d in the parable,
"Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" The
modern version would be, "How came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having
a dress on your back which came from Paris?"

The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds me
of Hamlet's uncle,--a thing "of shreds and patches," but rather pretty
to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the
name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church.
Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity
will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that
old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found
himself before this memorial tribute, on the inside,--you know he goes
to church sometimes, if you remember your Faust.

The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist. He
has always been rather "broad" in his views, but cautious in their
expression. You can tell the three branches of the mother-island church
by the way they carry their heads. The low-church clergy look down, as
if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest
drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints;
the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he
felt himself the heir of creation. Our rector carries his head in the
broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of
affectation,--in fact, is the natural and manly way of carrying it.

The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never
before. Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so
that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large
numbers. I know all about it, for she often consults me as to the merits
of a particular contribution.

What is to be the fate of Lurida? I often think, with no little interest
and some degree of anxiety, about her future. Her body is so frail and
her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or
the other will give way. I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever
being married. She grows more and more zealous in behalf of her own sex,
and sterner in her judgment of the other. She declares that she never
would marry any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage, and as
these gentlemen are not very common hereabouts the chance is against her
capturing any one of the hostile sex.

What do yo