hts in me.

[Illustration: "I wept, I wept, I wept."]

"I tell you, I rose from that bed--naturally I had thrown myself upon
it. Quick I washed my face, I brushed my hair, and, you see these bows
of ribbons,--look, here are the marks of the tears,--I turned them.
_He,_ Loulou, it occurs to me, that if you examined the blue bows on
a bride's _negligee_, you might always find tears on the other side;
for do they not all have to marry whom God sends? and am I the only
one who had dreams? It is the end of dreams, marriage; and that is the
good thing about it. God lets us dream to keep us quiet, but he knows
when to wake us up, I tell you. The blue bows knew! And now, you see,
I prefer my husband to my _brun_; in fact, Loulou, I adore him, and I
am furiously jealous about him. And he is so good to Clementine and
the poor little children; and see his photograph--a blond, and not
good-looking, and small!

"But poor papa! If he had been alive, I am sure he never would have
agreed with God about my marriage."

THE MIRACLE CHAPEL

Every heart has a miracle to pray for. Every life holds that which
only a miracle can cure. To prove that there have never been, that
there can never be, miracles does not alter the matter. So long as
there is something hoped for,--that does not come in the legitimate
channel of possible events,--so long as something does come not to be
hoped or expected in the legitimate channel of possible events, just
so long will the miracle be prayed for.

The rich and the prosperous, it would seem, do not depend upon God so
much, do not need miracles, as the poor do. They do not have to pray
for the extra crust when starvation hovers near; for the softening of
an obdurate landlord's heart; for strength in temptation, light in
darkness, salvation from vice; for a friend in friendlessness; for
that miracle of miracles, an opportunity to struggling ambition; for
the ending of a dark night, the breaking of day; and, oh! for God's
own miracle to the bedside-watchers--the change for the better, when
death is there and the apothecary's skill too far, far away. The poor,
the miserable, the unhappy, they can show their miracles by the score;
that is why God is called the poor man's friend. He does not mind, so
they say, going in the face of logic and reason to relieve them; for
often the kind and charitable are sadly hampered by the fetters of
logic and reason, which hold them, as it were, away from their ow