heering words of Saadi,--

'Says God, "Who comes towards me an inch through doubtings dim,
In blazing light I do approach a yard towards him."'"

"If I am to be kept in this world until all the bitterness is scourged
out of me, I might as well resign myself to a career as endless as
that of Ahasuerus. I tell you, sir, I have been forced to drink out of
quassia-cups until my whole being has imbibed the bitter; and I am
like that tree to which Firdousi compared Mahmoud, 'Whose nature is so
bitter, that were you to plant it in the garden of Eden, and water it
with the ambrosial stream of Paradise, and were you to enrich its
roots with virgin honey, it would, after all, discover its innate
disposition, and only yield the acrid fruit it had ever borne.'"

"What right have you to expect that existence should prove one
continued gala-season? When Christ went down meekly into Gethsemane,
that such as you and I might win a place in the Eternal City, how
dare you demand exemption from grief and pain, that Jesus, your
God, did not spare Himself? Are you purer than Christ, and wiser
than the Almighty, that you impiously deride and question their
code for the government of the Universe, in which individual lives
seem trivial as the sands of the desert, or the leaves of the
forest? Oh! it is pitiable, indeed, to see some worm writhing in
the dust, and blasphemously dictating laws to Him who swung suns and
asterisms in space, and breathed into its own feeble fragment of clay
the spark that enabled it to insult its God. Put away such unwomanly
scoffing,--such irreverent puerilities; sweep your soul clean of all
such wretched rubbish, and when you feel tempted to repine at your
lot, recollect the noble admonition of Dschelaleddin, 'If this
world were our abiding-place, we might complain that it makes our
bed so hard; but it is only our night-quarters on a journey, and
who can expect home comforts?'"

"I can not feel resigned to my lot. It is too hard,--too unjust."

"Mrs. Gerome, are you more just and prescient than Jehovah?"

She passed her thin hand across her face, and was silent, for his
voice and manner awed her. After a little while, she sat erect in her
chair, and tried to rise.

"Doctor, if you could look down into the gray ruins of my heart, you
would not reprove me so harshly. My whole being seems in some cold
eclipse, and my soul is like the Sistine Chapel in Passion-week,
where all is shrouded in shadow, and no s