“But do you remember you told me once that, when the snow first fell, and lay so dazzling and pure and soft all about, you always felt as if the spreads and window curtains, that seemed white before, were not clean? Well, it’s just like that with me. Your presence makes me feel that I am not pure,—that I am low and unworthy,—not worthy to touch the hem of your garment. Your good Dr. Hopkins spent a whole half day, the other Sunday, trying to tell us about the beauty of holiness; and he cut, and pared, and peeled, and sliced, and told us what it wasn’t; and what was _like it_, and wasn’t; and then he built up an exact definition, and fortified and bricked it up all round; and I thought to myself that he’d better tell’em to look at Mary Scudder, and they’d understand all about it.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Woman ennobled by man’s love.] Do you remember, at Niagara, a little cataract on the American side, which throws its silver, sheeny veil over a cave called the Grot of Rainbows? Whoever stands on a rock in that grotto sees himself in the centre of a rainbow-circle, above, below, around. In like manner, merry, chatty, positive, busy, house-wifely Katy saw herself standing in a rainbow-shrine in her lover’s inner soul, and liked to see herself so. A woman, by-the-bye, must be very insensible, who is not moved to come upon a higher plane of being herself, by seeing how undoubtingly she is insphered in the heart of a good and noble man. A good man’s faith in you, fair lady, if you ever have it, will make you better and nobler even before you know it. * * * * * [Sidenote: Power of real love.] It is only now and then that a matter-of-fact woman is sublimated by a real love; but if she is, it is affecting to see how impossible it is for death to quench it. * * * * * [Sidenote: Woman’s veneration.] If women have one weakness more marked than another, it is towards veneration. They are born worshippers.... The fact is, women are burdened with fealty, faith, and reverence, more than they know what to do with; they stand like a hedge of sweet-peas, throwing out fluttering tendrils everywhere for something high and strong to climb by,—and when they find it, be it ever so rough in the bark, they catch upon it. And instances are not wanting of those who have turned away from the flattery of admirers to prostrate themselves at the feet of a genuine hero who never wooed them, except by heroic deeds and the rhetoric of a noble life. * * * * * [Sidenote: Mother-love for a son.]