his thumbs under his arms, and affecting an air of great wisdom. "I know
all about that; I was there, and see the things wriggle."

Evolution staring her in the face in a corner class in a mission
school;--a class that had been gathered from the slums! Mrs. Roberts did
not know that these are the very places in which to find it in all its
coarseness. Yet she made haste to meet the boy on his own ground.

"Very well, if you choose to take that view of it. Was not the tadpole
alive? Where did the _life_ come from? You insist that the story I
have been telling you is untrue because you know that none of these
sleight-of-hand performers have ever, or _can_ ever make actual
life! That it is an impossible thing for human beings to do. Yet when I
tell you that _God_ did it you refuse the statement. How are you
going to account for life? If, in its very lowest forms, it cannot be
made by men who have given all their time to the study of the
marvellous, how is it that it is everywhere about us, unless I am
correct, and there is a Power that can produce life?"

Not a boy among them had heard the term "evolution;" knew anything
about "the survival of the fittest." They were entirely ignorant of
"protoplasm" or "bioplasm;" yet not one of them but had caught the
meaning of some of these terms as they had been translated for them
into the vernacular of the city slums; not one in the class but perceived
that their champion arguer had been met on his own ground and
vanquished. Not with an outburst of horror; he had not even been
informed that he was irreverent. Nimble Dick delighted in making each
teacher tell him this; he had merely been replied to in the calmest of
argumentative tones, and called upon to account for the facts in his own
statements, and had been unable to do so. The crowd broke into a