rheumatism; eyes and ears indebted to no oculist or aurist; and the
hearts,--they are always in excess,--and, to the most skeptical, there
is something sweetly comforting in the sight of so many cured hearts,
with their thanks cut deep, as they should be, in the very marble
thereof. Where the bed must have stood was the altar, rising by easy
gradations, brave in ecclesiastical deckings, to the plaster figure of
her whom those yearning hearts were seeing, whom those murmuring lips
were addressing. Hearts must be all alike to her at such a distance,
but the faces to the looker-on were so different. The eyes straining
to look through all the experiences and troubles that their life has
held to plead, as only eyes can plead, to one who can, if she will,
perform their miracle for them. And the mouths,--the sensitive human
mouths,--each one distorted by the tragedy against which it was
praying.

Their miracles! their miracles! what trifles to divinity! Perhaps
hardly more to humanity! How far a simple looker-on could supply them
if so minded! Perhaps a liberal exercise of love and charity by not
more than half a dozen well-to-do people could answer every prayer in
the room! But what a miracle that would be, and how the Virgin's heart
would gladden thereat, and jubilate over her restored heart-dying
children, even as the widowed mother did over her one dying babe!

And the little boy had stopped praying. The futility of it--perhaps
his own impotence--had overcome him. He was crying, and past the shame
of showing it--crying helplessly, hopelessly. Tears were rolling out
of his sightless eyes over his wordless lips. He could not pray; he
could only cry. What better, after all, can any of us do? But what
a prayer to a woman--to even the plaster figure of a woman! And the
Virgin did hear him; for she had him taken without loss of a moment to