"Oh, Harry, do you think so? Well, I must say I do think Mr. St. John is as ignorant as a child about such matters, if I may judge from the way he goes on about his own health. He ignores his body entirely, and seems determined to work as if he were a spirit and could live on prayer and fasting."
"Which, as he isn't a spirit, won't do," said Harry. "It may end in making a spirit of him before the time."
"But don't you think the disinterestedness he shows is perfectly heroic?" said Eva.
"Oh, certainly!" said Harry. "The fact is, I should despair of St. John if he hadn't set himself at mission work. He is naturally so ideal, and so fastidious, and so fond of rules, and limits, and order, that if he hadn't this practical common-sense problem of working among the poor on his hands, I should think he wouldn't be good for much. But drunken men and sorrowful wives, ragged children, sickness, pain, poverty, teach a man the common-sense of religion faster than anything else, and I can see St. John is learning sense for everybody but himself. If he only don't run his own body down, he'll make something yet."
"I think, Harry," said Eva, "he is a little doubtful of whether you really go with him or not. I don't think he knows how much you like him."
"Go with him! of course I do. I stand up for St. John and defend him. So long as a man is giving his whole life to hard work among the poor and neglected he may burn forty candles, if he wants to, for all I care. He may turn to any point of the compass he likes, east, west, north, or south, and wear all the colors of the rainbow if it suits him, and I won't complain. In fact, I like processions, and chantings, and ceremonies, if you don't get too many of them. I think, generally speaking, there's too little of that sort of thing in our American life. In the main, St. John preaches good sermons; that is, good, manly, honest talks to people about what they need to know. But then his mind is tending to a monomania of veneration. You see he has a mystical, poetic element in it that may lead him back into the old idolatries of past ages, and lead weak minds there after him; that's why I want to get him acquainted with such fellows as Campbell. He needs to learn the common sense of life. I think he is capable of it, and one of the first things he has got to learn is not to be shocked at hearing things said from other people's points of view. If these two men could only like each other, so as to listen tolerantly and dispassionately to what each has to say, they might be everything to each other."
"Well, how to get a mordant to unite these two opposing colors," said Eva.
"That's what you women are for—at least such women as you. It's your mission to interpret differing natures—to bind, and blend, and unite."
"But how shall we get them to like each other?" said Eva. "Both are so very intense and so opposite. I suppose Dr. Campbell would consider most of Mr. St. John's ideas stuff and nonsense; and I know, as well as I know anything, that if Mr. St. John should hear Dr. Campbell talking as he talks to you, he would shut up like a flower—he would retire into himself and not come here any more."
"Oh, Eva, that's making the man too ridiculous and unmanly. Good gracious! Can't a man who thinks he has God's truth—and such truth!—listen to opposing views without going into fits? It's like a soldier who cannot face guns and wants to stay inside of a clean, nice fort, making pretty stacks of bayonets and piling cannon balls in lovely little triangles."