"This one lived in Slabtown, if I remember right. He was a character of fiction, neither very wise nor very entertaining; yet when Deacon Bedott lifted up his voice and spake, he formulated one of the Great Truths that man can know."
"What did he say?" she asked after a pause.
"We are all poor critters," was the answer, with a grim laugh. "Paula, I believe it is the only truth that really does come home to a man."
"It is from the Bible," she said simply.
He looked up. "Do you mean to assert that the Deacon was merely quoting? Are you going to destroy my faith in a pet philosopher; he who said all that Plato said, or Socrates, or Seneca—or anybody?"
"For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain," she answered in a low tone.
There was silence for a moment; at length Mark said: "It seems that the Deacon was, after all, a plagiarist."
"I think that perhaps philosophers have discovered few truths concerning man that they might not have found in the Bible, and with less labor."
"Paula, do you believe the Bible?"
"Why, Mark! It is God's word."