accomplishes that part of the work which falls to them. Their natures stand open to all the glad influences of earth; their hearts rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. They make full proof of those experiences in which fortitude and silent endurance are the only resource. Sometimes they are happy, and sometimes they are sad; but always other people are happier because of them. They are the children of a better country. For them the soul's full summer waits. Knowing them, we do indeed know something of God and the eternal life. There is freedom to be achieved from the pettiness of our lives. They never, perhaps, look so pitiful as when they seem made up altogether of little, necessary details. Our planting and reaping, building and buying, all the half-mechanical operations that absorb our thought and time, seem sometimes little better than the bustle of a colony of ants. When we look down upon it all from the height of some quiet, meditative hour, are we not at times oppressed with a sense of its triviality and worthlessness? Trivial and worthless it is, except as amidst it all we are working out something higher. But to a man whose heart is set on noble ends; one whose great aim is, not to get his bread and butter, but to be a man; one who wants, not just to make a profit out of his neighbors, but to serve them and help them, these details are no more trivial or degrading than the rough dress and homely tools of a sculptor are unworthy of the marble beauty that is growing under his hands. The high purpose consecrates and transfigures all, the want of purpose degrades all. I have stood in Switzerland upon the Gorner Grat, looking upon the grandest scene in Europe. On every side a circle of towering heights look down; against the sky rise dazzling snowy summits, celestially pure, celestially tender; the Matterhorn frowns in awful majesty; vast ice-rivers sweep down toward the valley in solemn, silent march. If there be upon earth a spot that of itself has power to hush the soul with noblest emotion, it should be that. Yet there I have seen a company of travelers spend their half-hour in senseless gabble and banter and the laughter of fools. Amid the squalid surroundings of a New York tenement-house, I have seen a poor Irish woman living with such fortitude and faith and generosity that it was a comfort and inspiration to meet her. That brave soul ennobled its mean surroundings with a glory which not the Alps and the sky could flash in upon a heart made blind and dull by ignoble thoughts.