. How shocking! everybody said. What a
disgrace to the nineteenth century! But the wretched creature had only
been doing the best according to her light for the welfare of her
miserable child; while here--with their eyes open, with their cultured
consciences--the wives of these same philanthropists were doing the same
thing every day--the very same!

"Having gone for the mammies like this, he went for the dear girls
themselves one better. Let them gird sackcloth on their loins and hide
their faces. Why did they suffer themselves to be sold? The woman who
married a man for the sake of his title or his position or any worldly
advantage whatever was no better than an outcast of the streets. Her act
was the same, and in all reason and justice her name should be the same
also.

"Hey, nonny, nonny! I told you how he broke down before; but on Sunday
morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of
the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide.
You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were
lit up like the red lamps on Peel pier.

"Pulpit oratory! I don't know what it is, only I never heard the like of
it in all my born days. I begin to think the real difference between
preachers is the difference of the fire beneath the crust. In some it
burns so low that it doesn't even warm the surface, and you couldn't get
up enough puff to boil the kitchen kettle; but in others--look out! It's
a volcano, and the lava is coming down with a rush.

"Mercy me, how I cried! 'Oh, my daughter, oh, my child, what a ninny you
are!' I told myself; but it was no use talking. His voice was as hoarse
as a raven's, and sometimes you would have thought his very heart was
breaking.

"But the congregation! You should have seen the transformation scene!
They had come in bowing and smiling and whispering softly until the
church was a perfect sheet of sunshine, an absolute aurora borealis; but
they went out like a northeast gale, with mutterings of thunder and one
man overboard.

"And John Storm having put his foot in it, of course Glory Quayle had to
get her toe in too. Coming down the aisle some of the dear ladies of
Zion, who looked as if they wanted to 'swear in their wrath,' were
mumbling all the lamentations of Jeremiah. Who was he, indeed, to talk to
people like that? Nobody had ever heard of him except his mother. And in
the porch they came upon a fat old dump in a velvet