For this is the power of families, this is the mystery of birth." Suddenly he started.

What was it that had thrilled him so?
Only a tall dark fir in the birches.

But looming in there like a shadowy phantom it had recalled a memory of a dusk far back in his boyhood, when seeing a shadow just like this he had thought it a ghost in very truth and had run for the house like a rabbit! How terribly real that fright had been! The recollection suddenly became so vivid in his mind, that as though a veil had been lifted he felt the living presence here, close by his side, of a small barefoot mountain lad, clothed in sober homespun gray, but filled with warm desires, dreams and curiosities, exploring upon every hand, now marching boldly forward, now stealing up so cautiously, now galloping away like mad! "I was once a child." To most of us these are mere words.

To few is it ever given to attain so much as even a glimpse into the warm and quivering soul of that little stranger of long ago.

We do not know how we were made.
"I moulded you, my little son.