black. Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branches
seem no whit the cleaner for her care; but then their glistening
blackness mirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement
will sometimes lap our feet in a sea of gold. The little wet
sparrows are for the moment equally transformed, for the sun turns
their dun-coloured coats to a ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom as
it kisses each shiny beak. They are dumb Chrysostoms; but they
preach a golden gospel, for the sparrows are to London what the
rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste of waters--a
perpetual sign of the remembering mercies of God.

Last night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a shout, and then
silence. A runaway cab-horse, a dark night, a wide crossing, and a
heavy burden: so death came to a poor woman. People from the
house went out to help; and I heard of her, the centre of an
unknowing curious crowd, as she lay bonnetless in the mud of the
road, her head on the kerb. A rude but painless death: the misery
lay in her life; for this woman--worn, white-haired, and wrinkled--
had but fifty years to set against such a condition. The policeman
reported her respectable, hard-working, living apart from her
husband with a sister; but although they shared rooms, they "did
not speak," and the sister refused all responsibility; so the
parish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy.

Was it her own fault? If so, the greater pathos. The lonely souls
that hold out timid hands to an unheeding world have their meed of
interior comfort even here, while the sons of consolation wait on
the thresh-hold for their footfall: but God help the soul that
bars its own door! It is kicking against the pricks of Divine
ordinance, the ordinance of a triune God; whether it be the dweller