In one hour we follow the basest appetites; in another we hate them and the spirit arising through our mortal murk shines within or above us like a star.

In one hour our desire is to kill and spare not; in another we are filled with the holiest compassion even towards an insect or a snake, and are ready to forgive like a god.

Everything rules us in turn, to such an extent indeed, that sometimes one begins to wonder whether we really rule anything.
Now the reason of all this homily is that I, Allan, the most practical and unimaginative of persons, just a homely, half-educated hunter and trader who chances to have seen a good deal of the particular little world in which his lot was cast, at one period of my life became the victim of spiritual longings.
I am a man who has suffered great bereavements in my time such as have seared my soul, since, perhaps because of my rather primitive and simple nature, my affections are very strong.

By day or night I can never forget those whom I have loved and whom I believe to have loved me.
For you know, in our vanity some of us are apt to hold that certain people with whom we have been intimate upon the earth, really did care for us and, in our still greater vanity--or should it be called madness ?--to imagine that they still care for us after they have left the earth and entered on some new state of society and surroundings which, if they exist, inferentially are much more congenial than any they can have experienced here.

At times, however, cold doubts strike us as to this matter, of which we long to know the truth.