courage tends to raise the whole tone of life within the range of its influence, in proportion to the amount and the quality of the endurance exercised.

Tac lifting power of endurance must probably be measured by its motive. The mere instinctive pluck which makes a schoolboy ashamed to wince or cry out may have no conscious motive at all, and may in fact be inspired by nothing more exalted than a general sense of esprit de corps and respect for tradition or public opinion. Yet even these things are higher than the dominion of mere sensation from which the boy is lifted away by them. And when once we arrive at the recognition of fortitude as an ideal, the conscious and resolute practice of it becomes a radiating power of incalculable value, the condition of the highest achievements which ennoble life. And again, there is a devotion in the strength of which courage is kindled into the joyous rapture of martyrdom.

The higher degrees of courage-perhaps all conscious devotion to it as an ideal-imply of course the distinct recognition of that, be it what it may, for the sake of which we make the effort to rise above our pain. This object, recognized as something higher than ease, may be only an ideal. Some of us have seen, and wondered at, the sustaining power of that devotion to moral beauty and excellence (considered in a purely impersonal and abstract fashion as the one supremely desirable thing in a life unlighted by any revelation, and not necessarily regarded as extending beyond the grave) which in these troubled times ennobles and beautifies the lives of so many professed Agnostics. We have seen such lives gradually being lifted and purified by a power to which they give no name, and which seems not to inspire them with any tender or personal sense of devotion, but to which they render an austere and disinterested

obedience. Such as these do not ask for consolation; but neither do they struggle or cry out against the Order under which they live, and by which they have been wrought into so fine a temper of unworldly and unwavering integrity. Dumbly they do homage to the nature of the lessons taught by the discipline of life, though they may refrain from any spring of confidence towards the Teacher.

Others there are for whom the Light of Revelation has shone in the darkness; for whom the central source of all joy and strength is the life of the Crucified One-Son of God and Son of Man-by whom the very gates of heaven are opened to all believers. By these, however poor and feeble their own presentation of the Christian life, it is yet felt to be essentially and of necessity a life of victory. They have recognized once for all "the glory of the Cross," and all suffering is for them a means whereby the Father's name may be glorified. These "count it all joy" when they are called on to endure anything for His sake who loved us and gave Himself for us. They are ready with all their hearts to follow His call to rise higher through suffering, to take up their cross and follow the Captain of their salvation in the narrow upward path that leadeth into life. To them the discipline of life is not merely a steady obedience to principle, but a blessed and tender instruction administered by the Father of their spirits, and prized above all mere happiness for its power to draw them nearer to Himself. Such willing scholars in the school of Divine discipline have experiences more or less incommunicable, and not to be freely spoken of, in the light of which all pain is seen as containing the possibility of infinite blessing.

For indeed the experience of the saints that it is good for them to have been in trouble is too familiar, too

freely shared by those who, while never dreaming that they deserve the name of saints, are yet one with them in hope and faith, to need reassertion. It seems to be in the nature of happiness to lessen the forward impulse of the soul "Stay, thou art fair," is the language of the happy, while those who endure cheer themselves with the thought, "This too will pass." And not only does happiness tend rather to rest than to effort, but in proportion as it satisfies it isolates; whereas pain breaks down the barriers between spirit and spirit as nothing else can do. When we are in trouble we call upon God, and are brought into sympathy with man. Nothing unites hearts like a sorrow shared.

But though the contrast between these familiar effects of joy and sorrow explains the sense of the value of pain which makes so many of us feel that our times of trouble are those which we could least afford to have blotted out from our lives, it does not follow that we feel suffering to be a better thing than enjoyment, or indeed to be in itself a good thing at all. Its whole value is in the effect of its right endurance in the lifting and purifying and stimulating action on the mind for which to the brave and patient it becomes a means. It is one of the instruments, but is very far from being the only instrument, in the hand of the Divine Husbandman, by which the fruit harvest is brought to maturity. Just because joy and sorrow are so powerful and so various in their power, we need both, and both need to be administered by more than human wisdom and knowledge. The office of brave and patient endurance being not only to lift us above the dominion of mere emotion, but to reveal to us the presence of the Teacher from whom this instruction comes, it is, I believe, our wisdom, while accepting willingly from His hand the needful severity of dis

cipline, to abstain altogether from intermeddling in the administration of it by self-inflicted austerities. A dutiful spirit of confidence in Divine Wisdom is the mainspring of patience. I do not see how any such confidence can be rightly felt in one's own devices for subduing the flesh.

Indeed, the apportionment of joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, in any lot is a matter with which it does not seem conceivable that human wisdom should be competent to deal, even were the control of events in its hands. Joy and sorrow have their different and perhaps equally important parts to play in every life. While sorrow rightly met lifts and awakens and braces, joy rightly met rests and melts and ripens -and perhaps raises also. Surely our wisdom is to open our hearts to both, and to take no thought for either, while cleaving to the guidance of that "stern daughter of the voice of God" which sets us free from the sway of our own desires.

