It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had a powerful influence in enabling men and women to endure, although I object to giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is a necessity in all ages.  “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”  This is the last word which can be said.  Nothing can go beyond it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake under our feet.  All life is summed up, and due account is taken of it, according to its degree.  Mrs. Butts’ Calvinism, however, hardly took the usual dogmatic form.  She was too simple to penetrate the depths of metaphysical theology, and she never would have dared to set down any of her fellow creatures as irrevocably lost.  She adapted the Calvinistic creed to something which suited her.  For example, she fully understood what St. Paul means when he tells the Thessalonians that because they were called, therefore they were to stand fast.  She thought with Paul that being called; having a duty plainly laid upon her; being bidden as if by a general to do something, she ought to stand fast; and she stood fast, supported against all pressure by the consciousness of fulfilling the special orders of One who was her superior.  There is no doubt that this dogma of a personal calling is a great consolation, and it is a great truth.  Looking at the masses of humanity, driven this way and that way, the Christian teaching is apt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocation as real as if that soul were alone upon the planet.  Yet it is a fact.  We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall take care of every atom of life on the globe:  we are compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness.  But the truth of truths is that the mind of the universe is not our mind, or at any rate controlled by our limitations.

This has been a long digression which I did not intend; but I could not help it.  I was anxious to show how Mrs. Butts met her trouble through her religion.  The apostle says that “they drank of that spiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”  That was true of her.  The way through the desert was not annihilated; the path remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was accompanied to the end by a sweet stream to which she could turn aside, and from which she could obtain refreshment and strength.

Just about the time that we began our meetings near Drury Lane, I heard that Clem was dead; that he had died abroad.  I knew nothing more; I thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, but I had parted from both long ago, and I went on with my work.

CHAPTER V—­WHAT IT ALL CAME TO