instead of the bell assembles, and a third of elders and little ones gone back through the shadow of mystery whence they came.  In what abides of the flock nothing remains as it was.  Wondrous transformations snow maturity or decline in the very forms that, to his also changing eye and hand, once wore soft cheeks and silken locks.  In his experience, miracle is less than creation and lower than truth.  He cannot credit Memory’s ever losing her seat, he has such things to remember.  The best thereof can never be written down, published, uttered by orators, or blown from the trumpet of Fame, whose “brave instrument” must put up with a meaner message and inferior breath.  Out of his affections are born his beliefs; earth is the cradle of his expectancy and persuasion of heaven; and not otherwise than through the glass of his experience could he have sight of a sphere of ineffable glory for better growth than Nature here affords in all her gardens and fields.

So let the preacher stand by his order.  But let him be just, also, to the constituency from which it springs.  Hearty and cheerful, though obscure worker, let him be.  Let him fling his weaver’s shuttle still, daily while he lives, through the crossing party-colored threads of human life, till, in his factory too, beauty flows from confusion, contradiction ends in harmony, and the blows with which each one has been stricken form the perfect pattern from all.  There is a unity which all faithful labor, through whatever jars, consults and creates.  Of all criticisms the resultant is truth; be the conflicts what they may, the issue shall be peace; and one music of affection is yet angelically to flow from the many divided notes of human life.  Who is the minister, then?  No ordained functionary alone, but every man or woman that has lived and served, loved and lamented, and now, for such ends, suffers and hopes.

THE GHOST OF LITTLE JACQUES.

How quiet the saloon was, that morning, as I groped my way through the little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn to the windows.  It was my business to open the windows every morning, finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should soil the furniture.  This morning the glass dome which brightened the ceiling, and helped to lighten the saloon, was of very little effect, so cloudy and dusk was the sky.  The high houses which shut in the strip of garden on all sides reflected not a ray of light.  A chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a saloon-dampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble basin beyond—­dropping, dropping, incessantly—­struck upon my ear like water trickling down the side of a cave.

It had never occurred to me to think the place lonely or dreary before, or to demur at this morning operation of opening it for the day; a tawdry, gilded, showy hall, it had seemed to me quite a grand affair, compared with those in which I had hitherto found employment.  Now I shuddered and shivered, and felt the task, always regarded as a compliment to my honesty, to be indeed hard and heavy enough.