prose in vain; life would never lose its ideality, nor the world
become a mere combination of things. Her woman's fancy would embroider
my man's reason and make it beautiful, while not taking from its
strength. Idiot that I was, in imagining that I alone could achieve
success! Inevitably I could make but a half success, since the finer
feminine element would be wanting. Do I wish men only to read our
paper? Am I a Turk, holding the doctrine that women have no souls, no
minds? The shade of my mother forbid! Then how was I, a man, to
interpret the world to women? Truly, I had been an owl of the night,
and blind to the honest light of truth when I yielded to the counsel
of ambition, that I had no time for courtship and marriage. In my
stupid haste I would try to grope my way through subjects beyond a
man's ken, rather than seek some such guide as yonder maiden, whose
intuitions would be unerring when the light of reason failed. In
theory, I held the doctrine that there was sex in mind as truly as in
the material form. Now I was inclined to act as if my doctrine were
true, and to seek to double my power by winning the supplemental
strength and grace of a woman's soul.

Indeed, my day-dream was becoming exceedingly thrifty in its
character, and I assured ambition that the companionship of such a
woman as yonder maiden must be might become the very corner-stone of
success.

Time passed, and still no one was "moved." Was my presence the cause
of the spiritual paralysis? I think not, for I was becoming conscious
of reverent feeling and deeper motives. If the fair face was my Gospel
message, it was already leading me beyond the thoughts of success and
ambition, of mental power and artistic grace. Her womanly beauty began
to awaken my moral nature, and her pure face, that looked as free from