thing the angry creases of both the
thin and the square face.

"Then let him stop a-callin' me 'Skinny,'" was the last outbreak of the
injured lean one, and his antagonist confessed--

"I won't say nothin' to you no more if you stop grinning 'Flathead' at
me."

Before Miss Pepper had succeeded in describing the paraphernalia of
Eastern travel and the approach of the Ishmaelites, the two were induced
to shake hands silently across their gentle mediatrix, whose face suddenly
grew radiant with the sweetest blush I ever saw as the door opened and a
new feature was added to the scene.

I do not mean to detract from the good impulses or high motives of my dear
girl when I say that this was the key that opened the subject to me, and
made it bright and plain. It wore the form of a truly good and
good-looking young gentleman, who had just enough of the clergyman in his
appearance to show that he honored his holy calling above all things. He
gave Bessie a glance that set my heart at rest--for I naturally felt
anxious that the blush and brightness and other signs should not be thrown
away on an unappreciative object--and then he went right into his work. Oh
dear! what a difference! One could not imagine, without seeing for one's
self, what a beautiful sympathy could do with material that a hard, dry
purpose could only irritate. Of course he bowed to me, and met Miss Pepper
like an old friend, and then he began, and in beginning caught every
single wandering mind, and held it with that mysterious fascination which
individualizes, and convinces each one that he is the particular soul
addressed.

He had been spending the hour of his absence from us in the chamber of a
little fellow, one of our number, who had been terribly hurt by the
machinery of a factory in which he worked. He took every one of us there
with him, awakening our liveliest interest, and making us anxious to be
helpful to every suffering fellow-creature. Some of us had to cry a little
at the kind remembrances the poor crushed child sent us, and we felt quite
self-reproachful that we had not thought more of him, and been quieter and
more orderly in every way. Then, without any dry, hard preaching, he
planted that lesson, left it to take root without digging it up again with
personal exhortation, and told us something else. Surely no one could have
better divined just what we wanted to know, and just how we would have
liked it related. Love first of all; then cheer