from the clutch of Evil? And straightway you reckon up those friendships
where your heart lies; you know you are a true and honest friend to
Frank; and you love your mother, and your father; as for Nelly, Heaven
knows, you could not contrive a way to love her better than you do.

You dare not take much credit to yourself for the love of little
Madge,--partly because you have sometimes caught yourself trying--not to
love her; and partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in the way. Yet
you can find no command in the Catechism to love one girl to the
exclusion of all other girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do
find it. But as for loving some half-dozen you could name, whose images
drift through your thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and
slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and suddenly this thought,
coupled with a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons,
utterly breaks down your hopes.

Yet you muse again,--there are plenty of good people, as the times go,
who have their dislikes, and who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking
clergyman you have heard say some very sour things about his landlord,
who raised his rent the last year. And you know that he did not talk as
mildly as he does in the church, when he found Frank and yourself
quietly filching a few of his peaches through the orchard fence.

But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what seems to you quite
unnecessary coldness, that goodness is not to be reckoned in your
chances of safety; that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is
All-Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly; nor will you escape the puzzle,
until, in the presence of the Home altar, which seems to guard you, as
the Lares guarded Roman children, you _feel_--you cannot tell how--that
good actions must spring from good sources; and that those sources must