those who have failed to secure a distinct perception of the
highest aspect of human life, and of that which makes it
characteristically human life, who can say to a child that he is
seeing his happiest days.

I remember with entire distinctness the moment when the
consciousness possessed me that my childhood was transcended by
initial manhood, and I can never forget the pang that moment
brought me. It was on a bright, moonlight night, in midwinter,
when my mates, boisterous with life, were engaged in their usual
games in the snow, and I had gone out expecting to share in their
enjoyment. I had not played, or rather tried to play, five
minutes, before I found that there was nothing in the play for me--
that I had absolutely exhausted play as the grand pursuit of my
life. Never since has the wild laugh of boyhood sounded so vacant
and hollow, as it did to me that night. In an instant, the
invisible line was crossed which separated a life of purely animal
enjoyment from a life of moral motive and responsibility, and
intellectual action and enterprise. The old had passed away, and I
had entered that which was new; and I turned my steps homeward,
leaving behind me all my companions, to spend a quiet evening in
the chimney-corner, and dream of the realm that was opening before
me. Such a moment as this comes really, though not always
consciously, to every man and woman. To-day we are children;
to-morrow we are not. To-day we stand in life's vestibule;
to-morrow we are in the temple, awed by the sweep of the arches
over us, humbled by the cross that fronts us, and smitten with
mysteries that breathe upon us from the choir, or gaze at us from
the flaming windows.