He was crying.
"Mother! mother!" said the child, "I want--" But the mother's thoughts were far above the regions of the commonplace.

Her mind was in a world of ideal beauty.

Disturbed by the interruption, a slight frown contracted on her beautiful brows as she arose and took her child by the arm to thrust it from the room.
A slight shudder went through my frame as I marked the touching distress that overspread the countenance of the child as it looked up into its mother's face and saw nothing there but an angry frown.
"Every thought is born of affection," said the old man, as this scene faded away, "and has in it the quality of the life that gave it birth; and when that thought is reproduced in the mind of another, it awakens its appropriate affection.

If there had been a true love of his neighbor in the mind of the gifted one when he wrote the book from which the mother read, and if his purpose had been to inspire with human emotions--and none but these are God-like--the souls of men, his work would have filled the heart of that mother with a deeper love of her child, instead of freezing in her bosom the surface of love's celestial fountain.

To have hearkened to the grief of that dear child, and to have ministered to its comfort, would have been a commonplace act, but, how truly noble and divine! And now, look again, and let what passes before you give strength to your wavering spirits." I lifted my eyes, and saw a man reading, and I knew that he read that work of mine which the gifted one had condemned as dull, and tame, and commonplace.