uggestion of the
straight-falling garment may have had for the men a sort of appeal for
defense and even protection. It is certain, at any rate, that Father
Damon had the confidence of high and low, rich and poor. The forsaken
sought him out, the hungry went to him, the dying sent for him, the
criminal knocked at the door of his little room, even the rich reprobate
would have opened his bad heart to him sooner than to any one else. It
is evident, therefore, that Father Damon was dangerously near to being
popular. Human vanity will feed on anything within its reach, and there
has been discovered yet no situation that will not minister to its
growth. Suffering perhaps it prefers, and contumely and persecution.
Are not opposition, despiteful anger, slander even, rejection of men,
stripes even, if such there could be in these days, manna to the devout
soul consciously set apart for a mission? But success, obsequiousness,
applause, the love of women, the concurrent good opinion of all
humanitarians, are these not almost as dangerous as persecution? Father
Damon, though exalted in his calling, and filled with a burning zeal,
was a sincere man, and even his eccentricities of saintly conduct
expressed to his mind only the high purpose of self-sacrifice. Yet he
saw, he could not but see, the spiritual danger in this rising tide of
adulation. He fought against its influence, he prayed against it, he
tried to humiliate himself, and his very humiliations increased the
adulation. He was perplexed, almost ashamed, and examined himself to
see how it was that he himself seemed to be thwarting his own work.
Sometimes he withdrew from it for a week together, and buried himself in
a retreat in the upper part of the island. Alas! did ever a man escape
himself in a retreat? It made him calm for the moment. But why was it,
he asked himself, that he had so many followers, his religion so few?
Why was it, he said, that all the humanitarians, the reformers, the
guilds, the ethical groups, the agnostics, the male and female knights,
sustained him, and only a few of the poor and friendless knocked, by his
solicitation, at the supernatural door of life? How was it that a woman
whom he encountered so often, a very angel of mercy, could do the things
he was doing, tramping about in the misery and squalor of the great city
day and night, her path unilluminated by a ray from the future life?

Perhaps he had been remiss in his duty. Perhaps he was letti