the fulness of time shall have come,--ordained to take its place in the
historic evolution of the race, and to give the last and definite shape
to its wondrous destinies?

Is there, or is there not, another region of truth, of enterprise, of
progress,--to finish, to balance, to consummate the world?

Such is the Problem.

* * * * *


MY GARDEN.


I can speak of it calmly now; but there have been moments when the
lightest mention of those words would sway my soul to its profoundest
depths.

I am a woman. I nip this fact in the bud of my narrative, because I like
to do as I would be done by, when I can just as well as not. It rasps a
person of my temperament exceedingly to be deceived. When any one tells
a story, we wish to know at the outset whether the story-teller is a man
or a woman. The two sexes awaken two entirely distinct sets of feelings,
and you would no more use the one for the other than you would put
on your tiny teacups at breakfast, or lay the carving-knife by the
butter-plate. Consequently it is very exasperating to sit, open-eyed and
expectant, watching the removal of the successive swathings which hide
from you the dusky glories of an old-time princess, and, when the
unrolling is over, to find it is nothing, after all, but a great