"Not so!" said my companion. I turned to look at him; but the gifted
being stood not by my side. In his place was the ancient one who had
before spoken to me in the voice of wisdom.

"Not so!" he continued. "Nothing that is useful is poor and mean.
Look up! In the fruit of our labor is the proof of its quality."

I was in the midst of a small company, and the gifted being whose
powers I had envied was there, the centre of attraction and the
observed of all observers. He read to those assembled from a book;
and what he read flashed with a brightness that was dazzling. All
listened in the most rapt attention, and, by the power of what the
gifted one read, soared now, in thought, among the stars, spread
their wings among the swift-moving tempest, or descended into the
unknown depths of the earth. As for myself, my mind seemed endowed
with new faculties, and to rise almost into the power of the
infinite.

"Glorious! Divine! Godlike!" Such were the admiring words that fell
from the lips of all.

And then the company dispersed. As we went forth from the room in
which we had assembled, we met numbers who were needy, and sick, and
suffering; mourners, who sighed for kind words from the comforter:
little children, who had none to love and care for them; the faint
and weary, who needed kind hands to help them on their toilsome
journey. But no human sympathies were stirring in our hearts. We had
been raised, by the power of the genius we so much admired, far
above the world and its commonplace sympathies. The wings of our
spirits were still beating the air, far away in the upper regions of