erful stories to tell. When
Eric went with Roland into the passenger's room, he was surprised to
see Roland's quick eye for the laughable characteristics of people. He
had observed very shrewdly the peculiarities of the telegraphist, and
imitated him very exactly. Without a direct rebuff, Eric endeavored to
explain to his pupil, that those persons who are partly engaged in
work, and partly in science, in that middle region of the vocations of
life, such as apothecaries, surgical operators, lithographists,
photographists, and telegraphists, are easily carried from one extreme
to the other. Telegraphy created a certain excitability, and
susceptibility, on account of the direct arousing of the faculties and
the operation at great distances, which give to the soul a certain
tension and excitation.

Eric sought to explain all this to his pupil; he would have liked to
give him the just views which are embraced in the knowledge of
psychological principles, but he led him back to the wonderful in what
they had seen, and he succeeded in his purpose of deeply impressing
this upon the soul.

The stars were glittering in the heavens, when they returned home from
their glance into the mysterious primitive force of earth's being.

Eric could not restrain the impulse to picture to his scholar what had
been probably the feelings of that people of the desert, on the evening
of that day when Jehovah had revealed himself to them in thunder and
lightning upon Mount Sinai; how it must have been with them when they
went to rest, and how it must have seemed to the souls of thousands, as
if the world were created anew.

Eric hardly knew what he was saying, as he drove through the refreshed
and glistening starry night. But the feelings of the boy and the man
were devotional. And after they reached home neither wished to speak
one word, and they quietly bade each other good-night. But Eric could
not go to sleep for a long time. Is the light in the soul of a human
being an incomprehensible electric spark that cannot be laid hold of,
and which flashes up in resolve and act? So long as there is no storm
in the sky we send at will the spark over the extended wire; but when
the great, eternally unsubdued, primitive forces of nature manifest
themselves, the human message is no longer transmitted, and the sparks
spontaneously play upon the conducting wires. Chaos sends forth an
unintelligible message.

A time will come when thou shalt no longer b