reply to the Jesuit, Olea, who held his judgment in such matters to be infallible; but nevertheless her practical soul yearned over a well-dowered nun.  When an “excellent novice” with a fortune of six thousand ducats presented herself at the gates of the poverty-stricken convent in Seville, Teresa, then in Avila, was consumed with anxiety lest such an acquisition should, through some blunder, be lost.  “For the love of God,” wrote the wise old saint to the prioress in Seville, “if she enters, bear with a few defects, for well does she deserve it.”

This is not the type of anecdote which looms large in the volumes of “minced saints” prepared for pious readers, and its absence has accustomed us to dissever humour from sanctity.  But a candid soul is, as a rule, a humorous soul, awake to the tragi-comic aspect of life, and immaculately free from self-deception.  And to such souls, cast like Teresa’s in heroic mould, comes the perception of great moral truths, together with the sturdy strength which supports enthusiasm in the face of human disabilities.  They are the lantern-bearers of every age, of every race, of every creed, les ames bien nees whom it behooves us to approach fearlessly out of the darkness, for so only can we hope to understand.

The Nervous Strain

“Which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this night.”—­MRS. GAMP.

Anna Robeson Burr, in her scholarly analysis of the world’s great autobiographies, has found occasion to compare the sufferings of the American woman under the average conditions of life with the endurance of the woman who, three hundred years ago, confronted dire vicissitudes with something closely akin to insensibility.  “To-day,” says Mrs. Burr, “a child’s illness, an over-gay season, the loss of an investment, a family jar,—­these are accepted as sufficient cause for over-strained nerves and temporary retirement to a sanitarium. Then, war, rapine, fire, sword, prolonged and mortal peril, were considered as furnishing no excuse to men or women for altering the habits, or slackening the energies, of their daily existence.”

As a matter of fact, Isabella d’ Este witnessed the sacking of Rome without so much as thinking of nervous prostration.  This was nearly four hundred years ago, but it is the high-water mark of feminine fortitude.  To live through such days and nights of horror, and emerge therefrom with unimpaired vitality, and unquenched love for a beautiful and dangerous world, is to rob the words “shock” and “strain” of all dignity and meaning.  To resume at once the interrupted duties and pleasures of life was, for the Marchioness of Mantua, obligatory; but none the less we marvel that she could play her role so well.