There is one plain duty for us all in the presence of an ever-growing acquaintance with the sorrows of the world-the duty of self-control. Whatever our inmost thought with regard to the "Awful Power" by which the conditions of our life are ordained, whether we have even a grain of religious faith or must content ourselves with ethical principle, let us for any sake keep our balance, and not exaggerate, or indulge in rhetorical violence of denunciation against that which we can neither prevent nor fathom. It is certainly a duty to resist the temptation to an excessive value for ease whch is at any rate akin to cowardice.

I have not touched on the haunting horrors by which so many minds are overshadowed through dwelling on the worst evils of our overcrowded and in many respects corrupt city populations. It may be necessary that these things should be published, and it may be

right that we should all in our measure feel their weight and urgency; but of one thing I am sure-that they cannot be truly measured from outside, still less from afar off. It is not those who are actually engaged in a hand-tohand struggle with evil and degradation who take the gloomiest view of things. No others can give due weight to the elements of hope and of goodness which are mixed up everywhere with human vice and misery. This, I believe, is a part of the reward reserved for those who are honestly and heartily spending themselves in the service of the poor and wretched. The Hibbert Journal.

They learn to hope against hope, and to see encouragement everywhere. Their sympathy takes that deepest and best form which is not a mere reflection of pain, but a community of resolve. At any rate we shall do no good to ourselves or to others, and we may but too easily harden our hearts, by dwelling on pictures of misery and wretchedness without attempting any active endeavors to remove or lessen them. And if we are to give heart and hope to others, it must be by having our own heart and hope fixed on that which cannot fail,

Caroline Stephens.

Unless one happens to be familiar with the neighborhood, "Digby Buildings, Clock Street, Bloomsbury," is an address difficult to find. In itself the word Bloomsbury is misleading, for, naturally, one would penetrate the numerous squares and streets of the district patronized by students and Americans seeing London "on the cheap." But Clock Street is not to be found in this semi-fashionable part; it is off Upper Wardle Street, and Upper Wardle Street leads to Tottenham Court Road. However, once in Upper Wardle Street it is not easy to pass Clock Street by unnoticed, for the County Council has painted the name in large white letters on the corner of Digby Buildings themselves, and when the street is found the Buildings are found also.

There are in Clock Street a few oldfashioned houses, now let out in tenements, with wide steps leading to Adams-fronted doors, which steps accommodate the small fry of the Buildings. There are two or three blankwalled printing establishments; there is a small pickle factory, the fumes of LIVING AGE. VOL. XLI. 2147

whose vinegar flavor Clock Street by night and day; there is a catsmeat vendor-wholesale; a news-shop, whose sole ambition is to announce murders, executions and general disasters in as attractive a manner as possible; an oilshop with a window full of bar soap and tinned salmon; and Digby Buildings, a yellow-bricked block, with curling stone staircase opening to the street.

Half way up the Building, at the end of a stone passage, a door, with "Miss S. Short" written with an amateur's attempt at printing, attracted the attention. Underneath the name was written "Typist," and beneath that a small denizen of the Building had scratched the word "Stumpy." Though there had evidently been some attempt to efface the epithet by scrubbing, success had not attended the effort; the letters were deeply scratched into the putty-colored paint, and when the afternoon sun fell on the door "Stumpy" showed as boldly as the lady's name above it.

It was not yet half-past seven and only the semblance of morning was

coming through the fog-laden atmosphere. The paraffin lamp in Sarah Short's room was not burning brightly; she had only filled it, not trimmed it, when she arose before six to work at the typewriter standing at the foot of the bed. Now she was bending over it, not for warmth, but to make sure that the words in the letter she had just read were really written, not a figment of her active brain.

She turned up the lamp and read again:

Miss Ellaline De Vere.

Dear Madam,-We beg to inform you that the competition for "The best design for an evening gown," offered by us in "The Princess" of January 10, has been won by you. We have pleasure in telling you that, although the competition brought us in hundreds of designs, Madame Sylvestre, of Bond Street, to whom they were submitted, has pronounced in favor of the one you sent in. As you are aware, the prize is the winning design to be made to measure by Madame Sylvestre at a cost of not less than £25 and not exceeding £35. Madame Sylvestre will be pleased to see you at your earliest convenience. Enclosed order, signed by the editor, must be presented. Yours truly,

The Editor (pro).

