very altar, ready to answer our prayers; and, oh dear! when I came to
think of it, there were so many of my prayers waiting to be answered! I
'felt like' presenting them all over again, it seemed such a good
opportunity. And then they sang the _O salutaris Hostia_ divinely--
so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would
certainly have made them sing it again--and I could not pray any more
after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? _I_ do.
And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary
tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held
responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the devil,
but they are wrong. The first cause of these mental lapses is to be
found in some habit of levity, acquired young, and not easily got rid
of, but still not hopeless. But prevention is better than cure, and
children should be taught right-mindedness early. I wish I had been.
Happy is the child who is started in life with a set of fixed
principles, and the power to respect."

I used to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did
not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea,"
she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems
to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions
enough to satisfy nearly everybody."

She had very decided views about what heaven ought to be.

"The mere material notion of abundance of gold and precious stones,
which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she
declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures
provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an
exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phæacia--the land whose