greatness--conceit. Alfred Stevens fancied that he could do everything,
and this fancy produced in him the appearance of a courage which
his moral nature never possessed. He had the audacity which results
from presumption, not the wholesome strength which comes from
the conscious possession of a right purpose. But a truce to our
metaphysics.

Never did saint wear the aspect of such supernatural devotion. He
knelt with the first, groaned audibly at intervals, and when his
face became visible, his eyes were strained in upward glances, so
that the spectator could behold little more in their orbs than a
sea of white.

"Oh! what a blessed young man!" said Mrs. Quackenbosh.

"How I wish it was he that was to preach for us to-day," responded
that gem from the antique, Miss Polly Entwistle, who had joined
every church in Kentucky in turn, without having been made a spouse
in either.

"How handsome he is!" simpered Miss Julia Evergreen--a damsel of
seventeen, upon whom the bilious eyes of Miss Entwistle were cast
with such an expression as the devil is said to put on when suddenly
soused in holy water.

"Handsome is that handsome does!" was the commentary of a venerable
cormorant to whom Brother Cross had always appeared the special
and accepted agent of heaven.

"I wish Brother Cross would get him to pray only. I wonder if