st
in an existence whose visible, palpable part was burning itself fast
away. His inward need for the conception of this expanded, prolonged
self was reflected as an outward necessity. The thoughts of his heart
(that ancient phrase best shadows the truth) seemed to him too
precious, too closely interwoven with the growth of things not to have
a further destiny. And as the more beautiful, the stronger, the more
executive self took shape in his mind, he loved it beforehand with an
affection half identifying, half contemplative and grateful.

Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images, that his coherent
trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to
sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments: nay, they
often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage
from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually
thought of the Being answering to his need as one distantly approaching
or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a golden sky.
The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's habits. He was
keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a favorite resort of
his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some of the bridges,
especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he was bending over
watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper room looking out
on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his imagination
spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a far-stretching
scene; his thoughts went on in wide spaces; and whenever he could, he
tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. Leaning on the
parapet of Blackfriar's Bridge, and gazing meditatively, the breadth
and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half luminous,
the grand dim masses of tall forms of buildings which were the signs of
world-commerce, the oncoming of boats and barges from the still
distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent
themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to
which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our
spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of
Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light in
the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his
imagination toward fuller detail, he ceased to see the figure with its
back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became disce