The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

164 The Gates Ajar.
there shall it lie, and with that amount of
holiness of which a man leaves this life the
possessor, he must start in another. I have
seen great thinkers,'foremost men' in science,
in theology, in the arts, who, I solemnly
believe, will turn aside in heaven,- and will
turn humbly and heartily, - to let certain daylaborers and paupers whom I have known go
up before them as kings and priests unto
God."
"I believe that. But I was going to ask, -
for poor creatures like your respected niece,
who has n't a talent, nor even a single absorbing taste, for one thing above another thing,
-what shall she do? "
"Whatever she liketh best; something very
useful, my dear, don't be afraid, and very
pleasant. Something, too, for which this life
has fitted you; though you may not understand
how that can be, better than did poor Heine
on his'matrazzen-gruft,' reading all the books
that treated of his disease.'But what good
this reading is to do me I don't know,' he said,'except that it will qualify me to give lectures
in heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth
about diseases of the spinal marrow.'"
"I don't know how many times I have