me by accident. Mrs. C---- had judged from something said during our
interview that the equipage belonged to me, and that I had brought
Mrs. D---- to see her instead of being the invited party. I was now a
resident of another city. The story came to me by a circuitous route.
Explanation was impracticable. Yet it is not six months since there
fell under my eye a paragraph penned by the offended brother
testifying that his opinion of my insignificant self remains
unaltered.

Had he or his sister suspended judgment until the evidence against my
ladyhood and humanity could be investigated, I should have had to
look elsewhere for an incident with which to point the moral of my
Talk.

Rising above the pettiness of spiteful grudge-bearing against a
fellow-mortal, let me say a word of the unholy restiveness with which
we meet the disappointments which are the Father's discipline of His
own. "All these things are against me!" is a cry that has struck upon
His loving heart until Godlike patience is needed to bear with the
fretful wail.

Nothing that He lets fall upon us can be "against" us! In His hottest
fires we have but to "hold still" and bide His good time in order to
see that all His purposes in us are mercy, as well as truth to His
promises. In the Hereafter deeded to us as a sure heritage, we shall
see that each was a part of His design for our best and eternal good.