out of a frail young creature at one's bedside!--Well, souls
grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties; one that goes in a
nurse may come out an angel.--God bless all good women!--to their soft
hands and pitying hearts we must all come at last!----The schoolmistress
has a better color than when she came.---- ---- Too late!----"It might
have been."----Amen!

----How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, sometimes! There was no
long pause after my remark addressed to the company, but in that time I
had the train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash through my
consciousness sudden and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out
of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his death-rage, and
stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage.

I don't deny that there was a pang in it,--yes, a stab; but there was a
prayer, too,--the "Amen" belonged to that.--Also, a vision of a four-story
brick house, nicely furnished,--I actually saw many specific articles,--
curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could draw the patterns of them
at this moment,--a brick house, I say, looking out on the water, with a
fair parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and bird-cages, all
complete; and at the window, looking on the water, two of us.--"Male and
female created He them."--These two were standing at the window, when a
little boy that was playing near them looked up at me with such a look
that I---- ----poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and then
continued.]

I said I should like to tell you some things, such as people commonly
never tell, about my early recollections. Should you like to hear them?

Should we _like_ to hear them?--said the schoolmistress;--no, but we
should _love_ to.

[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had something very pleasant in
its tone, just then.--The four-story brick house, which had gone out like
a transparency when the light behind it is quenched, glimmered again for a
moment; parlor, books, busts, flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete,--and
the figures as before.]

We are waiting with eagerness, Sir,--said the divinity-student.

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black lightning had struck
it.]

If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing--I said--is to know
whether I can trust you with them. It is only fair to say that there are a
great many people in the world that laugh at such things. _I_ think they
are fools, but perha