testifying that his opinion of my insignificant self remains
unaltered.

Had he or his sister suspended judgment until the evidence against my
ladyhood and humanity could be investigated, I should have had to
look elsewhere for an incident with which to point the moral of my
Talk.

Rising above the pettiness of spiteful grudge-bearing against a
fellow-mortal, let me say a word of the unholy restiveness with which
we meet the disappointments which are the Father's discipline of His
own. "All these things are against me!" is a cry that has struck upon
His loving heart until Godlike patience is needed to bear with the
fretful wail.

Nothing that He lets fall upon us can be "against" us! In His hottest
fires we have but to "hold still" and bide His good time in order to
see that all His purposes in us are mercy, as well as truth to His
promises. In the Hereafter deeded to us as a sure heritage, we shall
see that each was a part of His design for our best and eternal good.

CHAPTER XIII.

"ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY."

The hardest task ever set for mortal endeavor is for us to allow other
people to know less than we know.

The failure to perform this task has kindled the fagots about the
stake where heretics perished for obstinacy.

It is not a week, by the way, since I heard a woman, gently nurtured
and intellectual, lament that those "old Pilgrim forefathers were so
disagreeably obstinate." She "wondered that their generation did not
send them to the scaffold instead of across the sea."

Inability to suffer the rest of the world to be mistaken has set a
nation by the ears, broken hearts and fortunes, and separated more
chief friends than all other alienating causes combined. Many
self-deluding souls set down their impatience with others' errors to a
spirit of benevolence. They love their friends too dearly, they have
too sincere a desire for the welfare of acquaintances, to let them
hold mischievous tenets.

The cause of variance may appear contemptible to an indifferent third
party.

To the average reasoner who has no personal concern in the debate, it
may seem immaterial at what date Mrs. Jenkyns paid her last visit to
Boston. She is positive that it was in March, 1889. Mr. Jenkyns is as
certain that she accompanied him thither in April of that year. She
establishes her position by the fact that she left her baby for the
first time when the cherub was ten months old, and there is the Family
Bible to