ll away from my eyes, and I
found the world bathed in a wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and
joy swelling on every side. This radiance pierced in a moment through
the folds of sadness and despondency which had accumulated over my
heart, and flooded it with this universal light.

That very day the poem, _The Awakening of the Waterfall_, gushed forth
and coursed on like a veritable cascade. The poem came to an end, but
the curtain did not fall upon the joy aspect of the Universe. And it
came to be so that no person or thing in the world seemed to me trivial
or unpleasing. A thing that happened the next day or the day following
seemed specially astonishing.

There was a curious sort of person who came to me now and then, with a
habit of asking all manner of silly questions. One day he had asked:
"Have you, sir, seen God with your own eyes?" And on my having to admit
that I had not, he averred that he had. "What was it you saw?" I asked.
"He seethed and throbbed before my eyes!" was the reply.

It can well be imagined that one would not ordinarily relish being drawn
into abstruse discussions with such a person. Moreover, I was at the
time entirely absorbed in my own writing. Nevertheless as he was a
harmless sort of fellow I did not like the idea of hurting his
susceptibilities and so tolerated him as best I could.

This time, when he came one afternoon, I actually felt glad to see him,
and welcomed him cordially. The mantle of his oddity and foolishness
seemed to have slipped off, and the person I so joyfully hailed was the
real man whom I felt to be in nowise inferior to myself, and moreover
closely related. Finding no trace of annoyance within me at sight of
him, nor any sense of my time being wasted with him, I was filled with
an immense gladness, and felt rid of some enveloping tissue of untruth
which had been causing me so much needless and uncalled for discomfort
and pain.

As I would stand on the balcony, the gait, the figure, the features of
each one of the passers-by, whoever they might be, seemed to me all so
extraordinarily wonderful, as they flowed past,--waves on the sea of the
universe. From infancy I had seen only with my eyes, I now began to see
with the whole of my consciousness. I could not look upon the sight of
two smiling youths, nonchalantly going their way, the arm of one on the
other's shoulder, as a matter of small moment; for, through it I could
see the fathomless depths of the eterna