's ill health had kept her much at home, and the
dominant influence of her father had therefore every chance to make
itself felt upon her character, and that influence was all in favor of a
self-denying philanthropy. To the last her father was altruistic,
finding nothing worth living for but the doing for others. Abiding
secluded as Phillida had, the father's stamp remained uneffaced. She saw
in all this magnificence a wanton waste of resources. She put it side by
side with her sense of a thousand needs of others, and she felt for it
more condemnation than admiration. Mrs. Frankland's vocation to the rich
was justified in her mind; it was, after all, a sort of mission to the
heathen.

And who shall say that Mrs. Frankland's missionary impulse was not a
true one? Phillida's people were exteriorly more miserable; but who
knows whether the woes of a Mulberry street tenement are greater than
those of a Fifth Avenue palace? Certainly Mrs. Frankland found wounded
hearts enough. The woman with an unfaithful husband, the mother of a
reckless son who has been obliged to flee the country, the wife of a
runaway cashier, disgraced and dependent upon rich relatives--these and
a score besides poured into her ear their sorrows, and were comforted by
her sympathy cordially expressed, and by her confidence in a consoling
divine love and her visions of a future of everlasting rest. Mrs.
Frankland had found her proper field--a true mission field indeed, for
in this world-out-of-joint there is little danger of going astray in
looking for misery of one sort or another. If the sorrows of the poor
are greater, they have, if not consolation, at least a fortunate
numbness produced by the never-ending battle for bread; but the canker
has time to gnaw the very heart out of the rich woman.

Even on the mind of Phillida, as she now listened to Mrs. Frankland, the
accessories made a difference. How many dogmas have lived for centuries,
not by their reasonableness but by the impressiveness of trappings!
Liturgies chanted under lofty arches, creeds recited by generation
following generation, traditions of law, however absurd, uttered by one
big-wigged judge following a reverend line of ghostly big-wigs gone
before that have said the same foolish things for ages--these all take
considerable advantage from the power of accessories to impose upon the
human imagination. The divinity that hedges kings is the result of a set
of stage-fixings which make the