Maggie and Lucy
BY the end of the week Dr Kenn had made up his mind that there was only one way in which he could secure Maggie a suitable living at St Oggs. Even with his twenty years experience as a parish priest, he was aghast at the obstinate tinuanputations against her in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to open the ears of women to reason and their sces to justi behalf of Maggie Tulliver, he suddenly found himself as powerless as he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influehe shape of bos. Dr Kenn could not be tradicted: he was listeo in silence; but when he left the room, a parison of opinions among his hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss Tulliver had undeniably acted in a blamable manner: even Dr Kenn did not deny that: how then could he think so lightly of her as to put that favourable interpretation ohing she had done? Even on the supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief - namely, that none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true; still, sihey had been said about her, they had cast an odour around her which must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her owation - and of society. To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, `I will not believe unproved evil of you: my lips shall not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it. I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to e short of my most ear efforts. Your lot has been harder than mine, your temptatioer. Let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling - to have dohis would have demanded ce, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust - would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquan evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in ning, that cheated itself with ne words into the belief that life have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love towards the individual men and women who e across our own path. The ladies of St Oggs were not beguiled by any wide speculative ceptions; but they had their favourite abstra, called society, which served to make their sces perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own egoism - thinking and speaking the worst of Maggie Tulliver and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr Kenn, after two years of superfluous inse from his feminine parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their views in opposition to his; but then, they maintaihem in opposition to a higher authority, which they had veed lohat authority had furnished a very explicit ao persons who might inquire where their social duties began, and might be ined to take wide views as to the starting-point. The answer had not turned oimate good of society, but on `a certain man who was found in trouble by the wayside. Not that St Oggs was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and sce: probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid: too timid even to believe in the correess of their ow promptings, when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St Oggs were not all brave, by any means: some of them were even fond of sdal - and to aent that might have given their versation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by mas