need to bestir ourselves in behalf of sufferers; that would be a wrong against God; a doubt of the Everlasting Justice; hence all may not feel pity for the wicked man upon whom God visits His wrath and punishment! Thus the “good people” and the just harden their hearts. They have stones which they heave at the poor sinner—especially at a “sinful woman”—but no mercy, no pity, for those who are not as they are, and do not think and feel and act as they do. They grow chesty: “Yes, if others were as good as we are, then it would be as well with them as it is with us!” With such pride they choke all feeling of kinship and connection with others. Where pride grows, no pity can thrive. And at last pity itself becomes a kind of pride, a sorry self-reflection as in a mirror. The most subtle and dangerous way for men to free themselves from the pain of pity, when they cannot stave it off completely, is to make it a thing of pride and praise: “I thank Thee, God, that I am not like the hard-hearted!” Then they revel and riot in their pity, then they rejoice that they are so good-hearted, so tender-hearted, because they can see no suffering without being touched and melted to tears. And the pitiful call this their morality and their virtue. They make a “delicacy” of their pity to set before themselves at the table of life when all of life’s other gratifications and indulgences begin to grow stale and tasteless. The tears of emotion that gush generously forth at the spectacle of suffering humanity—even of frail and faulty humanity—taste so good! Many is the time they have felt the weary weight of this unintelligible world on listening to a sad story or seeing a play, and screwed up melancholy and doleful countenances—maybe pity can be put among the things that can make life, always requiring to be braced up a bit, a trifle more interesting. And so pity is at last honored with a place among the articles of luxury with which they enrich and adorn their lives—their lives, always surprising them with some fresh sign of poverty and patches!