creditable story on any citizen going around we hear it first from
Silas, and if we do not print it he says we have taken hush money. If
we have to print it, he says we are stirring up strife. Seeing him over
there, looking down on the town which to him is accursed, we have often
thought how weary God must be looking at the world and knowing so much
better than Silas the weakness and iniquity of men. Sometimes we have
wondered if sin is really as important as Silas thinks it is, for with
Silas sin is a blot that effaces a man's soul. But maybe God sees sin
only as a blemish that men may overcome. Perhaps God is not so
discouraged with us as Silas is. But life is a puzzle at most.

[Illustration: Counting the liars and scoundrels and double-dealers and
villains who pass]

Last night Aaron Marlin died. He had lived for ninety years in this
world, and had seen much and suffered much, and has died as a child
turns to sleep. It was quiet and still at his home among the elms as he
lay in his coffin. The mourners spoke in low and solemn tones, and the
blinds were drawn as if death were shy. As he lay there in the great
hush that was over the house, there passed before it on the sidewalk two
who spoke as low as the mourners, though they were oblivious to the
house of death. They trod slowly, and a great calm was on their souls.
One of the scribes who sets down these lines stood in the shadow of the
doorway pine-tree and saw the lovers passing; he felt the silence and
the sorrow behind the door he was about to enter; and there he stood
wondering--between Death and Love--the End and the Beginning of God's
great mystery of Life. Now, with the sense of that great mystery upon
him, with all of this pied skein of life about him, he puts down his
pen, and looks out of the window as the thread winds down the street.

For "Thirty" is in for the day.

THE END

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