ness that she who had died desired to be dressed in a certain satin gown which had never been worn, owing to some delay in its completion. Other persons, equally reliable, mentioned a gown of quite another color and fabric. Some one spoke of a ring, saying she had intended it should be given to the one she loved best. Others testified to the number of times they had heard her express a wish that the ring should never be removed from her hand.

Fortunately she had left a written. paper of directions. Fortunately also, it was presently discovered. Not that it had been at all difficult to discover, every precaution having been taken to keep it in a place as open to the public eye as the town records. Perhaps for this very reason it had at first escaped attention. In this paper the satin gown and many of the personal ornaments, including the ring, were distinctly specified as to their final disposition, thereby ending all uncertainty in the matter. It was such a document as every human being should thoughtfully compose and put in a place of easy discovery, clear, concise, and of a nature to prevent all discussion.

II

Stephen Gray went to call on the pastor.

'We thought Sunday afternoon would be the best day,' he said. 'Sunday afternoon at three. There are people who might not be able to come on a week-day, and then again Sunday is more convenient for the organizations. You see she was n't like a private person. She had so many public interests.'

The pastor acquiesced. Yes, certainly, Sunday would be the best day. 'The representatives of various organizations came to see me last evening' Stephen Gray went on. They

spoke of wishing to take some part in the service. I promised to consult with you. One of them, he was a man with a fine Scotch accent, told me she had been a member of his particular society for more than sixty years and that he desired to show her especial honor because of the wonderful work she had done and because they loved her so.'

'Because they loved her so,' the pastor repeated, as he opened a note-book and wrote in it.

"Then there was a woman,' said Stephen, 'who told me the children would send flowers and that I was to see they were placed as near as possible, otherwise the children's hearts would be broken, because they loved her so.'

The pastor wrote in his note-book, "The children loved her so.'

'I regret to disappoint any of her friends,' he said, 'but I feel it would please her best to keep everything simple. My preference would be that some one person who knew her well should speak, only not longer than five minutes.' And he asked if there were any favorite hymns she might have liked sung.

It was then that Stephen Gray remembered the paper of directions, and he read from it aloud: 'I wish the pastor of my church to conduct the service and to make it as simple as possible. I wish hymn No. 583 to be sung by John Wilson, and I wish him to get some one to sing it with him. I am sure he will be willing.'

"That is precisely what he will not be willing to do,' said the pastor. 'He never sings with any one. It's his peculiarity. He sings alone or not at all.'

'Not if it were a written request?'

'No, not if it were a written request. Of course I shall tell him, but it won't make a particle of difference. He always sings alone.'

III

The church was filled with people. The light fell through the stained glass of the windows upon a wealth of flowers from field and wood and garden, for the season was midsummer. The little girls were in Sunday frocks and ribbons. The little boys sat with serious faces. The officers of the different organizations came in the regalia of their orders, and the rich hues of their dress gave an added touch to the coloring.

The words were repeated, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life'-'In My Father's House are many Mansions.' - The prayers were offered, the brief address given.

'Whatever I may be able to say,' so the pastor began, 'can be of little import beside the one sublime thing that every one loved her, men, women, and little children'

It had been decided that the allotted five minutes should be given to the Scotchman, he of the fine accent. He spoke out of a full heart and with a tender lingering on his concluding words, 'Good-night and good-morrow!' as if he might have been alone with her, his hand upon hers.

People brushed the tears from their eyes, and yet there was nothing sad about the words, ‘Good-night and goodmorrow.' Quite the contrary.

Stephen Gray listened with divided attention. He hoped everything had been done in the way she would have approved and that he had not forgotten any little detail which he ought to have kept in mind. Certainly all her wishes had been complied with; or at least, they had been until John Wilson began to sing.

It was a sweet old hymn, of sleep and peace and a happy wakening; but exactly as had been predicted, John Wilson sang it alone. Stephen Gray

glanced at the faces in the pews nearest to him. Evidently no one had expected any deviation from John Wilson's usual custom. It was probable that, with the exception of the pastor, no one had known of the request. That she should have made this request seemed rather curious. It might be that she had thought two voices would sound better. She must have really desired it or she would not have written it down.

There passed through his mind how one of her strong characteristics had been the power of always accomplishing her desires, doing it perhaps in some unexpected manner, which in the end surprised no one. George and Mary were sitting together across the aisle. Mary was trying to keep from crying, George, dry-eyed, sat straight and ob

servant.

