ire trend of your individual experience."

"Where--in what place will the lady speak--I mean, will it be in the
church?" ventured Miss Philura in a depressed whisper. She sighed
apprehensively as she glanced down at the tips of her shabby gloves.

"The lecture will take place in the drawing-room of the Woman's
Ontological Club," responded Mrs. Van Deuser, adding with austere
sweetness of tone: "The club deals exclusively with those conceptions or
principles which lie at the base of all phenomena; including being,
reality, substance, time, space, motion, change, identity, difference,
and cause--in a word, my dear Philura, with ultimate metaphysical
philosophy." A majestic and conclusive sweep of a perfectly gloved hand
suggested infinity and reduced Miss Philura into shrinking silence.

* * * * *

When Mrs. B. Isabelle Smart began to speak she became almost directly
aware of a small, wistful face, with faded blue eyes and a shabby,
unbecoming bonnet, which, surrounded as it was on all sides by tossing
plumes, rich velvets and sparkling gems, with their accompaniments of
full-fleshed, patrician countenances, took to itself a look of positive
distinction. Mrs. Smart's theme, as announced by the President of the
Ontological Club, was Thought Forces and the Infinite, a somewhat
formidable-sounding subject, but one which the pale, slight, plainly
dressed but singularly bright-eyed lady, put forward as the speaker of
the afternoon, showed no hesitancy in attacking.

Before three minutes had passed Miss Philura Rice had forgotten that
such things as shabby gloves, ill-fitting gowns, unbecoming bonnets and
superfluous birthdays existed. In ten minutes more she was leaning
forward in breathless attention, the faded eyes aglow, the unbecoming
bonnet pushed back from a face more wistful than ever, but flushed with
a joyful excitement.

* * * * *

"This unseen Good hems us about on every side," the speaker was saying,
with a comprehensive sweep of her capable-looking hands. "It presses
upon us, more limitless, more inexhaustible, more free than the air that
we breathe! Out of it _every_ need, _every_ want, _every_ yearning of
humanity can be, must be, supplied. To you, who have hitherto led
starved lives, hungering, longing for the good things which you believe
a distant and indifferent God has denied you--to you I declare that in
this encircling, ever-present, inv