Pliable as
she was to all outward appearances, the child had her own still,
interior world, where all her little notions and opinions stood up crisp
and fresh, like flowers that grow in cool, shady places. If anybody too
rudely assailed a thought or suggestion she put forth, she drew it back
again into this quiet inner chamber, and went on. Reader, there are
some women of this habit; and there is no independence and pertinacity
of opinion like that of these seemingly soft, quiet creatures, whom it
is so easy to silence, and so difficult to convince. Mara, little and
unformed as she yet was, belonged to the race of those spirits to whom
is deputed the office of the angel in the Apocalypse, to whom was given
the golden rod which measured the New Jerusalem. Infant though she was,
she had ever in her hands that invisible measuring-rod, which she was
laying to the foundations of all actions and thoughts. There may,
perhaps, come a time when the saucy boy, who now steps so superbly, and
predominates so proudly in virtue of his physical strength and daring,
will learn to tremble at the golden measuring-rod, held in the hand of a
woman.

"Howbeit, that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural." Moses is the type of the first unreflecting stage of
development, in which are only the out-reachings of active faculties,
the aspirations that tend toward manly accomplishments. Seldom do we
meet sensitiveness of conscience or discriminating reflection as the
indigenous growth of a very vigorous physical development. Your true
healthy boy has the breezy, hearty virtues of a Newfoundland dog, the
wild fullness of life of the young race-colt. Sentiment, sensibility,
delicate perceptions, spiritual aspirations, are plants of later growth.

But there are, both of men and women, beings born into this world in
whom from childhood the spiritual and the reflective predominate over
the physical. In relation to other human beings, they seem to be
organized much as birds are in relation to other animals. They are the
artists, the poets, the unconscious seers, to whom the purer truths of
spiritual instruction are open. Surveying man merely as an animal, these
sensitively organized beings, with their feebler physical powers, are
imperfect specimens of life. Looking from the spiritual side, they seem
to have a noble strength, a divine force. The types of this latter class
are more commonly among women than among men. Multitudes of