Why should one grieve? Had she not told him herself many and many a time that she was going to be better off? Did not the hymn say so?

Asleep in Jesus, blessed Sleep,

From which none ever wakes to weep

At the beginning of the hymn Stephen Gray noticed that the boy turned his head suddenly and looked searchingly about. Then he resumed his attentive attitude. In the pew just in front was a little figure in black with a strong trustworthy face, which was neither old nor young. She had been pointed out to Stephen as one of the 'Dearest Woman's most devoted friends.' Later he remembered having noticed that she too had turned and looked around.

IV

'I heard her voice singing all through the hymn.'

This was what George told Stephen Gray the next morning.

The boy made the statement as if he

were only relating one of the many occurrences of the day before and as such to be received without comment.

Stephen Gray's thoughts went back to the written directions and he asked the boy if he had read them.

No, only the page where his own name was put down as one of the 'persons to be notified.' She had shown him that.

In the evening Stephen had occasion to call upon the little woman who had

sat in the pew in front. She was full of sweet sorrow and memories and they talked till late. When he rose to go, she said, almost as if it were an afterthought with nothing unusual about it, 'I heard her voice singing in the church yesterday. She sang with John Wilson all the way through the hymn. You remember her voice. It had such a beautiful quality. For a moment I forgot what had happened and looked round. It sounded close behind me.'

LIKE every other attentive reader of our periodical literature, I am increasingly aware of our persistent exposure of sin and wrong-doing in high places and in low; like many another attentive reader, I am growing a bit rebellious against this constant demand and supply in the matter of information regarding recent evil. Have we not grown over-alert in the search for this special kind of news? We take vice with our breakfast porridge; perjury with our after-dinner coffee; our essayists vie with one another in seeing who can write up the most startling story of crime; and it is a bankrupt family nowadays that cannot produce one member to expose civic or political corruption. Undoubtedly much genuine ethical impulse lies back of all this; undoubtedly, too, much of the picturesque and spectacular treatment springs from a desire to startle, and ministers, in many a reader who would scorn paper-covered fiction, to a love of the sensational. Surely it must seem to the people of other countries that we take pride in the immensity of

our sins, as we take pride in Niagara, in the length of the Mississippi, in the extent of our western plains.

Many may be, and must be, the good effects of throwing the searchlight upon dark places, but the constant glare of the searchlight bids fair to rob us of our normal vision of life. My poor mind has become a storehouse of misdeeds not my own. I am sick with iniquity; I walk abroad under the shadow of infamy, and I sup with horrors. I shrink from meeting my friends, not that they are not the best people in the world, but I dread lest they pour into my ears some newly acquired knowledge of wrong-doing. For me, as for others, the sun of noonday is clouded by graft, bribery, treachery, and corruption; and I fear to close my eyes in the dark because of the pictured crimes that crowd before them. Suppose poor Christian had had to drag after him not only his own bag of transgressions, but those of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Facing-bothways, and all the denizens of Vanity Fair, what chance would he ever have

had of getting out of the Slough of Despond?

It is not that I wish to shirk; I am not afraid of facing anything that I ought to know, and I have not the slightest doubt that we are all, in great measure, responsible for our neighbors' sins. But I am not sure that we are taking the wisest way to mend them. It seems to me incontestable that, with the large issues of individual and of national well-being in mind, we are overdoing the exposure, and slighting the incentives to right action; emphasizing the negative at the expense of the positive; and that, with our weakening convictions regarding the things that are right, it is dangerous to go on loudly proclaiming the things that are wrong. We are much in the position of a village improvement society which has pulled down a bridge because it is rotting, and is impotent to build another and a better. We have invested our national all in wrecking machinery, and have nothing left for constructive tools. It is said that in our explosive setting forth of civic and national wrongdoing, we are all too prone to stop with the explosion, as if mere knowledge of these things would set them right. Mere knowledge never yet set anything right; only the ceaselessly active, creative will can fashion a world of law out of chaos.

