zeal of anathema against this deadly sin, making a dreadful picture of
the ruin that it creates in the heart where it establishes itself, and
how it makes a corrosive acid of those genial juices. Then he told the
boy that the condition of all good was, in the first place, truth;
then, courage; then, justice; then, mercy; out of which principles
operating upon one another would come all brave, noble, high, unselfish
actions, and the scorn of all mean ones; and how that from such a
nature all hatred would fall away, and all good affections would be
ennobled.

I know not at what point it was, precisely, in these ethical
instructions that an insight seemed to strike the grim Doctor that
something more--vastly more--was needed than all he had said; and he
began, doubtfully, to speak of man's spiritual nature and its demands,
and the emptiness of everything which a sense of these demands did not
pervade, and condense, and weighten into realities. And going on in
this strain, he soared out of himself and astonished the two children,
who stood gazing at him, wondering whether it were the Doctor who was
speaking thus; until some interrupting circumstance seemed to bring him
back to himself, and he burst into one of his great roars of laughter.
The inspiration, the strange light whereby he had been transfigured,
passed out of his face; and there was the uncouth, wild-bearded, rough,
earthy, passionate man, whom they called Doctor Grim, looking ashamed
of himself, and trying to turn the whole matter into a jest. [Endnote: 2.]

It was a sad pity that he should have been interrupted, and brought
into this mocking mood, just when he seemed to have broken away from
the sinfulness of his hot, evil nature, and to have soared into a
region where, with all his native characteristics transfigured, he
seemed to have become an angel in his own likeness. Crusty Hannah, who