myself--little things that I thought children would like to hear some
day." What did she not unconsciously throw into those last words? "I
dream of it," she pursued, talking with as little regard to me as
on the stage she sang to the prima donna. "Their little arms, their
little faces, their little lips! And in an asylum there would be so
many of them! When they cried and were in trouble I would take them in
my lap, and I would say to them, with all sorts of tenderness--" She
had arranged that in her program, too--all the minutiae of what she
would say to them in their distress. But women are that way. When once
they begin to love, their hearts are magnifying-lenses for them to
feel through. "And my heart hungers to commence right here, now, at
once! It seems to me I cannot wait. Ah, madam, no more stage, no more
opera!" speaking quickly, feverishly. "As I said, it may be your
beautiful spring, your flowers, your birds, and your numbers of
children. I have always loved that place most where there are most
children; and you have more children here than I ever saw anywhere.
Children are so beautiful! It is strange, is it not, when you consider
my life and my rearing?"

Her life, her rearing, how interesting they must have been! What a
pity I had not listened more attentively!

"They say you have much to do with asylums here."

Evidently, when rôles do not exist in life for certain characters, God
has to create them. And thus He had to create a rôle in an asylum for
my friend, for so she became from the instant she spoke of children
as she did. It was the poorest and neediest of asylums; and the poor
little orphaned wretches--but it is better not to speak of them. How
can God ever expect to rear children without their mothers!