It seemed to me not unlike the feeling of Isaiah when, in the vision, his mouth had been touched with the celestial fire.

And I can only hope that something of this may be read between my very inadequate lines.
Looking back, I fancy Derrick must have been a clever child.

But he was not precocious, and in some respects was even decidedly backward.

I can see him now--it is my first clear recollection of him--leaning back in the corner of my father's carriage as we drove from the Newmarket station to our summer home at Mondisfield.

He and I were small boys of eight, and Derrick had been invited for the holidays, while his twin brother--if I remember right--indulged in typhoid fever at Kensington.
He was shy and silent, and the ice was not broken until we passed Silvery Steeple.
"That," said my father, "is a ruined church; it was destroyed by Cromwell in the Civil Wars." In an instant the small quiet boy sitting beside me was transformed.