s and what he does are the direct,
unmistakable effusions of his nature. All comes straight from the secret
place where his soul abideth. Even his subterfuges are open as the day.
You know that you are looking upon virgin Nature. Just as it flashed
from its source, you see the unadulterated spirit. If grown-up persons
would or could be as frank as he,--if they had no more misgivings,
concealments, self-distrust, self-thought than he,--they would doubtless
be as interesting. Every separate human being is a separate phenomenon
and mystery; and if he could only be unthinkingly himself, as Jamie is,
that self would be as much more captivating as it is become great and
subtle by growth and experience. But we--fashion, habit, society,
training, all the culture of life, mix a sort of paste, and we gradually
become coated with it, and it hardens upon us; so it comes to pass
by-and-by that we see our associates no longer, but only the casing in
which they walk about; and as one is a good deal like another, we are
not deeply fascinated. Sometimes a Thor's hammer breaks this flinty rock
in pieces. Sometimes a fervid sun melts it, and you are let in to where
the vigilant soul keeps watch and ward. Sometimes, alas! the hardening
process seems to have struck in, and you find nothing but petrifaction
all the way through.

Perhaps, after all, it is just as well; for, if our neighbors won upon
us unawares as Jamie does, when should we ever find time to do anything?
On the whole, it is a great deal better as it is, until the world has
learned to love its neighbor as itself. For the present, it would not be
safe to go abroad with the soul exposed. You fetch me a blow with your
bludgeon, and I mind it not at all through my coat-of-mail; but if it
had fallen on my heart, it would have wounded me to death. Nay, if you
did but know where the sutures are, how you would stab and stab, dear
fellow-man and brother, not to say Christian! No, we are not to be
trusted with each other yet,--I with you, nor you with me; so we will
keep our armor on awhile, please Heaven.

And as I think of Jamie frisking through the happy, merry days, I see
how sad, unnatural, and wicked a thing it is, that mothers must so often
miss the sunshine that ought to come to them through their little ones.
We speak of losing children, when they die; but many a mother loses her
children, though they play upon her threshold every day. She loses them,
because she has no leisur