Please write me in your next letter about the uncertain
marriage-plans. I believe, _by Jove!_[12] that the matter is becoming
serious. Until the day is fixed, it still seems to me as though we had
been dreaming; or have I really passed a fortnight in Reinfeld, and
held you in these arms of mine? Has Finette been found again? Do you
remember our conversation when we went out with her in leash--when
you, little rogue, said you would have "given me the mitten" had not
God taken pity on me and permitted me at least a peep through the
keyhole of His door of mercy! That came into my mind when I was
reading I Cor. vii. 13 and 14 yesterday.

[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK FRANZ VON LENBACH]

A commentator says of the passage that, in all relations of life,
Christ regards the kingdom of God as the more powerful, victorious,
finally overcoming all opposition, and the kingdom of darkness as
powerless, falling in ruins ever more and more. Yet, how do most
of you have so little confidence in your faith, and wrap it carefully
in the cotton of isolation, lest it take cold from any draught of
the world; while others are vexed with you, and proclaim that you
are people who esteem yourselves too holy to come into contact
with publicans, etc. If every one should think so who believes he
has found truth--and many serious, upright, humble seekers do believe
they find it elsewhere, or in another form--what a Pennsylvania
solitary-confinement prison would God's beautiful earth become,
divided up into thousands and thousands of exclusive coteries by
insuperable partitions! Compare, also, Rom. xiv. 22 and xv. 2; also,
particularly, I Cor. iv. 5; viii. 2; ix. 20; also xii. 4 and the
following; further, xiii. 2; all in the First Ep. to the Cor., which
seems to me to apply to the subject. We talked, during that walk, or