Excerpt from Katharine Ashton, Vol. 2 of 2

And yet in the eyes of the world there were such barriers between them! That was the greatest Wonder of all. Katharine looked at the luxurious chamber in which Jane was lying, and it brought back in strong contrast the absence of riches and refinements in her own home; and she thought of the polished society in which Jane moved, and felt her self admitted more by sufferance than courtesy into the privacy of her family, since Colonel Forbes looked down upon her, and his friends would, for the most part, have thought it beneath them to notice her and yet she could not but feel that Jane and herself were in heart one. They had been so in childhood, they were so still; how was it?

She took up Jane's Bible, which was lying on the table. It happened to open at St. Paul's epistle to Philemon, and she read it through; not with any particular intention, but because it had first pre sented itself; yet it had a special meaning to her at that time. Onesimus, she had been told, was a runaway slave, St. Paul was a gentleman by birth and education; yet was Onesimus to be received not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved; a brother, because born to the same inheritance, and working, though still a ser vant in the eyes of man, for the same glorious cause.

If such was Christianity in its early times, such also must Christianity be still. But the lesson then principally inculcated by fellowship in suffering must, in a different state of society, be taught by fellowship in work. When Jane Sinclair and Katharine Ashton joined in the same 'work, they were unconsciously, yet most firmly, cementing the tie which the habits of the world would otherwise, in all probability, have utterly severed. Katharine was willing to work still, either with Jane or for her; they had mutual interests, and it mattered little what form the service assumed, only that it was happiness to her to feel that she could be a comfort tw one whom she so truly loved. It was this feeling which gave her self-respect and self command. Outward deference to those above her in society was accorded by her freely; for, although belonging to things of this world, it was an ob ligation rendered sacred by the ordering of God's Providence, but it could never cause any sense of humiliation. How could a difference of worldly rank touch one whose aim was a crown in Heaven?

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