heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
possession.

That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
loved him--in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
according to temperament and the domestic environment already existing.
To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.

One woman, whom "The Healer" had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
voice. She loved him--and partook of his every mental delusion.

This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
frame, but she says: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
am waiting for him here."

This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
me letters, I do not know, but they do--perhaps there is a sort o'
fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
those things into which it is not our right to pry.

This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
back to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
the way.

She watches and waits.

Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others--in
useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: "He is not