Chapter 37 VANITAS VANITATIS.

And is there in God's world so drear a place,

Where the loud bitter cry is raised in vain;

Where tears of penance come too late for grace,

As on the uprooted flower the genial rain.

Keble.

St. Luke's little summer was over, the ripe golden days that October binds in her sheaf, the richest and rarest of the year's harvest, had been fo