athy. If you are generally
charitable and just, and have few actual dislikes, and meet a man
against whom your whole nature revolts, who is as repulsive to you as
a snake would be, avoid him. It is not necessary for you to tell
others of the uncomfortable impression he has made upon you. He may
not affect them in the same way. I acknowledge, not only from
observation, but from personal experience, that there are certain
people from whom one recoils with a feeling of physical as well as
mental repugnance. I believe that every woman who reads this talk has
an unerring feminine instinct which will thus prompt her when she
meets her own particular "Dr. Fell."

But I also believe that we seldom meet characters which repel us in
this especial way. Oftener some slight to ourselves, some one
unfortunate speech, biases our judgment, and those against whom we are
thus prejudiced are even sometimes connected to us by ties of
consanguinity. We would do well to analyze the causes which lead to
our feelings of dislike, and I fear we should often find that wounded
self-esteem was the root of the evil. And, after all, what a great
matter a little fire kindleth! Let us quench the spark before it
ignites. It is arrant folly, not to mention wickedness, to make
enemies for the little while we are here. There is an incurable
heartache which comes from such mistakes. Owen Meredith describes it
in a poem, every verse of which throbs with hopeless love and regret,
and one of which teaches a lesson so much needed by us all that we
would do well to commit to memory the last two lines, and repeat them
almost hourly:

"I thought of our little quarrels and strife,
And the letter that brought me back my ring;
_And it all seemed then, in the waste of life,
Such a very little thing!_"

CHAPTER XII.

THE PERFECT WORK OF PATIENCE.

A slender little treble was singing it over and over again in childish
sort, with so little appreciation of the meaning of the words that the
oddity of the ditty was the first thing to attract my attention to it.

"You'd better bide a wee, wee, wee!
Oh, you'd better bide a wee.
La, la, la, la, la, _la_,
You'd better bide a wee."

The elf was singing her dolly to sleep, swinging back and forth in her
little rocking-chair, the waxen face pressed against the warm pink cushion
of her own cheek, the yellow silk of curls palpitating with the owner's
vitality mingling with the lifeless flo