have been happy
in the possession of a key which unlocks the mystery of things, and there
would have been ample room for emotion. How impatient she became of
those bars which nowadays restrain people from coming close to one
another! Often and often she felt that she could have leaped out towards
the person talking to her, that she could have cried to him to put away
his circumlocutions, his forms and his trivialities, and to let her see
and feel what he really was. Often she knew what it was to thirst like
one in a desert for human intercourse, and she marvelled how those who
pretended to care for her could stay away so long: she could have
humiliated herself if only they would have permitted her to love them and
be near them. Poor Catharine! the world as it is now is no place for
people so framed! When life runs high and takes a common form men can
walk together as the disciples walked on the road to Emmaus. Christian
and Hopeful can pour out their hearts to one another as they travel
towards the Celestial City and are knit together in everlasting bonds by
the same Christ and the same salvation. But when each man is left to
shift for himself, to work out the answers to his own problems, the
result is isolation. People who, if they were believers, would find the
richest gift of life in utter confidence and mutual help are now
necessarily strangers. One turns to metaphysics; another to science; one
takes up with Rousseau's theory of existence, and another with Kant's;
they meet; they have nothing to say; they are of no use to one another in
trouble; one hears that the other is sick; what can be done? There is a
nurse; he does not go; his old friend dies, and as to the funeral--well,
we are liable to catch cold. Not so Christian and Hopeful! for when
Christian was troubled "with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits,
even on the borderland of Heaven--oh, Bunyan! Hopeful kept his brother's
head above water, and called upon him to turn his eyes to the Gate and
the men standing by it to receive him." My poor reader-friend, how many
times have you in this nineteenth century, when the billows have gone
over you--how many times have you felt the arm of man or woman under you
raising you to see the shining ones and the glory that is inexpressible?

Had Catharine been born later it would have been better. She would
perhaps have been able to distract herself with the thousand and one
subjects which are now got u