such different birds are hatched from the same nest! And what a
nest was then the city itself! -- with its university, its schools,
its churches, its hospitals, its missions; its homes, its
lodging-houses, its hotels, its drinking shops, its houses viler
still; its factories, its ships, its great steamers; and the same
humanity busy in all! -- here the sickly lady walking in the panoply
of love unharmed through the horrors of vicious suffering; there the
strong mother cursing her own child along half a street with an
intensity and vileness of execration unheard elsewhere! The will of
the brooding spirit must be a grand one, indeed, to enclose so much
of what cannot be its will, and turn all to its purpose of eternal
good! Our knowledge of humanity, how much more our knowledge of the
Father of it, is moving as yet but in the first elements.

In his shed under the stair it had been dark for some time -- too dark
for work, that is, and George Galbraith had lighted a candle: he
never felt at liberty to leave off so long as a man was recognizable
in the street by daylight. But now at last, with a sigh of relief,
he rose. The hour of his redemption was come, the moment of it at
hand. Outwardly calm, he was within eager as a lover to reach Lucky
Croale's back parlour. His hand trembled with expectation as he
laid from it the awl, took from between his knees the great boot on
the toe of which he had been stitching a patch, lifted the yoke of
his leather apron over his head, and threw it aside. With one hasty
glance around, as if he feared some enemy lurking near to prevent
his escape, he caught up a hat which looked as if it had been
brushed with grease, pulled it on his head with both hands, stepped
out quickly, closed the door behind him, turned the key, left it in
the lock, and made straight for his earthly paradise -- but with
chastened step. All Mistress Croale's customers made a point of