re all necessary--the delicate expressive body, the rich voice, the
power of mental transposition. The actor, who absorbs and then reflects
from himself other human lives, needs them all, but needs not much
more. This is her end; but how to reach it? Before her are endless
difficulties: seas must be crossed, poverty must be endured, loneliness,
want. She must be content to wait long before she can even get her feet
upon the path. If she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted
herself with a burden which she must bear to the end, she must but
bear the burden bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and
repentance here: the next world is the place for that; this life is too
short. By our errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited
for a while. "If she does all this--if she waits patiently, if she is
never cast down, never despairs, never forgets her end, moves straight
toward it, bending men and things most unlikely to her purpose--she must
succeed at last. Men and things are plastic; they part to the right and
left when one comes among them moving in a straight line to one end.
I know it by my own little experience," she said. "Long years ago I
resolved to be sent to school. It seemed a thing utterly out of my
power; but I waited, I watched, I collected clothes, I wrote, took my
place at the school; when all was ready I bore with my full force on the
Boer-woman, and she sent me at last. It was a small thing; but life is
made up of small things, as a body is built up of cells. What has been
done in small things can be done in large. Shall be," she said softly.

Waldo listened. To him the words were no confession, no glimpse into the
strong, proud, restless heart of the woman. They were general words with
a general application. He looked up into the sparkling sky with dull
eyes.

"Yes," he said; "but when we lie and think, and think, we see that there
is nothing worth doing. The universe is so large, and man is so small--"

She shook her head quickly.

"But we must not think so far; it is madness, it is a disease. We know
that no man's work is great, and stands forever. Moses is dead, and the
prophets and the books that our grandmothers fed on the mould is eating.
Your poet and painter and actor,--before the shouts that applaud them
have died their names grow strange, they are milestones that the world
has passed. Men have set their mark on mankind forever, as they
thought; but time ha