"Oh, Dennis, my husband, God forbid that you should speak thus! How can
you feel so toward our Best Friend?"

"What kind of a friend has He been to me, pray? Has not my life been
one long series of misfortunes? Have I not been disappointed in all
my hopes? I once believed in God and tried to serve Him. But if, as
I have been taught, all this evil and misfortune was ordered and made
my inevitable lot by Him, He has not been my friend, but my enemy.
He's been against me, not for me."

In the winter twilight the man's emaciated, unshorn face had the
ghostly, ashen hue of death. From cavernous sockets his eyes gleamed
with a terribly vindictive light, akin to insanity, and, in a harsh,
high voice, as unnatural as his appearance and words, he continued:
"Remember what I have gone through! what I have suffered! how often
the cup of success that I was raising to my lips has been dashed to the
ground!"

"But, Dennis, think a moment."

"Ah! haven't I thought till my heart is gall and my brain bursting?
Haven't I, while lying here, hopelessly dying, gone over my life again
and again? Haven't I lived over every disappointment, and taken every
step downward a thousand times? Remember the pleasant, plentiful home
I took you from, under the great elms in Connecticut. Your father did
not approve of your marrying a poor school-teacher. But you know that
then I had every prospect of getting the village academy, but with my
luck another got ahead of me. Then I determined to study law. What
hopes I had! I already grasped political honors that seemed within my