grind knives along the streets of our town, if set to do it by their Lord and ours; and how well they would grind them too! And not a single seraph, winging by on swift pinions upon some embassy of highest import to the realm-ruling angel, would have a thought of scorn for the faithful knifegrinder's, or the cheerful street-sweeper's place and work.

"Look then upon your work-basket as a badge of dignity, and upon your scissors and needles as holy implements. Shirt-making is sacred. Stocking-mending is divine.

"But I know your heart, my dear wife. Would you neglect your work-basket in order to be directress or secretary to the Society for planting a Christian coffee-growing colony at Borioboola Gha on the left bank of the Niger? No, you would not, my dear.

"Would you let my shirts and Phil's go without buttons, in order that you might make flannel shirts for the benighted dwellers in Timbuctoo? No, my dear wife, you would not.

"Would you let your children go about without warm stockings to their feet, in order that you might go about begging money to buy warmingpans for the children of the tropics, or even to buy

Mount Vernon at ten times its proper price? No, Mrs. Oldham, my dearest wife, I know you better. When your work-basket is cleared, you will go and carry comfort and coals to poor sickly Mrs. Johnson, who has three children to maintain, and no way to do it but making pantaloons for the slopshops at eighteen cents the pair. And you will find more honor and more pleasure in it than in uniting all the offices of the Ladies' Mount Vernon Association in your own single person.

And Lilly, my dear child, I hope you will always be of your mother's way of thinking."

"But surely, husband, you don't object to the Mount Vernon Association, and ladies holding office in it ? "

"No, my dear, not at all. The object is noble. I am only mortified and ashamed for my country that this should be the way of accomplishing it— that it should be left to the women to gather together in such ways the money that ought to have been appropriated long ago by the nation. One million (out of the twenty that have been probably wasted this very year, in jobs corruptly given to President-making politicians) would have been an ample provision for the purpose.

"No, my dear, it may be as fitting, as it is ne

cessary, for some women to hold office in this association: only it is not your vocation, any more than it would be mine to go about lecturing in its behalf —even if I could draw together such audiences as Everett delights."

CHAPTER XV.

WHEREIN THE DOCTOR SAYS PSHAW TO SOMETHING ADVANCED BY THE AUTHOR, AND ADVANCES HIS OWN NOTIONS.-COMFORT AND SWILL NOT THE HIGHEST FELICITY FOR RATIONAL BEINGS.-THE WORLD NEEDS MARTYRS, BUT CROOKE RACKET NOT THE RIGHT TYPE.

THE DOCTOR is not of a turn of mind that disposes him to think as other people think, and to do as they do merely because they think so and do so. He accepts nothing-save coin, bank-notes, whatever passes for money-because it has the stamp of conventional acceptance, nor at the common valuation, unless it coincides with his own estimate of its intrinsic worth. Popular suffrages do not seem to have with him the weight they have with most persons, and are perhaps entitled to, particularly in regard to the public personages of the age; indeed, I am afraid-if the truth must be confessed that the admiring acclamation of all Boston would not of itself be enough to convince him

that this man was a great man, statesman, and patriot, that one a great true poet, or the other one a great genuine thinker and inspired prophet-the rather as he has, besides, noted that great men, bards, and prophets have in their generation been sometimes undiscovered, sometimes vilified, and sometimes even crucified, while charlatans and impostors have carried off the praises and prizes of the age. In short, it matters not greatly to him what the general opinion is, so far as the forming of his own is concerned. If he thinks as other people do, it is not so much because they think so, as because he has come to think so on grounds of his own.

In all this the Doctor is simply and unconsciously honest. There is nothing of self-conceit, caprice, love of paradox, vanity, or pride of independence in him. He is no more inclined to reject than to accept the prevailing opinion merely because it is the prevailing opinion; and whether he agrees with the world or differs from it-in either case it is simply because he cannot help it. As to the rest, there is nothing of arrogance, bitterness, or intolerance in his nature.

Professor Clare, unlike the Doctor, is always in happy sympathy with the prevailing opinion.