But his memory of the machine brings no such consolation or help.  Why should it?  Answer, if you can, you who have faith in the mill itself, or whose business it is to make it grind.

As “Dodd” touches his brush to a bit of ruddy color on the pallet at his side and tinges the cheeks of a beautiful face that smiles from the easel before him, I draw the curtain that shuts him out of your sight and mine, beloved, and that closes him into the sacred radiance of his own happy home.  Let us leave him there within the veil, within the veil.

ADDENDA

[For School Teachers Only.]

As I vexed no one with a preface at the beginning of this story, I allow myself the privilege of a few reflections at its close.

If the Evolution of “Dodd” has seemed slow, or if it has appeared, sometimes, as if the life, whose growth I have traced, began on a very low plane and progressed almost imperceptibly, let it be remembered that this is the ordinary course of nature.  It is the way of the world.  From the primordial germ to the soul of a man is a long, long distance; and often and often, in the upward march of life, the path seems to turn upon itself and go backward.  It is even so in the life of every one who eventually reaches the goal.  The way to final victory is marked by a succession of advances, battles, and retreats.  This also is ordained.

The physical body of man, from the time of its inception till the close of its career, passes through all the varied stages of animal life—­the germ, the cell, and the changes that these are subject to in animal existence—­that is, being the highest form of material life, man bears, in his own body, marks of all previous conditions.  Even so, in his spiritual body, each individual exemplifies “The total world since life began,” and every soul must span the space from the first man, Adam, to the quickened spirit of a son of God.  People whose business it is to develop human souls should remember that.

Again:  How to help weak and tempted humanity so as to build it up, to make it strong and able to resist temptation, is a problem that has never yet been fully solved.  Whether it is better to hold up an awful example before the gaze of the suffering ones, and to relate to them the certainty of a like conclusion to their own career if a like course of life is persisted in; whether it is better to point out the success that some tempted and tortured men have reached, by devious ways that led through flame and darkness, and from which the victims have escaped only as by fire, like brands plucked from the burning,—­which of these ways is the better, heaven only knows and has never revealed.

It is well enough, though, to remember that the Master was tempted in all points, like as we are, and that it is said of the saints in glory that they came to their reward through great tribulation.