is what you call
talented or not. He says things exactly as though he knew they were so,
and for the time being he makes you feel as though you were a perfect
simpleton for not knowing it, too."

"And you like to be made to feel like a 'perfect simpleton?' Is that the
reason you resolved to hear him again?"

"I like to meet a man once in a while who knows how to do it, and for
the matter of that I wouldn't mind being made to feel the truth of the
things that he says, if one could only _stay_ made. It isn't the fault
of the preaching that it all feels like a pretty story and nothing else;
it is the fault of the wretched practicing that the sheep go home and
do. It makes one feel like being an out-and-out goat, and done with it,
instead of being such a perfect idiot of a sheep."

At this point the talk suddenly ceased, for the leaders began to
assemble, and the service commenced. Ruth and Marion exchanged comic
glances when they discovered the "heathen" of the afternoon to be
Socrates. And Marion presently whispered that she was evidently to play
the character of the old fellow's wife, and Eurie whispered to them
both:

"Now I want to know if that horrid Zantippe was Socrates' wife! Upon my
word I never knew it before. She wasn't to blame, after all, for being
such a wretch."

"What do you mean?" Marion whispered back, with scornful eyes. "Socrates
was the grandest old man that ever lived."

"Pooh! He wasn't. He didn't know any more than little mites of
Sunday-school children do nowdays. I never could understand why his
philosophy was so remarkable, only that he lived in a heathen country
and got ahead of all the rest, but if he were living now he would be a
pigmy."

"I wish he were," Marion said, with her eyes still flashing. "I would
like to see such a life as he lived."

This girl was a hero worshiper. Her cheeks could burn and her eyes glow
over the grand stories of old heathen characters, and she could melt to
tears over their trials and wrongs. And yet she passed by in haughty
silence the sublime life that of all others is the only perfect one on
record, and she had no tears to shed over the shameful and pitiful story
of the cross. What a strange girl she was! I wonder if it be possible
that there are any others like her?

CHAPTER VIII.

"AT EVENING TIME IT SHALL BE BRIGHT."

Meantime Flossy Shipley came to no place where her heart could rest. She
went through that first day at Chautauqua in