Watersprings

, a call "are you there? are you there?" until, when all the sparrows were in full cry, a thrush struck boldly in, like a solo marching out above

April morning, with the sunlight lying on the lawn and lighting up the old worn detail of the carved cornices, he recovered for a time the boyish

about this time. No WORK, I think. A day of calm resolution and looking forward manfully to the future! My father and sister are going to dine at the Manor to-night. I shall be

ac

you to begin CO

of this, towards the road, opened the little parlour where he had breakfasted, and above it was a library full of books, with its oriel overhanging the road, and two windows looking into the garden. Then there was the big drawing-room. Upstairs there were but a half a dozen bedrooms. The offices and the servants' bedrooms were in the wing on the road. There was but little furniture in the house. Mr. Graves had had a preference for large bare rooms; and such furniture as there was, was all for use and not for ornament, so that there was a refreshing lack of any aesthetic pose about it. There wer

of Mrs. Graves; "the most wonderful person, I assure you! I

ikes it?"

says very little, but you feel somehow that all is right if she is there. It's a g

one balustrade looking down upon the stream, and beyond that the woods closed in. He left the garden and followed the stream up the valley; the downs here drew in and became steeper, till he came at last to one of the most lovely places he thought he had ever set eyes upon. The stream ended suddenly in a great clear pool, among a clump of old sycamores; the water rose brimming out of the earth, and he could see the sand fountains rising and falling at the bottom of the basin; by the side of it was a broad stone seat, with carved back and ends. There was not a house in sight; beyond there wa

in a blissful content that was beyond thought. Then he slo

happy?-that is what I had wished and hoped. You have been to the pool-yes, that is a lovely spot. It was that, I think, which made your uncle buy the place; h

s. Graves. "Give her my love, and ask her to come and see me as soon as she can." Presently as they sat together, Howard smoking, she asked him something about his work. "Will you

aid so, and began to explain very simply what was in his mind, the essential unity of all religion, and his attempt to disentangle the central motive from outl

have never followed it philosophically. Now," she went on, "I am going to reduce it all to practical terms, and I don't want t

sence a very artistic thing, a perception of effects which are hidden from many hearts and minds. When a man speaks of definite religious experience, I feel that I am in the presence of a perception of something real-as real as music and painting. But I d

ulpit. He likes lecturing people in rows! But in reality he is one of the kindest and vaguest of men. He preached a stiff sermon about conversion the other day-I am pretty sure he did not understand it himself-and he disquieted one of my good maids so much that she went to him and asked what she could do to get assurance. He seems to have h

for this curious outburst of forms and doctrines, so contradictory in the differ

e piston-rod; it's an intelligence somewhere that fits the one to the other. But then

an attempt to simplify, to get a principle; and then the people who don't understand it begin to make it technical and defined; uncritical minds begin to attribute all sorts of vague wonders

nderful experiences and are like the language of children telling their dreams. The moral genius who sees through it all and gives the first impulse is trying to deal with life directly and frankly; and the difficulty arises from people who see the attendant circumstances and mis

n insecure evidence, and all the sham terminology that comes from a muddled delight in the supernatural. I want to give up

him. Then when he died, I had a terrible time to go through. I felt utterly adrift. My old system did not give me the smallest help. I was trying to find an intellectual solution. It was then that I met Miss Gordon, the great evangelist. She saw I was unhappy, and she said to me one day: 'You have no business to be unhappy like this. What you want is STRENGTH, and it is there all the time waiting for you! You are arguing your case with God, complaining of the injustice you have receive

side, and spoke to God Himself. I said, 'You made me, You put me here, You sent me love, You sent me prosperity. I have cared for the wrong things, I have loved in the wrong way. Now I throw everything else aside, and

o my whole being; it was the water of life, clear as crystal; and yet it was myself all the

or rebuke or arrange; one must simply love and be. Let me tell you one thing. I was haunted all my early life with a fear of death. I liked life so well, every moment of it, every incident, that I could not bear to think it should ever cease; now, though I shrink

ill unbroken, like a crystal wall all round you. I think you will have to suffer; but you will believe, will you not, that you have not seen a half of the wonder of life? You are full of happy experience, but you have begun to feel the larger need. And I knew that when you began to feel that need, you would be brought to me, not to be given it, but to be shown it. That is all I can say to you now, but you will know the f

his mind that the pool which he had seen that morning was an allegory of what he had now heard. The living water, breaking up so clearly from underground in the grassy valley, and passing downwards to gladden the earth! It would be used, be tainted, be troubled, but he saw that no soil or stain, no scattering or disruption, could ever really intrude itself into that elemental puri

ponder over that I can say no more now. I do indeed feel that I have missed what is perhaps the greatest thing in the wor

her's knee; "we all come home thus, sooner or later; and the time has come for you. I knew it the moment I open