Every heart has a miracle to pray for. Every life holds that which only a miracle can cure. To prove that there have never been, that there can never be, miracles does not alter the matter. So long as there is something hoped for,--that does not come in the legitimate channel of possible events,--so long as something does come not to be hoped or expected in the legitimate channel of possible events, just so long will the miracle be prayed for. The rich and the prosperous, it would seem, do not depend upon God so much, do not need miracles, as the poor do. They do not have to pray for the extra crust when starvation hovers near; for the softening of an obdurate landlord's heart; for strength in temptation, light in darkness, salvation from vice; for a friend in friendlessness; for that miracle of miracles, an opportunity to struggling ambition; for the ending of a dark night, the breaking of day; and, oh! for God's own miracle to the bedside-watchers--the change for the better, when death is there and the apothecary's skill too far, far away. The poor, the miserable, the unhappy, they can show their miracles by the score; that is why God is called the poor man's friend. He does not mind, so they say, going in the face of logic and reason to relieve them; for often the kind and charitable are sadly hampered by the fetters of logic and reason, which hold them, as it were, away from their own benevolence. But the rich have their miracles, no doubt, even in that beautiful empyrean of moneyed ease in which the poor place them. Their money cannot buy all they enjoy, and God knows how much of their sorrow it assuages. As it is, one hears now and then of accidents among them, conversions to better thoughts, warding off of danger, rescue of life; and heirs are sometimes born, and husbands provided, and fortunes saved, in such surprising ways, that even the rich, feeling their limitations in spite of their money, must ascribe it privately if not publicly to other potencies than their own. These cathedral _tours de force_, however, do not, if the truth be told, convince like the miracles of the obscure little chapel.