e a
January north wind in the middle of a cold wave, when his little fur
cape becomes a mockery and his hard high hat a misery. However admirable
Mrs. Frankland's prolonged sessions may have seemed to the ladies with
tear-stained cheeks within the house, it appeared far from laudable as
seen from the angle of a coachman's box.

The address on this day followed a reading of the eleventh chapter of
Hebrews, which is itself the rhapsody of an eloquent man upon faith. If
this were written, as some suppose, by Apollos, the orator of the early
Church, one may almost fancy that he reads here a bit of one of those
addresses wherein speaker and hearer are lifted up together above the
meanness and exigencies of mere realism. Mrs. Frankland accompanied the
reading of this summary of faith's victory by a comment consisting
largely of modern instances carefully selected and told with the tact of
a _raconteur_, so as to leave the maximum impression of each incident
unimpaired by needless details. Some of these stories were little short
of miraculous; but they were dignified by the manner of telling, which
never for an instant degenerated into the babble of a mere
wonder-monger.

As usual, Mrs. Frankland, or the oratorical part of her, which was quite
the majority of her mind, was carried away by the force of her own
speech, and in lauding the success of faith it seemed to her most
praiseworthy to push her eulogies unfalteringly to the extreme. You are
not to understand that by doing this she vociferated or indulged in
vehement gesture. He is only a bastard orator who fancies that loudness
and shrillness of tone can enforce conviction. When Mrs. Frankland felt
herself about to say extravagant things she intuitively set off her
transcendent utterances by assuming a calm demeanor and the air of one
who expresses with judicial deliberation the most assured and
long-meditated conclusions. So to-day she closed her little Oxford Bible
and laid it on the richly inlaid table before her, deliberately
depositing her handkerchief upon it and looking about before she made
her peroration, which was in something like the following words,
delivered with impressive solemnity in a deep, rich voice:

"Why should we always praise faith for what it _has_ done? Has God
changed? Faith is as powerful to-day as ever it was since this old world
began. If the sick are not healed, if the dead are not raised to-day, be
sure it is not God's fault. I am asked i