drew a long breath, and said to the doctor:

"This is the most awful day I ever lived through."

Dr. Eben smiled. "You have had a life singularly free from troubles,
Miss Gunn."

"No!" said Hetty, "I've had a great deal. But there has always been
something to do. The only things one can't bear, it seems to me, are
where one can't do any thing, like to-day: that poor little baby crying,
crying, and nothing to be done, but to wait for him to stop; and Sally
looking as if she would die any minute; and that screaming steam-engine
whirling us all along as if we were only dead freight. I suppose if
Sally had died, we should have had to keep right on, shouldn't we?"

"Yes," said the doctor. Something in his tone arrested Hetty's ear. She
looked at him inquiringly; then she said slowly:

"I understand you. I am ashamed. We were only three people out of
hundreds: it is just like life, isn't it: how selfish we are without
realizing it! It isn't of any consequence how or where or when any one
of us dies: the train must keep right on. I see."

"Yes," said the doctor again: and this monosyllable meant even more than
the other. Dr. Eben was a philosopher. Epictetus, and that most royal of
royal emperors, Marcus Aurelius, had been his masters: their words
were ever present with him. "It is not possible that the nature of the
universe, either through want of power or want of skill, has made a
mistake;" "nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature
to bear,"--were hourly watchwords of thought with him. In this regard he