gladden the earth.... It is not necessary, even in the cold atmosphere
of this world, to become contractedly selfish; cold expands noble
natures as it does water.... Lastly ...

Yours, MOLLY O'MOLLY.




NO. IV.


The old trout knows enough to keep off the fisherman's hook; the
squirrel never cracks an empty nut; the crow soon learns the
harmlessness of the scarecrow. But man, though he may have twenty times
wriggled off the hook, the patient angler catches him at last. He always
cracks the empty shell, then cries: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
This cry he might be spared would he learn a lesson from the squirrel,
who weighs his nuts and throws away the light, hollow shell.... And
there are scarescrows, the harmlessness of which the human biped learns
not in a a lifetime. How long is it since that horned, cloven-footed
monster whom the monks made of Pan _theos_ and called him _Devil_, was
an object of fear? How 'the real, genuine, no mistake' (savin' his
presence) must have laughed at his own effigy! Then there is Grim Death,
too, a creation of the Dark Ages, for in no age of light could this
horror have been ever conceived. Unlike the _other_, against him no
exorcism avails.... As if the soul about to be launched on the dim sea
Eternity, after all lights and forms of the loved shore have become
indistinct, must be cut loose from her moorings by this phantom. The
idea that 'Death comes to set us free,' would hardly make us 'meet him