ather suffered, nor why his father died, nor did
he understand it all till he had grown to a man's stature, and then he
knew; and he tried to live his days as his father had lived, and to lay
down his life, if need be, for his friend.

"This is the Easter story that should come to every heart. The Christ
that came into the desert of this weary life, and walked here foot-sore,
heart-broken and athirst, came here for the love that was in His heart.
Who put it there--whether the God that gave Shakespeare his brain and
Wagner his harmonies, gave Christ His heart--or whether it was the God
that paints the lily and moves the mountains in their labours--it
matters not. It is one God, the Author and First Cause of all things. It
is His heart that moves our own hearts to all their aspirations, to all
the benevolence that the wicked world knows; it is His mind that is made
manifest in our marvels of civilisation; it is His vast, unknowable plan
that is moving the nations of the earth.

"Whether it be spirit or law or tendency or person--what matter?--it is
our Father, who went to the desert to find His sheep."

All day Saturday, in order to square himself with the printers who set
up his sermon, and to rehabilitate himself in the graces of the others
about the office who knew of his weakness, Mehronay turned in the gayest
lot of copy that he had ever written. There was an "assessment call of
the Widowers' Protective Association to pay the sad wedding loss of
Brother P. R. Cullom, of the Bee Hive," whose wedding was announced in
the society column; there was a card of thanks from Ben Pore to those
who had come with their sympathy and glue to nurse his wooden Indian
which had blown down and broken the night before, and resolutions of
respect for the same departed brother, in most mocking language, from
the Red Men's Lodge. There was an item saying seven different varieties
of Joneses and three kinds of Hugheses were in town from Lebo--the Welsh
settlement; there was a call for the uniformed rank of head waiters to
meet in regalia at Mrs. Larrabee's reception, signed by the three men in
town who were known to have evening clothes, and there was a meeting of
the anti-kin society announced to discuss the length of time
Alphabetical Morrison's new son-in-law should be allowed to visit the
Morrisons before the neighbours could ask when he was going to leave.
But when the paper was out Mehronay got a dozen copies from the press
and sen