evere an ordeal. He therefore took out his lancet and
slit the cocoon. The moth came out at once; but its glorious colours
never developed. The soaring wings never expanded. The indescribable
hues and tints and shades that should have adorned them never appeared.
The moth crept moodily about; drooped perceptibly; and presently died.
The furious struggle with the cocoon was Nature's wise way of
developing the splendid wings and of sending the vital fluids pulsing
through the frame until every particle blushed with their beauty. The
naturalist had saved the little creature from the struggle, but had
unintentionally ruined and slain it in the process. It is the story of
Gog and Magog over again.

In my college days I used to go down to a quaint little English village
for the week-end in order to conduct services in the village chapel on
Sunday. I was always entertained by a little old lady whose face
haunts me still. It was so very human, and so very wise, and withal so
very beautiful; and the white ringlets on either side completed a
perfect picture. She dwelt in a modest little cottage on top of the
hill. It was a queer, tumble-down old place with crooked rafters and
crazy lattice windows. Roses and honeysuckle clambered all over the
porch, straggled along the walls, and even crept under the eaves into
the cottage itself. The thing that impressed me when I first went was
the extraordinary number of old Bessie's visitors. On Saturday nights
they came one after another, young men and sedate matrons, old men and
tripping maidens, and each desired to see her alone. She was very old;
she had known hunger and poverty; the deeply furrowed brow told of long
and bitter trouble. She was a great sufferer, too, and daily wrestled
with her pitiless disease. But, like the sturdier of the poplars by my
gate, she had gathered into herself the force of all the cruel winds
that had beaten so savagely upon her. And the result was that her own
character had become so strong and so upright and so beautiful that she
was recognized as the high-priestess of that English countryside, and
every man and maiden who needed counsel or succour made a beaten path
to her open door.

III

MY WARDROBE

Changing your mind is for all the world like changing your clothes.
You may easily make a mistake, especially if the process is performed
in the dark. And, as a matter of fact, a man is usually more or less
in the dark at the mo