en wiped away long ago, by weight of
its own eccentricity, had not Mary Dunbar been the making of it. She is
the one righteous among many. She is the good nurse whom we all go to
seek, in our times of trouble, and she perpetually saves her city from
the odium of the world.

Mary was born in Tiverton Street. We are glad to remember that, we who
condemn by the wholesale, and are assured that no good can come out of
Nazareth. When she was a girl of eighteen, her father and mother died;
and she fell into a state of spiritual exaltation, wherein she dreamed
dreams, and had periods of retirement within her house, communing with
other intelligences. We said Mary had lost her mind; but that was
difficult to believe, since no more wholesome type of womanhood had ever
walked our streets. She was very tall, built on the lines of a beauty
transcending our meagre strain. Nobody approved of those broad shoulders
and magnificent arms. We said it was a shame for any girl to be so
overgrown; yet our eyes followed her, delighted by the harmony of line
and action. Then we whispered that she was as big as a moose, and that,
if we had such arms, we never'd go out without a shawl. Her "mittins"
must be wide enough for any man!

Mary did everything perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the
morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess
might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that
round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we
only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved
Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions and
that elemental strength.

One snowy morning, Mary's spiritual vision called her out of our midst,
to which she never came back save as we needed her. The world was very
white that day, when she rose, in her still house, dressed herself
hastily, and roused a neighbor, begging him to harness, and drive her up
to Horn o' the Moon. Folks were sick there, with nobody to take care of
them. The neighbor reasoned, and then refused, as one might deny a
person, however beloved, who lives by the intuitions of an unseen world.
Mary went home again, and, as he believed, to stay. But she had not
hesitated in her allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through the
blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o' the
Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she stayed.
We marveled ove