the same stocking on her needles, and absolutely the same expression, of
as near nothing as may be upon human countenance, nor changes whoever
speaks to her!"

"She says the Lord is with her," suggested the draper.

"Well!" rejoined the minister, in a slow, cogitative tone.

"And plainly life is to her worth having," added the draper. "Clearly
she has as much of life as is necessary to her present stage."

"You are right. I have been saying just the same things to myself; and,
I trust, when the Lord comes, He will not find me without faith. But
just suppose life _were_ to grow altogether uninteresting! Suppose
certain moods--such as you, with all your good spirits and blessed
temper, must surely sometimes have experienced--suppose they were to
become fixed, and life to seem utterly dull, God nowhere, and your own
dreary self, and nothing but that self, everywhere!"

"Let me read you a chapter of St. John," said the draper.

"Presently I will. But I am not in the right mood just this moment. Let
me tell you first how I came by my present mood. Don't mistake me: I am
not possessed by the idea--I am only trying to understand its nature,
and set a trap fit to catch it, if it should creep into my inner
premises, and from an idea swell to a seeming fact.--Well, I had a
strange kind of a vision last night--no, not a vision--yes, a kind of
vision--anyhow a very strange experience. I don't know whether the
draught the doctor gave me--I wish I had poor Faber back--this fellow is
fitter to doctor oxen and mules than men!--I don't know whether the
draught had any thing to do with it--I thought I tasted something sleepy
in it--anyhow, thought is thought, and truth is truth, whatever drug, no
less than whatever joy or sorrow, may have been midwife to it. The
first I remember of the mental experience, whatever it may have to be
called, is, that I was coming awake--returning to myself after some
period wherein consciousness had been quiescent. Of place, or time, or
circumstance, I knew nothing. I was only growing aware of being. I
speculated upon nothing. I did not even say to myself, 'I was dead, and
now I am coming alive.' I only felt. And I had but one feeling--and that
feeling was love--the outgoing of a longing heart toward--I could not
tell what;--toward--I can not describe the feeling--toward the only
existence there was, and that was every thing;--toward pure being, not
as an abstraction, but as the one actual fact, when