nd." All things considered, that is perhaps the best praise
that Goodwill and his house ever earned. For, to receive and to secure
Feeble-mind as a pilgrim--to make it impossible for Feeble-mind to
entertain a scruple or a suspicion that was not removed beforehand--to
make it impossible for Feeble-mind to find in all the house and in all
its grounds so much as a straw over which he could stumble--that was
extraordinary attention, kindness, and condescension in Goodwill and all
his good-willed house. "Go on, go on, dear Mr. Feeble mind," said
Goodwill giving his hand to Mr. Fearing's nephew, "go on: keep your
feeble mind open to the truth, and still hope to the end!"

3. "As to the Interpreter's House, I received much kindness there." That
is all. But in that short speech I think there must he hid no little
shame and remorse. No words could possibly be a severer condemnation of
Feeble-mind than his own two or three so irrelevant words about the
Interpreter's house. No doubt at all, Feeble-mind received kindness
there; but that is not the point. That noble house was not built at such
cost, and fitted up, and kept open all the year round, and filled with
fresh furniture from year to year, merely that those who passed through
its significant rooms might report that they had received no rudeness at
the hands of the Interpreter. "'Come,' said the Interpreter to Feeble-
mind, 'and I will show thee what will be profitable to thee.' So he
commanded his man to light the candle and bid Feeble-mind follow him. But
it was all to no use. Feeble-mind had neither the taste nor the capacity
for the significant rooms. Nay, as one after another of those rich rooms
was opened to him, Feeble-mind took a positive dislike to them. Nothing
interested him; nothing instructed him. But many things stumbled and
angered him. The parlour full of dust, and how the dust was raised and
laid; Passion and Patience; the man in the iron cage; the spider-room;
the muck-rake room; the robin with its red breast and its pretty note,
and yet with its coarse food; the tree, green outside but rotten at the
heart,--all the thanks the Interpreter took that day for all that from
Feeble-mind was in such speeches as these: You make me lose my head. I
do not know where I am. I did not leave the town of Uncertain to be
confused and perplexed in my mind with sights and sounds like these. Let
me out at the door I came in at, and I shall go back to the g