A Woman's War

Murchison sat for a while before the open window after his wife had gone to bed. He could hear her moving to and fro in the room above him, the only sound in the silence of the night. He was at rest, and happy, her very nearness filling him with a sense of peace and strength. The tenderness of her love breathed in the air, and he still seemed to hear her radiant singing. We mortals are often in greater peril of a fall when we trust in the cheerful temerity of an imagined strength. To a man standing upon the edge of a precipice the lands beneath seem faint and insignificant, and yet but a depth of air lies between him and the plain. Our frailties may seem pitiful, nay, impossible to us when we listen to noble music, or watch the sunrise on the mountains. The man who is exalted in the spirit lives in a clearer atmosphere, and wonders at the fog that may have drifted round him yesterday. He may even laugh at the alter ego framed of clay, and ask whether this soft-bodied, cringing thing could ever have answered to the name of "self."