Of the criticism often made that exposure of wrong should be followed, more closely than is done here, by constructive action, if anything is to be really effected, it is not my task to speak. The aspect of the matter which interests me especially concerns the youth of the land; it is the educational aspect. Not through loud wailing over evil can a nation be built, but through resolute dwelling with high ideals. In certain ugly tendencies of recent years among the young, as, for instance, the unabashed sensuality of much of the

modern dancing, may we not detect, perhaps, a cynical assumption that life is at basis corrupt, — a natural result of continued harping on evil things, and of failure to keep before them images of moral beauty? Our magazine writers would be far better employed, if, instead of making our ears constantly resound with reports of civic iniquities, they were, part of the time at least, studying Plato's Republic, and filling mind and soul with the hope of the perfect state. Wrong things we dare hope are of small and fleeting consequence as compared with the right; it is not the sin of Judas Iscariot, but the righteousness of his Master, that has brought the human race a gleam of hope and possible redemption. When I was told, not long ago, of a student in one of our great universities who had elected 'Criminology 16,' I could not help reflecting that he might far better have taken Idealistic Philosophy 1.

Whether or not our study of evil should be lessened, our study of the good needs to be vastly strengthened. We are losing the vision! Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions,' said the prophet, in promising wonders in the heavens and in the earth, after his account of fasting, weeping, mourning, and beating the breast. There is a time for beating the breast and for tearing the hair, and of this we have had our day, but perpetual sitting upon the ashheap and howling will not raise the walls of state. Sitting there may, in time, even become a luxury; can it be that we are doing so much of it partly because it is easier, and because the heaven-sent task of building up and shaping is too hard for us?

Take away from youth the power of seeing visions, of dreaming dreams, and you take away the future. It would behoove us to remember, per

haps, that the eras of great deeds have not been eras of analysis, but eras when the creative imagination was at work. Yet our modern mental habit is overwhelmingly a habit of analysis, for which science, in teaching us to pick the world to bits, is partly, though not wholly, responsible. It has brought us an immense amount of interesting information; it has brought also a danger whose gravity we can hardly estimate, in the constant lessening of the synthetic power. The power to image, to fashion high ideals, and to create along the line of the imagining, is weakening, instead of growing more strong. In the glorious days of Queen Elizabeth, in the unparalleled days of Periclean Athens, great ideals formed themselves before men's eyes and great achievements followed; emotion, hope, vision, shaped human nature to great issues. I wonder what influence those perfect marble representations of perfect form had upon the very bodies of the youths and the maidens of Athens, what creative force they exercised, the imaginative grasp of the perfect reaching forward toward perfectness in the human being. I wonder what influence the character of Sir Philip Sidney alone, with 'high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy,' has had upon succeeding generations of English youth. 'A man to be greatly good,' said Shelley, 'must imagine intensely and comprehensively.'

Here my quarrel with our present intellectual trend and our present system of education becomes more acute. We are not only losing the habit of mind that fosters idealism, but we are more and more breaking with the past. The door of that storehouse of noble thought and noble example is being slowly but firmly closed, and there is little in modern teaching that can meet the inroads made by the devastating knowledge of evil of which we have

been speaking; little that can build up where this tears down. Study of Greek life, with its incomparable power of shaping existence toward the beautiful, is all but cast aside; most unfortunately now, when, with the rush of ignorant peoples to our shores, it might have a far-reaching potency never attained before. The ignorance of contemporary youth regarding that other and finer loveliness of 'Gospel books' is amazing. More and more we are stripped of the humanities; the incredulity of science in contemplating philosophy, art, literature, as part of the educational curriculum, is full of menace. There has never been, I think, in the history of the civilized world, a time when people were so anxious to cast off the past. In our eager Marathon race of material and physical progress we want to go as lightly equipped as possible. The aeroplane carries small luggage; our light modern mind is ever ready to throw overboard even its precious heritage, in its eagerness for swift flight. As earlier days have reverenced the old, we reverence the new, and are all too insistently contemporaneous.

We need, as we never needed before, a broader and deeper study of history, of philosophy, of literature; for most of our young, a knowledge of the mental and spiritual past of the race is of far greater importance than a knowledge of the physical past, at the amœba stage, or any other. Science, much as it can do for us, can never meet our deepest need; the world of imaginative beauty and the world of ethical endeavor are apart from its domain. It has no spring to touch the will, yet that which has, the magnificent inheritance of our literature, is more and more neglected for the latest machinery that applied science has devised, or the most recent treatise on insect, bird, or worm. It is well to study insect, bird,