door Philemon came forth to offer refuge, and apologized for the rudeness of his neighbors.  The old man prepared for them seats in the grateful shade and hurried to bring them fresh water from the cool spring.  Baucis also hastened to bring the loaf, with her one small honeycomb and her pitcher of milk.  When the glasses were filled twice and thrice and still the rich milk failed not, the old housewife marveled, until she found that in the bottom of the pitcher there was a fountain from which the rich milk gushed so long as it was needed.  Nor did the honeycomb fail, nor did the sharp knife make the wheaten loaf to be less.  Having told us that the morning brought disaster to the inhospitable villagers, but brought assurance from these angels who had been entertained unawares that Baucis and Philemon should never more want for earthly goods, the writer of the olden times sets forth for us the principle that good man and bad alike reap what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself.  Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle.  Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold.  David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, and his city.

Walter Scott believes in moral retribution.  He tells us of a youth who deftly split an arrow at the point where it fitted the bow-string, that when his brother, whom he hated, should bend his bow the arrow might split and, rebounding, pass through his eye.  Now it happened that the brother returned from the hunt without using his weapon.  That night, alarmed at a commotion without, the youth seized his bow, and, chancing to strike upon that very arrow, was himself slain by the stratagem that he had wickedly planned for his brother.  George Eliot, too, has dedicated her greatest volume to the study of this principle.  The orphan child, Tito, is received into the arms of an adopted father, who lavishes upon him all his wealth.  But when the youth was grown to full strength and beauty, one night Tito left his adopted father in slavery and fled with his gold and gems into a foreign land.  Years passed by and, with his stolen wealth, Tito bought wife, palace, position, fame.  He had sown falsehood and cruelty, and nothing seemed so unlikely as that he would reap a similar harvest.  But one day the people discovered his falsehood and attacked Tito.  A mob pursued him through the streets, and, knowing his strength as a swimmer, the youth cast himself into the River Arno.  When Tito had swum far down the river to the other side, and, in his exhaustion, would go ashore, he looked up, and, lo! he discerned the gray-haired father whom he had injured trotting along the shore side by side with the swimmer.  In the old man’s eyes blazed bitter hatred, in his hand flashed a sharp