is clothes), I leaned forward and read these words:_

"WHAT SHALL A MAN DO THAT HE MAY GAIN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN?"

_I did not need a moment to seek for an answer to the question. "That,"
said I, "is not difficult to tell, for it has been answered again and
again. He who would gain the kingdom of heaven must resist and subdue
the lusts of his heart; he must do good works to his neighbors; he must
fear his God. What more is there that man can do?"_

_Then the leaf was turned, and I read the Parable._

I.

The town of East Haven is the full equation of the American ideal worked
out to a complete and finished result. Therein is to be found all that
is best of New England intellectuality--well taught, well trained; all
that is best of solidly established New England prosperity; all that is
best of New England progressive radicalism, tempered, toned, and
governed by all that is best of New England conservatism, warmed to life
by all that is best and broadest of New England Christian liberalism. It
is the sum total of nineteenth-century American _cultus_, and in it is
embodied all that for which we of these days of New World life are
striving so hard. Its municipal government is a perfect model of a
municipal government; its officials are elected from the most worthy of
its prosperous middle class by voters every one of whom can not only
read the Constitution, but could, if it were required, analyze its laws
and by-laws. Its taxes are fairly and justly assessed, and are spent
with a well-considered and munificent liberality. Its public works are
the very best that can be compassed, both from an artistic and practical
stand-point. It has a free library, not cumbersomely large, but almost
perfect of its kind; and, finally, it is the boast of the community that
there is not a single poor man living within its municipal limits.

Its leisure class is well read and widely speculative, and its busy
class, instead of being jealous of what the other has attained, receives
gladly all the good that it has to impart.

All this ripeness of prosperity is not a matter of quick growth of a
recent date; neither is its wealth inherited and held by a few lucky
families. It was fairly earned in the heyday of New England commercial
activity that obtained some twenty-five or thirty years ago, at which
time it was the boast of East Haven people that East Haven
sailing-vessels covered the seas from India to India. Now that busy
harvest-tim