THE DOCTOR. We must talk it all over. There aren’t many people I could trust to remember exactly all the things I want to know. But you can if you try hard. (He touches the bell, the nurse appears.) Now, Miss Bryant, Miss Hattie and I have several important things to discuss and there isn’t much time left, so if she wants me at any time call me and I’ll come. And I think while she has so much thinking on hand about what I’m asking her to do for me, she had better not see other visitors. You don’t mind, do you? THE GIRL. No no! I don’ want ’em! Doctor, when will it come? Doctor, will I know soon? THE DOCTOR. Soon I think—Very soon. (He takes her hand a second, then goes out, motioning the nurse to precede him.) THE GIRL (raptly). Soon! He said it would be very soon—and I’m so tired! I’d like something nicer. (She settles herself with a little sigh, and falls asleep.) CURTAIN. [3] From _The Century, March, 1914_. The Schoolmaster GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER The history of the world has not known a greater movement than that which seized the hearts of men when the old culture was borne to its grave, _and a new fresh Spring-life,—the Christ-life_, as it came to be called,—of humanity, welled up from hidden and mysterious sources of power. In the commerce of thought diverse folk-spirits were cross-fertilized and bounds once held to be insurmountable were transcended as vision grew wider. Customs came to be more human. Man himself grew greater, deeper, freer. Man learned to practice virtues which hitherto he had hated as vices: mercifulness, meekness, peaceableness. Man prayed to a new God who made his sun to shine upon the evil and the good. He ever created sacreder names for his God. Taking his cue from the adorable will of this new God he framed ever more earnest and more sacred rules of life. These were radical and revolutionary novelties to the old culture, which speedily scented the dangers menacing it, and as speedily dispatched executioners to the rescue. In the language of its old theology, the language of St. Augustine, this was called the war of the Kingdom of the World against the Kingdom of God. Any well-informed scholar can recall what were said to be the hindrances which the Kingdom of God had at first to overcome, and how today these hindrances still offer the same resistance; degenerate paganism, with its powers of unbelief, and with its supremacy of the “flesh”; judaism, apostate from God, with its priests and scribes.