more paternal than anything else, though my
heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without
anything very remarkable coming of it.

This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us,
together in a new way, and it wouldn't be very odd if some of us should
become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance for
the elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two
subjects of them come within range! There lies a bit of iron. All the
dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that
position, and there it will lie until it becomes a heap of red-brown
rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,--it looks to you like just such a
bit of iron as the other,--and lo! it leaves them all,--the tugging of
the mighty earth; of the ghostly moon that walks in white, trailing the
snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a
sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,--it leaves
the wrestling of all their forces, which are at a dead lock with each
other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet. What a
lucky thing it is for well-conducted persons that the maddening elective
affinities don't come into play in full force very often!

I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than it
deserves. It must be because I have got it into my head that we are
bound to have some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and that this
will give a chance for advances on the part of anybody disposed in that
direction. A little change of circumstance often hastens on a movement
that has been long in preparation. A chemist will show you a flask
containing a clear liquid; he will give it a shake or two, and the whole
contents of the flask will become solid in an instant. Or you may lay a
little heap of iron-filings on a sheet of paper with a magnet beneath it,
and they will be quiet enough as they are, but give the paper a slight
jar and the specks of metal will suddenly find their way to the north or
the south pole of the magnet and take a definite shape not unpleasing to
contemplate, and curiously illustrating the laws of attraction,
antagonism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious and unconscious,
are alike governed. So with our little party, with any little party of
persons who have got used to each other; leave them undisturbed and they
might remain in a state of equilibrium