my heart like a great spiritual plummet They dropped
down to depths not often stirred. And from those depths came up some
shining sands of truth, worth keeping among treasures; having a
phosphorescent light in them, which can shine in dark places, and, making
them light as day, reveal their beauty.

"A genius for affection." Yes; there is such a thing, and no other genius
is so great. The phrase means something more than a capacity, or even a
talent for loving. That is common to all human beings, more or less. A man
or woman without it would be a monster, such as has probably never been on
the earth. All men and women, whatever be their shortcomings in other
directions, have this impulse, this faculty, in a degree. It takes shape
in family ties: makes clumsy and unfortunate work of them in perhaps two
cases out of three,--wives tormenting husbands, husbands neglecting and
humiliating wives, parents maltreating and ruining children, children
disobeying and grieving parents, and brothers and sisters quarrelling to
the point of proverbial mention; but under all this, in spite of all this,
the love is there. A great trouble or a sudden emergency will bring it
out. In any common danger, hands clasp closely and quarrels are forgotten;
over a sick-bed hard ways soften into yearning tenderness; and by a grave,
alas! what hot tears fall! The poor, imperfect love which had let itself
be wearied and harassed by the frictions of life, or hindered and warped
by a body full of diseased nerves, comes running, too late, with its
effort to make up lost opportunities. It has been all the while alive, but
in a sort of trance; little good has come of it, but it is something that
it was there. It is the divine germ of a flower and fruit too precious to
mature in the first years after grafting; in other soils, by other waters,
when the healing of the nations is fulfilled, we shall see its perfection.
Oh! what atonement will be there! What allowances we shall make for each
other, then! with what love we shall love!

But the souls who have what my friend meant by a "genius for affection"
are in another atmosphere than that which common men breathe. Their "upper
air" is clearer, more rarefied than any to which mere intellectual genius
can soar. Because, to this last, always remain higher heights which it
cannot grasp, see, nor comprehend.

Michel Angelo may build his dome of marble, and human intellect may see as
clearly as if God had said it