ardon, where we are offended; we can pity, where we cannot
pardon. Both the good and the bad principles generate their like in
others. Force begets force; anger excites a corresponding anger; but
kindness awakens the slumbering emotions even of an evil heart. Love may
not always be answered by an equal love, but it has never yet created
hatred. The testimony which Friends bear against war, he said, is but a
general assertion, which has no value except in so far as they manifest
the principle of peace in their daily lives--in the exercise of pity, of
charity, of forbearance, and Christian love.

The words of the speaker sank deeply into the hearts of his hearers.
There was an intense hush, as if in truth the Spirit had moved him to
speak, and every sentence was armed with a sacred authority. Asenath
Mitchenor looked at him, over the low partition which divided her and
her sisters from the men's side, absorbed in his rapt earnestness and
truth. She forgot that other hearers were present: he spake to her
alone. A strange spell seemed to seize upon her faculties and chain them
at his feet: had he beckoned to her, she would have arisen and walked to
his side.

Friend Carter warmed and deepened as he went on. "I feel moved to-day,"
he said,--"moved, I know not why, but I hope for some wise purpose,--to
relate to you an instance of Divine and human kindness which has come
directly to my own knowledge. A young man of delicate constitution,
whose lungs were thought to be seriously affected, was sent to the
house of a Friend in the country, in order to try the effect of air and
exercise."

Asenath almost ceased to breathe, in the intensity with which she gazed
and listened. Clasping her hands tightly in her lap to prevent them from
trembling, and steadying herself against the back of the seat, she
heard the story of her love for Richard Hilton told by the lips of
a stranger!--not merely of his dismissal from the house, but of that
meeting in the street, at which only she and her father were present!
Nay, more, she heard her own words repeated, she heard Richard's
passionate outburst of remorse described in language that brought his
living face before her! She gasped for breath--his face WAS before her!
The features, sharpened by despairing grief, which her memory recalled,
had almost anticipated the harder lines which fifteen years had made,
and which now, with a terrible shock and choking leap of the heart, she
recognized. He