THERE are times when to the unintelligent observer the affairs of this world appear a hopeless tangle, a web without a pattern, a heap of unclassified material without an architect, a wild, unmeaning chaos of things animate and inanimate, all grinding, groaning, clashing together, sport of the gods or of demons, tending towards nothing, useless, hideous. But to one who views the world from another and higher level there sometimes appear illumining hints of harmony and completeness, tokens of a Master Mind working continually among the affairs of men and universes, setting all in divine order, either with or without the understanding and co-operation of the lesser intelligences. Thus when Barbara Preston was impelled, she knew not how, to send forth her strange and piteous little appeal to the unknown, it found instant response, and proceeded to fit itself into the scheme of things as perfectly and as cunningly as a tiny bit in a picture puzzle. The paper in which it appeared passed into the hands of a great number of persons, who glanced carelessly at its glaring headlines or searched painstakingly through its losts and founds or things offered, or help wanted, according to their varied tastes or necessities. On the second day thereafter, as was also to be expected, the particular edition containing the queer little unclassified appeal, found its way to many ash-cans, waste-paper baskets, bureau drawers, and pantry shelves; in its progress it helped to build numberless fires, it wrapped parcels of every conceivable shape and size; it fluttered out of car windows, across decks of steamers and ferry-boats; it floated and dissolved in many waterways, and finally disappeared, swallowed in the abyss which appears always to yawn for all things of human creation. Having vanished mysteriously, unobtrusively, as must every printed page sooner or later, it nevertheless left its mark on the lives of many. Plans were changed, voyages undertaken or abandoned, marriages made and unmade. In a word, prosperity, ruin, joy, sadness, glory, despair—all came about through its appearance, and persisted in ever widening circles after it had passed from sight and mind.