over the child
fresh from God's presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to
him--at least in this world." We are accountable to God for our
influence; this it is "that gives us pause."

Gentle as is the atmosphere about us, it presses with a weight of
fourteen pounds to the square inch. No infant's hand feels its weight;
no leaf of aspen or wing of bird detects this heavy pressure, for the
fluid air presses equally in all directions. Just so gentle, yet
powerful, is the moral atmosphere of a good man as it presses upon and
shapes his kind. He who hath made man in his own image hath endowed
him with this forceful presence. Ten-talent men, eminent in knowledge
and refinement, eminent in art and wealth, do, indeed, illustrate this.
Proof also comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells.
Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the
life-career of an apple woman. Her history makes the story of kings
and queens contemptible. Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger,
cold and two rooms in a tenement. But there were three orphan boys
sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder. She dedicated her heart
and life to the little waifs. During two and forty years she mothered
and reared some twenty orphans--gave them home and bed and food; taught
them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the
trades; helped others off to Canada and America. The author says she
had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead
face. It must have been so. She "had a beautiful soul," as Emerson
said of Longfellow. Poverty disfigured the apple woman's garret, and
want made it wretched, nevertheless, God's most beautiful angels
hovered over it. Her life was a blossom event in London's history.
Social reform has felt her influence. Like a broken vase the perfume
of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after
we are gone.

The Greek poet says men knew when the goddess came to Thebes because of
the blessings she left in her track. Her footprints were not in the
sea, soon obliterated, nor in the snow, quickly melting, but in fields
and forests. This unseen friend, passing by the tree blackened by a
thunderbolt, stayed her step; lo! the woodbine sprang up and covered
the tree's nakedness. She lingered by the stagnant pool--the pool
became a flowing spring. She rested upon a fallen log--from decay and
death came moss, the snowdrop a