"It is strange how we have exchanged parts! Yesterday you were exhorting me to mildness towards the lad, and to-day--" "To-day I am severer than you," interrupted Dorothea.

"Who, indeed, could guess that an old graybeard would derogate from the duties of his office as father and as judge for the sake of a woman's smiling face in clay--as Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage ?" "And to whom would it occur," asked Petrus, taking up his wife's tone, "that so tender a mother as you would condemn her favorite son, because he labored to earn peace for his soul by a deed--by a work for which his master might envy him ?" "I have indeed observed," interrupted Dorothea, "that Sirona's image has bewitched you, and you speak as if the boy had achieved some great miracle.

I do not know much about modelling and sculpture, and I will not contradict you, but if the fair-haired creature's face were less pretty, and if Polykarp had not executed any thing remarkable, would it have made the smallest difference in what he has done and felt wrong?
Certainly not.

But that is just like men, they care only for success." "And with perfect justice," answered Petrus, "if the success is attained, not in mere child's play, but by a severe struggle.

'To him, that hath, shall more be given,' says the scripture, and he who has a soul more richly graced than others have--he who is helped by good spirits--he shall be forgiven many things that even a mild judge would be unwilling to pardon in a man of poor gifts, who torments and exerts himself and yet brings nothing to perfection.