Let us strive to look out on life with open vision and simple soul, seeing that it is fair; that no plant cometh forth to face the winter’s blight, but when the winter is over then green, tender things of beauty push upwards to meet the sunshine—first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in the ear. Then cometh the insect, with his drop of gall, and ugliness and excrescence follow. That which gives heat and light and blessing; that which generates force, and yields beauty in the burning wood that cheers our hearth, is the warm brightness of the sun’s rays that, in the process of liberating oxygen into the outer air, were stored up in the growing tree. If these had not been actually caught and incorporated in the wood by Nature’s subtle chemistry, do you think the fire would warm us, sitting by it? And that in our literature, and in our art, that shall make them real, and able to offer coming ages anything in the warmth and light of this, must be what we shall manage to incorporate with their growth of the pure and wholesome, the life-making forces of our time. Negation is not life. Disease is not power. Abnormality is not truth. These are forces that make for death; and life, in its scientific ultimate, is the sum-total of the forces that resist death. So, I say again, that work of ours which is to carry life forward, which is to warm and light the ages, must be what we can perpetuate of the life-giving, growing elements of this one. Let there be gall enough in thy ink. To what purpose? Gall is not a promoter of growth. It is a result of hurt, and where it touches it leaves even a bad thing worse than it found it. ADELINE KNAPP. THE WORSHIPPERS. Now it came to pass in the still night watches, when my body was asleep, that my soul dreamed a dream. And in my dream I heard a voice say, “Unstop his ears that he may hear.” And I became aware of the presence of an Angel, and he touched mine ears, saying, “When thou hearest a sound, a great sound, as of many mighty waters rushing headlong, listen, and fear nothing.” Then, verily, did burst on my hearing a mighty noise, a most discordant frush, and I stretched out my hand to the Angel, who said, “Fear not! Now tell me what thou hearest.” After pondering a long time I turned me to the Angel and said, “This discordant sound is that of many and diverse petitions, of which some are directed to the Eternal but more to the Spirit of Evil. I further perceive that well-nigh each and every voice thinks its own tone the right and the only right tone, and some few voices there be which desire all the others destroyed. Yet, I hear faintly a few that are as pure and sweet as the voices of the morning stars when they sing together.”