“Well,” rejoined the other, “with your permission, I will venture to say that with all due respect to your mother’s second or third cousin, I would as lief hear it thunder as to hear her talk. Why can’t a pretty woman let well enough alone and not go into hysterics over what she doesn’t know anything about? You would think, to hear her go on, that the country was going to the devil, and that we were the cause of it.” “I wonder if all those facts about Russia and the thirty per cent. taxation in Italy are really true,” interposed Mr. Conro, meditatively. “She reeled off all those statistics like a schoolma’am saying dates.” “They are true if she says so, you can bet your life on that,” answered Will, thoroughly nettled. “Being out at Cambridge most of the time, I haven’t seen much of her, and I never heard her say so much on any subject before to-night. I was about as much surprised as you were at her coming out in that way; but if you and Gordon think she is the kind of girl to go into hysterics over nothing, you are mightily mistaken. Most people talk for the sake of talking, but I’ve seen enough of her to know that when she says a thing it stands for something. What you said hurt her in a way a fellow like you can’t understand. You’ve no interest in a girl who has any notions beyond flattering you into thinking you are the most stunning fellow going.” “Beg pardon,” drawled Gordon, “but”— “Hold on there,” interposed Mr. Mather, grimly; “you’ve said enough. What she said was solid gospel, and you know it as well as I do.” CHAPTER II. The books of Scripture only suffer from being subjected to requirements which we have ceased to apply to the books of common literature.—DEAN STANLEY, _History of the Jewish Church_. The Protestant Reformation shows how men tried to lodge infallibility in the Bible.... The great point of our present belief is that there is no such infallible record anywhere in church or council or book.—PHILLIPS BROOKS, _Harvard Divinity Address, 1884_. BOSTON, _Jan. 6._ 25 Louisburg Square. JESSIE DEAR,—I have been sitting for the last half hour in the broad, cushioned window-seat of my cosy attic room, looking far out over the mass of chimney-tops to the towers and spires beyond the hill and the Public Garden. I love to sit here quietly on Sunday afternoons, and when the sunset comes I throw aside my books and watch the shifting, brilliant colors turning the blue Charles into a sheet of glimmering gold and dyeing with rosy hues the snowy slopes of Corey Hill beyond. Have you been away so long as to have forgotten these dear old sights? And do you recall that on this western slope of Beacon Hill from which I write to you lived the hermit Blackstone of Shawmut, before Winthrop or any Puritan had thought of settling Boston town?