Miss Short sat down on the edge of her bed and tittered; she could not laugh outright, the situation was too full of irony. To cost not less than twenty-five pounds and not exceeding thirty-five. "Oh, my!" she exclaimed aloud, and then, as there seemed nothing else to say, she repeated "Oh, my!" But she fell to thinking. "If I could but have the money I could buy myself a good second-hand Remington, instead of paying five shillings a week for the hire of that old thing, and then have enough to get myself a new walkingout costume. But an evening gown! Why was the competition for an evening dress?" The flush of victory,

which for a moment had painted her cheeks, faded away, and the tears of disappointment trickled from her cheeks into the cup of unmixed cocoa she was holding.

At that moment Sarah Short, had she been asked to describe her costume, would have pronounced herself en déshabillé. Her skirt was hitched round her waist and held together by one hook and eye; over her stays and bodice she had pinned a shawl which, like the boy's almond-drop, "was pink once," but from many washings had taken a nondescript tone. The room was comfortless and untidy; a mixture of MSS. and meals lay on the table; the bed-clothes hung half on and half off the bed; the ashes were piled high in an unlit fireplace. Providence had not been kind to the girl; she was short by stature as well as name-so short, indeed, that, when seated on the office stool she used when working the typewriter, she needed an upturned soapbox to rest her feet upon. She had always preferred "a profession" to trade, which, considering her appearance, was no doubt the more excellent choice; yet she had been born to a small general grocer in Clapham, whose bankruptcy had driven her to the "profession" of typist in Digby Buildings. She admired tall, elegant women of the best American type, yet Providence had made her four foot nine and nicknamed "Stumpy."

Yet in moments of hallucination snatched from the duplicating of sale catalogues, the work that fell mostly to her typewriter, Sarah could see herself grown tall and prepossessing, could see herself with auburn hair and costumed by Paquin whirling round in some fashionable ballroom or walking up the marble staircase at an ambassador's reception. The costumes her brain sketched, and in which she arrayed herself, were her delight. It was this aptitude of throwing herself

into other spheres that had brought about the present situation. Miss Ellaline De Vere had been bidden to a very smart function and Miss Ellaline De Vere required a costume for the occasion. The rare times that Sally could afford the sixpence, she would buy "The Princess," and revel in its most exclusive fashions, and it was with the idea of letting its subscribers participate in the joys of Miss De Vere's new gown that she had sent a design to the monthly competition. In the annoyances of duplicating a catalogue of "startling reductions," dear at any price on their intrinsic merits, according to Sally's ideas, she had forgotten all about it, and now here was she confronted with the possession of an evening gown-needed only in dream moments-with nowhere to wear it and with an ill-shapen body to put it on.

Now,

or,

would wake up and put on her one and only Sunday frock. It was but blue serge, worn for four seasons, but, with the pretence assumed, she would imagine it a new creation every Sunday. "Ah!" she would exclaim, "yes, as it is fine I will wear the biscuit cloth with the galon vest that Madame Clothilde sent home last week. what sunshade? My coffee lace? let me see, if I wear the large black hat from Gainsborough's with the pink roses under the brim, I might use the rose chiffon sunshade with the enamel handle. Gloves now-white kid or those exquisite tan suèdes with the rucked arms? The tan, I think. Yes, and the white lace petticoat made with the cream silk lining would be suitaable," and with her cotton umbrella under her arm, working a pair of old gloves down her fingers, Miss Ellaline De Vere, no longer Stumpy, of four foot nine, but grown to five foot eleven, sailed down the stairs of Digby Buildings arrayed, in her mind, to perfection.

That ill-shapen body-how painfully at times was Sarah conscious of it! Only yesterday a lady who lived on her landing, when consulting her as to the purchase of a Sunday garment, had intimated that though she liked a bit of color with plenty of tabs and bright buttons down the skirt-"a good show of trimming always looks moneyed, even if you aren't"-it was natural that Sarah, with a figure like hers. "as can't stand much in the trimming line," should like those long, plain, clinging skirts on which she would always insist. "But I have a figure as you can load up a bit," the woman had added proudly, and she had gone to seek ideas in a more promising quarter.

Sunday, when it was fine and during the season, was a red-letter day for Sally. At about half-past eleven, household duties done, she would, as it were, project herself into her other self. Then she would become Miss Ellaline De Vere. She would close her eyes, for half an hour would work herself into a kind of trance, when she

Half-past twelve would find her in the Park, there to spend a penny, and an hour, admiring the finest-dressed women of the Empire. Yet even here her taste at times received a shock. "Oh dear!" she would exclaim, "there's that Miss Hobbs, the banker's daughter. Why can't she understand that a blonde should never wear unrelieved maize? And, oh, my dear Countess of Blickford, why did not Providence give you an eye for color? Can't you see that that pink crêpe of yours is just two shades on the light side? I know what you were trying for, but you have missed it as usual. Ah, now, look at the Russian princess! Nothing British about that tone of pink; Paquin written all over it. So plain yet so commanding. I must make a mental note of it; I think even I can accept that hint." She would project her mind a day or two further in the