ribute towards the self-centred existence led by most
inhabitants of rural communities. To prove this, one has but to think
of a cripple, or a dwarf, or a drunken man, or a maniac; also, to
revert to pleasanter images, of an unusual flower or animal, or of
convincing and conspicuous personal beauty. What is a cripple in the
city? He is passed by without a glance, for there are, alas! many like
him. What is a dwarf? He only suggests the unnatural or unpleasant;
the last circus or a fairy-book. What is a drunken man in a city? Or
what a poor maniac? Officers of the police, and places of correction,
physicians and nurses are at hand; the suffering and the evildoer are
taken away and we know them no more.

But if we change a little part of speech and write the cripple, and
proceed to think of the cripple in a village, or the dwarf, or the
drunken man or the maniac, we instantly perceive how their presence
must greatly colour the limited society in which they exist; how they
must either amuse or disgust, arouse sympathy or create fear, as the
case may be, and although a calla lily and a red-blooming cactus, a
parrot or Persian kitten, are scarcely regarded as curiosities or
rarities in the city, they may easily come to be regarded as such in
the village.

From uninteresting and unimpersonal generalizations and aggregations
such as dwarfs, cripples, lunatics, cats and parrots, we turn to the
individuals of the species and behold--it is now The Cripple, The
Dwarf, The Maniac, and so on, and how profoundly important the
appearance and conduct, habits and dwellings of these--our
companions--immediately become. We cannot get away from them, nor they
from us. And the beautiful young girl! She is often safer in the
city, where a kind of dove-like wisdom soon informs and protects, than
in the lonely and silent places of the wilderness. The beauty that was
fatally conspicuous in the village finds its rival and its level in the
town.

Ringfield had certainly had his full share of ministering to the
decadent and the unhappy at St. Ignace, and he was therefore very
pleased one day to be called on by the Rev. Mr. Abercorn, incumbent of
St Basil's at Hawthorne, the latter a small settlement, about nine
miles distant, in which the English element predominated. Once a year
the congregation of St. Basil's gave a picnic tea, when members of
surrounding denominations met tranquilly on common ground and neutral
territory. Maca