think he almost longed for the power to become a proselyte to any active
communion, even if it proposed but a new whitewashing of the sepulchre
which hides the corruptions of society. Notwithstanding the vigorous
words he had spoken, I knew him for one who could never take hearty
satisfaction in denouncing any form of Error, because always fated to
discern behind it the muffled figure of Truth. More than most men he
felt the pressure of an awful fact which weighs upon such as are gifted
with any fine apprehension of these worlds of spirit and
matter,--namely, the impossibility of drawing anywhere in Nature those
definite lines of demarcation which the mind craves to limit and fortify
its feeble beliefs. If the boundaries of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms are hopelessly interlaced, it is only an image of the confusion
in which our blackest sins are shaded off into the sunlight of virtue.

"But why am I here?" exclaimed Clifton, suddenly starting to his feet.
"I can at, least swim a few desperate strokes against this current,
before sinking beneath it forever! I can do something to save a few
ardent maidens from this whirling water of Reform!

"And yet," he continued, after a pause, "yet many, perhaps most of these
wretched people, drained dry by their one idea, are devoted with
absolute singleness of purpose to the pursuit of an honest thing. Let us
consider whom and what we may be found fighting against. If these
subverters do not altogether prove the truth of their own opinions, do
they not at least demonstrate the error of those who totally oppose
them? Here is Miss Hurribattle,--who will not acknowledge her noble
contempt for the accidental and the transitory? I believe that woman
desires Truth as earnestly as men desire wealth or reputation!"

"It is so, indeed," I assented. "Her large nature will assimilate