—­It is well always to have a woman near by when one is talking on this class of subjects.  Whether there will be three or four women to one man in heaven is a question which I must leave to those who talk as if they knew all about the future condition of the race to answer.  But very certainly there is much more of hearty faith, much more of spiritual life, among women than among men, in this world.  They need faith to support them more than men do, for they have a great deal less to call them out of themselves, and it comes easier to them, for their habitual state of dependence teaches them to trust in others.  When they become voters, if they ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the ward-rooms gain.  Relax a woman’s hold on man, and her knee-joints will soon begin to stiffen.  Self-assertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does not promote devotional habits.

I remember some such thoughts as this were passing through my mind while the Master was talking.  I noticed that the Lady was listening to the conversation with a look of more than usual interest.  We men have the talk mostly to ourselves at this table; the Master, as you have found out, is fond of monologues, and I myself—­well, I suppose I must own to a certain love for the reverberated music of my own accents; at any rate, the Master and I do most of the talking.  But others help us do the listening.  I think I can show that they listen to some purpose.  I am going to surprise my reader with a letter which I received very shortly after the conversation took place which I have just reported.  It is of course by a special license, such as belongs to the supreme prerogative of an author, that I am enabled to present it to him.  He need ask no questions:  it is not his affair how I obtained the right to give publicity to a private communication.  I have become somewhat more intimately acquainted with the writer of it than in the earlier period of my connection with this establishment, and I think I may say have gained her confidence to a very considerable degree.

My dear sir:  The conversations I have had with you, limited as they have been, have convinced me that I am quite safe in addressing you with freedom on a subject which interests me, and others more than myself.  We at our end of the table have been listening, more or less intelligently, to the discussions going on between two or three of you gentlemen on matters of solemn import to us all.  This is nothing very new to me.  I have been used, from an early period of my life, to hear the discussion of grave questions, both in politics and religion.  I have seen gentlemen at my father’s table get as warm over a theological point of dispute as in talking over their political differences.  I rather think it has always been very much so, in bad as well as in good company; for you remember how Milton’s fallen angels amused themselves with disputing on “providence, foreknowledge, will,