ce,
some wish passing through his mind, and then seating herself at his
feet, often with her work--which was always destined for him or for one
of her absent brothers,--now and then with the one small book that
she had carried with her, a selection of Bible stories compiled for
children,--sometimes when I saw her thus, how I wished that Lilian,
too, could have seen her, and have compared her own ideal fantasies with
those young developments of the natural heavenly Woman!

But was there nothing in that sight from which I, proud of my arid
reason even in its perplexities, might have taken lessons for myself?

On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought to him the draft of
deeds for the sale of his property. He had never been a man of business
out of his profession; he was impatient to sell his property, and
disposed to accept an offer at half its value. I insisted on taking
on myself the task of negotiator; perhaps, too, in this office I was
egotistically anxious to prove to the great physician that which he
believed to be my "hallucination" had in no way obscured my common-sense
in the daily affairs of life. So I concluded, and in a few hours,
terms for his property that were only just, but were infinitely more
advantageous than had appeared to himself to be possible. But as I
approached him with the papers, he put his finger to his lips. Amy was
standing by him with her little book in her hand, and his own Bible lay
open on the table. He was reading to her from the Sacred Volume itself,
and impressing on her the force and beauty of one of the Parables, the
adaptation of which had perplexed her; when he had done, she kissed him,
bade him goodnight, and went away to rest. Then said Faber thoughtfully,
and as if to himself more than me,--

"What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion! How
intuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life,
and how intuitively on quitting life the old man turns back to prayer
and worship, putting himself again side by side with the infant!"

I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and freeholds,
title-deeds and money; and when the business on hand was concluded,
asked my learned guest if, before he departed, he would deign to look
over the pages of my ambitious Physiological Work. There were parts of
it on which I much desired his opinion, touching on subjects in which
his special studies made him an authority as high as our land po