ithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in
deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day the
unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that
unobtrusive yet dramatic book, "Miss Crofutt's Missionary Labors in the
English Prisons."

It came to her notice by mere accident, not by favor of proselyting
friends; and such was its singular material, that she at once devoured
it with avidity. As its title suggests, it was the history of the
ameliorating endeavors of a woman in criminal society, and it contained,
perforce, a large amount of tragic and pathetic incident. But this last
was so blended and involved with what Miss Eunice would have skipped as
commonplace, that she was led to digest the whole volume--statistics,
philosophy, comments, and all. She studied the analysis of the
atmosphere of cells, the properties and waste of wheaten flour, the cost
of clothing to the general government, the whys and wherefores of crime
and evil-doing; and it was not long before there was generated within
her bosom a fine and healthy ardor to emulate this practical and
courageous pattern.

She was profoundly moved by the tales of missionary labors proper. She
was filled with joy to read that Miss Crofutt and her lieutenants
sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped
divine kernels in the hearts of some of the wretches, and she frequently
wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose defences of
silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above the slow but
persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling
thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that on Christmas
every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, a gracious man;
that the sight of a few penny tapers, or the possession of a handful of
sweet stuff, or a spray of holly, or a hot-house bloom, would appear to
convert the worst of them into children. Her heart would swell to learn
how they acted during the one poor hour of yearly freedom in the
prison-yards; that they swelled their chests; that they ran; that they
took long strides; that the singers anxiously tried their voices, now
grown husky; that the athletes wrestled only to find their limbs stiff
and their arts forgotten; that the gentlest of them lifted their faces
to the broad sky and spent the sixty minutes in a dreadful gazing at the
clouds.

The pretty student gradually became possessed