FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92  
93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   >>   >|  
ed this rather than saw it. He knew it, but could not assert it. The body, with its bodily wants and limitations, leaned on the couch, half slumberously; while the mind, himself, full of vague aspirations, keen intellectual hunger, and overlaid with error, obstinacy, and the thick crust of self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,--these assimilated qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to himself more than to anybody else. All his perceptions pointed inward, and cramped and narrowed his existence. He felt very, very small. "This is strange," he reasoned, "that I should have such a sense of contraction! I crowd on myself, as it were. My thoughts hit me, press me, instead of elevating me. I cannot see why; for the habit of looking up to no goodness or intelligence but the Supreme must surely be a good one, and self-education and development the noblest process for a human being." He said this in a mechanical sort of way, as if it were a lesson he remembered at school. But it made no impression on him, and did not relieve his difficulty. He knew it, somehow, to be false, and felt it falling off as he spoke, as if it were the last remnant of gauzy sophistry. Fred had never been fond of church-going, nor was he much given to reading the Holy Scriptures. Indeed, he rather affected the style of the Latter-Day Saints, who look for a better and nobler Messiah than came in the Son of Mary. But just now, fifty texts of Scripture, which he must have learned long ago at his mother's knee, came crowding upon his memory. "Though I have all gifts, and have not charity, I am nothing." "He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." "He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" "Little children, love one another." "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." And so on,--interminably. In a helpless, vague way, he looked at the shadow by his side. "You like pictures, and paint them," said she, speaking for the first time;--and the voice was precisely the tone he had recognized in the music of the wind; he had thought then it was like hers;--"look with me at these two." They were, indeed, magnificent pictures. They reached from floor to ceiling. Fred was artist enough to enjoy fully the wide sweep of sky and land,--the mountains in the distance, and the firmament studded with stars. A
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92  
93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
pictures
 

greater

 

loveth

 
heaven
 
kingdom
 
brother
 

charity

 

assert

 

Little

 

children


Though
 
crowding
 

Messiah

 

nobler

 

bodily

 

Latter

 

Saints

 

mother

 

burdens

 

Scripture


learned
 

memory

 

Christ

 
reached
 

ceiling

 
artist
 
magnificent
 

firmament

 

distance

 

studded


mountains

 

thought

 
looked
 
helpless
 

shadow

 
interminably
 

fulfil

 

affected

 

precisely

 

recognized


speaking

 

reading

 
overlaid
 

hunger

 
thoughts
 
contraction
 

obstinacy

 

intellectual

 
aspirations
 

elevating