OME time before the marriage of my daughter, I had become acquainted with the Abbe Fenelon, and the family into which she had entered being among his friends, I had the opportunity of seeing him there many times. We had conversations on the subject of the inner life, in which he offered many objections to me. I answered him with my usual simplicity. He gave me opportunity to thoroughly explain to him my experiences. The difficulties he offered only served to make clear to him the root of my sentiments; therefore no one has been better able to understand them than he. This it is which, in the sequel, has served for the foundation of the persecution raised against him, as his answers to the Bishop of Meaux have made known to all persons who have read them without prejudice. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MADAME GUYON. CT H&7 Fenelon and Madame Guyon HAVE been reading the "Autobiography of Madame Guyon." All books that live are autobiographies, because as he no writer is interesting save writes about himself. All literature is a confession-there is only one kind of ink, and it is red. Some people say the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the most interesting book written by an American. It surely has one mark of greatness-indiscretion. It tells of things inconsequential, irrelevant and absurd. For instance, the purchase of a penny loaf by a moon-faced youth with outgrown trousers, who walked up Market Street, in the city of Philadelphia, munching his loaf, and who saw a girl sitting in a doorway, laughing at him. What has that to do with literature? Everything, for literature is a human document, and the fact that he of the moon-face got even with the girl who laughed at him by going back and marrying her, gives us a picture not soon forgotten. Everybody is entertaining when he writes about himself because he is discussing a subject in which he is vitally interested-whether he understands the theme is another thing. The fact that Madame Guyon did not understand her theme does not detract from the interest in her book, it rather adds to it-she is so intensely prejudiced. Franklin was the very king of 57 LITTLE humorists, and in humor Madame Guyon was a pauJOURNEYS per 900 There is not a smile in the whole big book from cover to cover-not a smile, save those the reader brings to bear. Madame Guyon lays bare her heart, but she does it by indirection. In this book she keeps her left hand well informed of what her right hand is doing. Her multimasked ego tells things she must have known, but which she didn't know she knew, otherwise she would not have told us. We get the truth by reading between the lines. The miracle is that this book should have passed for a work of deep religious significance, and served as a text-book for religious novitiates for three centuries. Madame Guyon was a woman of intellect, damned with a dower of beauty-sensitive, alert, possessing an impetuous nature that endeavored to find its gratification in religion. Born into a rich family, and marrying a rich man, unkind fate gave her time for introspection, and her mind became morbid through lack of employment for her hands. Work would have directed her emotions to a point where they would have been useful, but for the lack of which she was feverish, querulous, impulsive-always looking for offense, and of course finding it. Her pride was colossal, and the fact that it found form in humility must have made her a sore trial to her friends.. The confessional seems a natural need of humanity, but when an introspective hypochondriac acquires the |