e in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with
that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song,
that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years
afterwards.--_C'est tout comme un serin_, said the French student at my
side.

These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to
what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter
through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things
besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres to ours; and when we
speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth
than we dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some
pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity
to make one more trial to reach the shore,--as some grave theologians have
maintained,--if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who
have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the
earth in a suit of living rags that lasts three or four score summers,--
why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company,
and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them.

----I wish you could once hear my sister's voice,--said the
schoolmistress.

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,--said I.

I never thought mine was anything,--said the schoolmistress.

How should you know?--said I.--People never hear their own voices,--any
more than they see their own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for
the voice. Of course, there is something audible to us when we speak; but
that something is not our own voice as it is known to all our
acquaintances. I think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we
should not know them in the least.--How pleasant it would be, if in
another state of being we could have shapes like our former selves for
playthings,--we standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they
being to us just what we used to be to others!

----I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after our
earthly toys are broken,--said the schoolmistress.

Hush,--said I,--what will the divinity-student say?

[I thought she was hit, that time;--but the shot must have gone over her,
or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]

Oh,--said the schoolmistress,--he must look out for my sister's heresies;
I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of mine.

Do you mea