Lying in bed, patient, gentle.

Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still.

I spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards.
-- C'est tout comme un serin, said the French student at my side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl.

There must be other things besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we dream.

If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach the shore,--as some grave theologians have maintained,--if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or four score summers,--why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them.
-- I wish you could once hear my sister's voice,--said the schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,--said I.
I never thought mine was anything,--said the schoolmistress.
How should you know ?--said I .-- People never hear their own voices, -- any more than they see their own faces.