It is a grim sort of a thought.

The relics of St.Anne, up in Canada, have now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing the sick by the dozen.
But it is merest matter-of-course that these same relics, within a generation after St.Anne's death and burial, MADE several thousand people sick.

Therefore these miracle-performances are simply compensation, nothing more.

St.Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, it is true; but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years, and outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not paid at all; and most of the knights of the halo do not pay at all.

Where you find one that pays--like St.Anne--you find a hundred and fifty that take the benefit of the statute.