, against the axes of zealous political opponents.

The old blear-eyed Boody is not so cheery as we have seen him, although
his party has won brilliant success. There is a sad story of domestic
grief that has marked a new wrinkle in his forehead and given a droop to
his eye, which, had all gone fairly, he might have weathered for ten
years more. The glory of the ringleted Suke has indeed gone, as Phil had
told; but it has not gone in the way of marriage. God only knows where
those pink cheeks are showing their graces now,--not, surely, in any
home of hers,--not in any home at all. God only knows what repinings
have come, all too late, over the glitter and the triumph of an hour.
The elderly, grave ones shake their heads dismally over this fall, and
talk of the terribly demoralizing associations amidst which the poor
child has lived; but do they ask themselves if they did their best to
mend them? Decoyed toward evil fast and frequently enough, without
doubt; but were there any decoys, such as kind hands and welcoming
words, in the other direction? The meeting-house doors have, indeed,
been always open, for the just and for the unjust. But have not the
starched, good women of the parish been a little disposed to count the
pretty tavern-keeper's daughter as outside the fold--so far as all
social influences were concerned--from the beginning? That exuberant
life in her which led to the dance at a tavern ball, was there any
palliative for it,--any hope for it, except to go on in the way of
destruction?

But we would not judge unjustly. Certain it is, that Miss Johns indulged
in such scathing condemnation of the poor sinner as made Adele shiver:
with the spinster at least, there would be little hope for a Magdalen,
or a child of a Magdalen. Nor could such as she fully understand the
measured and subdued tone with which the good Doctor talked of a lapse
from virtue which had so shocked the little community. But the parson
lived so closely in that spiritual world where all his labor and love
centred, that he saw under its ineffable light only two great ranks of
people pressing toward the inevitable goal: a lesser rank, which had
found favor of God; and a greater, tumultuous one, toward whom his heart
yearned, that with wavering and doubt and evil intention pressed on to
destruction. What mattered to him the color of the sin, or who was he to
judge it? When the secret places of the heart were so full of
wickedness, why anathema