web into an abiding-place,
unto such time as the light is shut out forever, or the waves from the
silver sea curl their mist up thither. I had much marvel then concerning
the hidden mysteries; but Sophie so soon thereafter spake the naughty "I
will," that the silent room forgot to speak to me. I have never heard
sound thence since that morning-time.

"Why does not my father take me in? Am I not his child, even as Sophie?"

I asked these questions of Anna Percival, the while she stood at an
upper window, and looked out over New York's surging lines of life.
The roar of rolling wheels came muffled by distance and the shore of
dwelling-places over which I looked. I counted the church-spires that
threaded the vault of night a little of the upward way. How angels, that
have lived forever in heaven, and souls just free from material things,
must reach down to touch these towering masts, that tell which way the
sails of spirit bend! These city churches, dedicated with solemn service
unto the worship of the great I AM, the Lord God of Adam, the Jehovah
Jireh of Israelites, the Holy Redeemer of Christians,--may the Lord of
heaven and earth bless them _every one_! I looked forth upon them with
tears. There never comes a time, in the busiest hurry of human ways,
that I do not sprinkle a drop of love upon the steps as I pass,--that I
do not wind a tendril of holy feeling up to height of tower or summit of
spire for the great winds to waft onward and upward. God pity the heart
that does not involuntary reverence to God's templed places, made sacred
a thousand fold by every penitential tear, by every throb of devotion,
by every aspiration after the divine existence, from which let down a
little while, we wander, for what we know not! God doth not tell, save
that it is to "love first Him, Sole and Individual," and then the
fragments, the crumbs of Divinity that dwell in Man.

I had not lighted the gas. The street-lamps sent up their rays, making
the room semi-lucent. I took out my tower-key. What matter, if I held
the cold iron thereof to my lips awhile? there was no frost in the March
air then. I sent my restless fingers in and out of the wards, prisoning
them often therein. As thus I stood, with cheek pressed against the
windowpane, looking out upon the city, set into a rim of darkness, from
out of which it flashed its million rays, papa came up.

"I didn't say good-night," he said, coming in, and to the window where
I was. "But