and fate,” and it was the same thing in that club Goldsmith writes so pleasantly about.  Indeed, why should not people very often come, in the course of conversation, to the one subject which lies beneath all else about which our thoughts are occupied?  And what more natural than that one should be inquiring about what another has accepted and ceased to have any doubts concerning?  It seems to me all right that at the proper time, in the proper place, those who are less easily convinced than their neighbors should have the fullest liberty of calling to account all the opinions which others receive without question.  Somebody must stand sentry at the outposts of belief, and it is a sentry’s business, I believe, to challenge every one who comes near him, friend or foe.

I want you to understand fully that I am not one of those poor nervous creatures who are frightened out of their wits when any question is started that implies the disturbance of their old beliefs.  I manage to see some of the periodicals, and now and then dip a little way into a new book which deals with these curious questions you were talking about, and others like them.  You know they find their way almost everywhere.  They do not worry me in the least.  When I was a little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it would turn into a snake in the course of a few days.  That did not seem to me so very much stranger than it was that an egg should turn into a chicken.  What can I say to that?  Only that it is the Lord’s doings, and marvellous in my eyes; and if our philosophical friend should find some little live creatures, or what seem to be live creatures, in any of his messes, I should say as much, and no more.  You do not think I would shut up my Bible and Prayer-Book because there is one more thing I do not understand in a world where I understand so very little of all the wonders that surround me?

It may be very wrong to pay any attention to those speculations about the origin of mankind which seem to conflict with the Sacred Record.  But perhaps there is some way of reconciling them, as there is of making the seven days of creation harmonize with modern geology.  At least, these speculations are curious enough in themselves; and I have seen so many good and handsome children come of parents who were anything but virtuous and comely, that I can believe in almost any amount of improvement taking place in a tribe of living beings, if time and opportunity favor it.  I have read in books of natural history that dogs came originally from wolves.  When I remember my little Flora, who, as I used to think, could do everything but talk, it does not seem to me that she was much nearer her savage ancestors than some of the horrid cannibal wretches are to their neighbors the great apes.