He maundered on in this way, uttering even worse nonsense, and mingling with it soiled and dusty commonplaces of religion, every now and then dwelling for a moment or two upon his own mental and physical decline from the admirable being he once was.

Cornelius was in fits of near laughter. The only thing that kept his merriment within bounds was the dread that the dreary old soul, who smelled abominably of strong drink, might address him personally and so draw upon him the attention of the audience.

How different were Hester’s thoughts. To the astonishment of Cornelius, when at last they rose to go, there were tears in her eyes. The misery of the wretched man, no doubt once a clergyman, had overcome her heart. Worst of all, to the heart of Hester, was the fact that so few people were present, many of them children at half-price, most of whom were far from satisfied with the amusement offered them. When the hall and the advertising were paid for, what would this poor, old remnant of humanity, with his yellowing neck-cloth, have left for his supper? Did he have anyone to look after him? The poor man! Hester’s eyes were full of tears to think she could do nothing for him. She remembered the fat woman with curls hanging down her cheeks who had taken their money at the door. Apparently she was his wife. Alas for the misery of the whole thing!

When they emerged and breathed again the clean, rain-washed air instead of the musty smells of the hall, Hester’s eyes involuntarily rose to the vault above her, the top of whose arch is the will of the Father, whose endless space alone is large enough to picture the heart of God. How was that old man to get up into the high regions and grow clean and wise? He must belong there as well as she! And were there not thousands equally and more miserable in the world—people who knew no tenderness, to whom none ministered, people who were pitifully alone? Was there nothing she could do to help, to comfort, to lift up one such person of her own human family, to rescue a heart from the misery of hopelessness, to make one feel there was a heart of love and refuge at the center of things?

Hester had a large, though not hitherto entirely active aspiration in her. And now, the moment she began to flutter her weak wings, she found the whole human family hanging upon her, and that she could not rise except in raising them along with her. For the necessities of our deepest nature are such as not to allow a mere private and individual satisfaction.

I well remember feeling as a child that I did not care for God to love me if he did not love everybody. The kind of love I needed was love essential to my nature—the love of me, a man, not of me a person—the love therefore that all men needed, the love that belonged to their nature as the children of the Father, a love he could not give me except he gave it to all men.