“You’re the right sort to put ’eart into a body. I’m glad I came up,” said Mrs. Phillips. “I get a bit down in the mouth sometimes when ’e goes off into one of ’is brown studies, and I don’t seem to know what ’e’s thinking about. But it don’t last long. I was always one of the light-’earted ones.” “Yes,” she answered firmly, as if she were giving a command. But he read pity also in her eyes.!

Ought there not to be a school for reformers, a training college where could be inculcated self-examination, patience, temperance, subordination to duty; with lectures on the fundamental laws, within which all progress must be accomplished, outside which lay confusion and explosions; with lectures on history, showing how improvements had been brought about and how failure had been invited, thus avoiding much waste of reforming zeal; with lectures on the properties and tendencies of human nature, forbidding the attempt to treat it as a sum in rule of three? “Your friends, that you never had any. And your enemies, that they are always the latest,” she informed him.

“To the poor?” the old man almost shrieked. “To the poor that he has robbed of all power of resistance to oppression by his vile, submissive creed! that he has drugged into passive acceptance of every evil done to them by his false promises that their sufferings here shall win for them some wonderful reward when they are dead. What has been his teaching to the poor? Bow your backs to the lash, kiss the rod that scars your flesh. Be ye humble, oh, my people. Be ye poor in spirit. Let Wrong rule triumphant through the world. Raise no hand against it, lest ye suffer my eternal punishments. Learn from me to be meek and lowly. Learn to be good slaves and give no trouble to your taskmasters. Let them turn the world into a hell for you. The grave—the grave shall be your gate to happiness. There had been whispered talk among the men, and when she rose the one who had first spoken to her came forward. He was nervous and stood stiffly. The suggestion that was forcing itself into her brain was monstrous—unthinkable. That, never possessed of any surplus vitality, and suffering from the added lassitude of illness, the woman should have become indifferent—willing to let a life that to her was full of fears and difficulties slip peacefully away from her, that was possible. But that she should exercise thought and ingenuity—that she should have reasoned the thing out and deliberately laid her plans, calculating at every point on their success; it was inconceivable.