving, he fell at every step up the slippery steepness, but
at every step the beauty of it became more and more wondrous, hardly
bearable. The little village sank lower and lower, and about him were
sof