t in belief, this weird and piteous utterance came with
peculiar effect. That she who uttered it had only told the tale of her
own sad life and hope he understood at once, and what was of more force,
that she believed and felt in her own heart that every word of her
recital was heard by her Creator. Albert had heard prayers and religious
exhortations without number; prayers that were incoherent, pointless,
vague, or uttered to the hearers instead of God; prayers that contained
advice to the Deity galore, but of supplication and thankfulness not a
vestige; but never before one that reached his heart and touched his
feelings as the strange and piteous supplication uttered by this weird
old lady there in the dimly-lighted room with the sad and solemn dirge
of the ocean whispering through the open windows.

The rest of the services were of little interest to him, except the fact
that Telly's voice at his side, now a little bolder than at first, led
the gospel hymns that followed. Old and time-worn they were, and yet
rendered with a zest of feeling reflected, maybe, from the plaintive
prayer of this old lady.

Our moods, and more especially our thoughts, are often turned from one
groove into another by some single word or reference that, like a little
rudder at the stern of a great ship, seems of no account. To Albert, who
for a year had had no thought except to win success amid the hard,
selfish scramble of life in a busy city, this episode, and more
especially the utter self-abnegation and piteous appeal of this poor,
ill-clad, and gaunt-faced old lady, was the tiny rudder that changed his
thoughts and carried him back to the many times when he, a boy,
exuberant in spirit, was made to kneel each night at bed-time and listen
to a loving mother's prayer. Then, too, the memory of that mother's
face, and even the very tones of her voice as she prayed that God would
guide her boy's footsteps aright, came back to him now, and into the
remembrance too was woven all of that mother's kind and patient acts;
all her earnest and good advice; all her self-denials; all the pinchings
and small economies she had endured to enable him to receive an
education, and as each and all came trooping back like so many little
hands tugging at his heart-strings and moistening his eyes, he realized
that there was needed in this hurrying, selfish life of ours something
deeper, and something beyond the skepticism of Voltaire and the
materialism of Ing