he was not alarmed at himself. Every day and night he
heard that the spirit of the Lord would probably soon quit striving with
him, and leave him out. The phrase was that he would "grieve away the
Holy Spirit." John wondered if he was not doing it. He did everything
to put himself in the way of conviction, was constant at the evening
meetings, wore a grave face, refrained from play, and tried to feel
anxious. At length he concluded that he must do something.

One night as he walked home from a solemn meeting, at which several of
his little playmates had "come forward," he felt that he could force
the crisis. He was alone on the sandy road; it was an enchanting summer
night; the stars danced overhead, and by his side the broad and shallow
river ran over its stony bed with a loud but soothing murmur that filled
all the air with entreaty. John did not then know that it sang, "But I
go on forever," yet there was in it for him something of the solemn flow
of the eternal world. When he came in sight of the house, he knelt down
in the dust by a pile of rails and prayed. He prayed that he might feel
bad, and be distressed about himself. As he prayed he heard distinctly,
and yet not as a disturbance, the multitudinous croaking of the frogs by
the meadow spring. It was not discordant with his thoughts; it had in
it a melancholy pathos, as if it were a kind of call to the unconverted.
What is there in this sound that suggests the tenderness of spring, the
despair of a summer night, the desolateness of young love? Years after
it happened to John to be at twilight at a railway station on the edge
of the Ravenna marshes. A little way over the purple plain he saw the
darkening towers and heard "the sweet bells of Imola." The Holy Pontiff
Pius IX. was born at Imola, and passed his boyhood in that serene and
moist region. As the train waited, John heard from miles of marshes
round about the evening song of millions of frogs, louder and more
melancholy and entreating than the vesper call of the bells. And
instantly his mind went back for the association of sound is as subtle
as that of odor--to the prayer, years ago, by the roadside and the
plaintive appeal of the unheeded frogs, and he wondered if the little
Pope had not heard the like importunity, and perhaps, when he thought of
himself as a little Pope, associated his conversion with this plaintive
sound.

John prayed, but without feeling any worse, and then went desperately
into the