with soup-houses, and dinner-tickets, and great public charities of
that sort. Or, I don't know that I should say she was not in sympathy
with them. I mean, rather, that those would not have been her ways of
working. She was thinking of young people, and to give them a dinner
now and then, she would not have considered a very great step toward
elevating them morally and spiritually. Mrs. Roberts, it was just that
which she wanted to do,--lift them up. She thought there could be
invented ways of reaching them, so that they would want helping, want
teaching,--_crave_ it, I mean; and she thought that Christian homes of
wealth and culture could be opened to them, and they gradually toled
in,--made to feel on a level with others, in the social scale; in
short, she believed that instead of people going down to them in a
condescending spirit, they could be drawn up to the level of others, so
that they would realize their manhood, and be led to make earnest
efforts to take their rightful places in the world. I know I am
bungling dreadfully; I don't know how to tell you her plans, only that
they were splendid. But I am afraid the world will have to be made
over, before they can be carried out."

"Perhaps so. Christ is at work making the world over, you know." The
lady before him, whose eyes never for an instant moved from his face,
spoke with exceeding sweetness and gravity. Neither by word nor glance
did she give him to understand that she thought his schemes wild. "But I
find that, after all, I want details. I catch a glimpse of the grandness
of your sister's meaning. What were some of the steps,--the little
steps, such as you and I could take, toward accomplishing? Yet, even
while I ask the question, I see something of what the answer must be.
'Christian homes opening to receive them!' That is a new thought to me,
and in the plural number I do not see how just now, it could be done,
but _one_ Christian home,--I ought to be able to manage that. Mr. Ried,