Difficulties and disappointments vanished and fear vexed her no more. She was like those who have won all battles, put all troubles behind them. She had the knowledge that within herself was power over all temporal dragons; that her welfare depended on no man’s whim; that there are no accidents; that He who slumbers not nor sleeps, is “guiding each of His creatures in the current of an eternal purpose”; that she was as indestructible as the universe, and as old, as young and as deathless as its builder. She thought no more of happiness, because blessedness had come into her life,--the blessedness which “consists in progress toward perfection.” In an undefined way she felt herself approaching high summits, understanding that there is neither high nor low, near nor far in the universe save in thought. CHAPTER XXIII. THE BOOK AND ITS CRITICS. The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as the new-cut tooth-- For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth; And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart, The Devil drum on the darkened pane: “You did it, but was it Art?” --_Rudyard Kipling._ One day Mrs. Doring received a letter from a lawyer announcing Kendall’s death, and advising her that by his will she was sole heir to his property, which was valued at about twenty-five thousand dollars--a fortune in Bohemia. A few lines from the testator were enclosed, the last his hand penned. He had but one request to make in regard to the disposition of it, and that was that she use part of it in bringing out her book. “See,” she said to Lilla Joy, who had long lived with her in the little flat, “how my trust is rewarded. Influences unseen were working for me while I rested. Had I been a little wiser, I might have saved myself much torment all my life. Worry hinders instead of helps, I believe it is one of the forty deadly sins the Egyptians tried to avoid.” With money to work with it was not difficult to find a publisher for the book. It was a true tale, told in a simple, straightforward manner, of life and its meaning, as its author understood them. The theme of it was that life goes on after the change we call death, and is inconceivably enlarged and ennobled for all who aspire. Such of the critics as worship plots and believe that the chief aim of life in stories and out is to marry and be given in marriage, made it the subject of very rough surgery. “It is a most unwholesome book,” said one. “Love and marriage are scarcely mentioned in it. Some twaddle that pretends to come from across the river of death is the only bait it has with which to angle for the reader’s interest, a theme in which healthy minds will find no attraction.”