ly possessed, affords no complete
gratification. There is an essence in it that eludes all ownership. Its
highest use seems to be a purifying impulse for nobler endeavor. It says
at the last, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

Where there is this haunting memory of a great love lost there is always
forgiveness, charity, and a sympathy that makes the man brother to all who
endure and suffer. The individual himself is nothing; he has nothing to
hope for, nothing to gain, nothing to win, nothing to lose; for the first
time and the last he has a selflessness that is wide as the world, and
wherein there is no room for the recollection of a wrong. In this memory
of a great love, there is a nourishing source of strength by which the
possessor lives and works; he is in communication with elemental
conditions.

Harriet Martineau was a lifelong widow of the heart. That first great
passion of her early womanhood, the love that was lost, remained with her
all the days of her life: springing fresh every morning, her last thought
as she closed her eyes at night. Other loves came to her, attachments
varying in nature and degree, but in this supreme love all was fused and
absorbed. In this love, you get the secret of power.

A great love is a pain, yet it is a benison and a benediction. If we carry
any possession from this world to another it is the memory of a great
love. For even in the last hour, when the coldness of death shall creep
into the stiffening limbs, and the brain shall be stunned and the thoughts
stifled, there shall come to the tongue a name, a name not mentioned aloud
for years--there shall come a name; and as the last flickering rays of
life flare up to go out on earth forever, the tongue will speak this name
that was long, long ago burned into the soul by the passion of a love that
fadeth not away.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE

I was not surprised, when I went down into the hall, to see that
a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the
night, and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a
fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so
happy. A beggar woman and her little boy, pale, ragged objects
both, were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all
the money I happened to have in my purse--some three or four
shillings: good or bad they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks
cawed and blither birds sung, bu