chambers; but to your indifferent neighbor, what
blind alleys, and deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains! To him who
"touches the electric chain wherewith you're darkly bound," your soul
sends back an answering thrill. One little window is opened, and there
is short parley. Your ships speak each other now and then in welcome,
though imperfect communication; but immediately you strike out again
into the great, shoreless sea, over which you must sail forever alone.
You may shrink from the far-reaching solitudes of your heart, but no
other foot than yours can tread them, save those

"That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, to the bitter cross."

Be thankful that it is so,--that only His eye sees whose hand formed. If
we could look in, we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds that
glide around us are mysteries too high for us. We can not attain to
them. The naked soul is a sight too awful for man to look at and live.
There are individuals whose topography we would like to know a little
better, and there is danger that we crash against each other while
roaming around in the dark; but for all that, would we not have the
constitution broken up. Somebody says, "In Heaven there will be no
secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were a
revelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speak
flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and
humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it have
any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all
individuality, and undermine the foundations of society.
Clairvoyance--if there be any such thing--always seemed to me a stupid
impertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the
front door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish
them to climb in at the window, or creep through the pantry, or, worst
of all, float through the key-hole, and catch me in undress. So I
believe that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of
volition,--more accurately expressed when expression is desired, but
just as entirely suppressed when we will suppression.

After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from a prevalent confusion
of ideas as to what constitutes a man your friend. Friendship may stand
for that peaceful complacence which you feel towards all well-behaved
people who wear clean collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a ve