transcendant thought.

Another change came. I saw a woman reading from the same book from
which the gifted one had read. Ever and anon she paused, and gave
utterance to words of admiration.

"Beautiful! beautiful!" fell, ever and anon, from her lips; and she
would lift her eyes, and muse upon what she was reading. As she sat
thus, a little child entered the room. He was crying.

"Mother! mother!" said the child, "I want--"

But the mother's thoughts were far above the regions of the
commonplace. Her mind was in a world of ideal beauty. Disturbed by
the interruption, a slight frown contracted on her beautiful brows
as she arose and took her child by the arm to thrust it from the
room.

A slight shudder went through my frame as I marked the touching
distress that overspread the countenance of the child as it looked
up into its mother's face and saw nothing there but an angry frown.

"Every thought is born of affection," said the old man, as this
scene faded away, "and has in it the quality of the life that gave
it birth; and when that thought is reproduced in the mind of
another, it awakens its appropriate affection. If there had been a
true love of his neighbor in the mind of the gifted one when he
wrote the book from which the mother read, and if his purpose had
been to inspire with human emotions--and none but these are
God-like--the souls of men, his work would have filled the heart of