arm, with his face turned towards the wilderness. What eyes they must be
under those huge brows! On what message to the nations is he borne as by
the slow sweep of ages, on towards his mysterious goal?"

"Stop, stop, Harry," said my wife. "It makes me unhappy to hear grand words
clothing only cloudy fancies. Such words ought to be used about the truth,
and the truth only."

"If I could carry it no further, my dear, then it would indeed be a
degrading of words. But there never was a vagary that uplifted the soul,
or made the grand words flow from the gates of speech, that had not its
counterpart in truth itself. Man can imagine nothing, even in the clouds of
the air, that God has not done, or is not doing. Even as that cloudy giant
yields, and is 'shepherded by the slow unwilling wind,' so is each of us
borne onward to an unseen destiny--a glorious one if we will but yield to
the Spirit of God that bloweth where it listeth--with a grand listing--
coming whence we know not, and going whither we know not. The very clouds
of the air are hung up as dim pictures of the thoughts and history of man."

"I do not mind how long you talk like that, husband, even if you take the
clouds for your text. But it did make me miserable to think that what you
were saying had no more basis than the fantastic forms which the clouds
assume. I see I was wrong, though."

"The clouds themselves, in such a solemn stately march as this, used to
make me sad for the very same reason. I used to think, What is it all for?
They are but vapours blown by the wind. They come nowhence, and they go
nowhither. But now I see them and all things as ever moving symbols of the
motions of man's spirit and destiny."