I could not help reflecting often and wonderingly at this great change in her manner towards me. Her eyes dwelt lovingly on me, and her keenest suffering, and the unfortunate blundering expressions I frequently let fall, seemed equally powerless to wring one harsh or impatient word from her. I was not now only one among her children, privileged to come and sit at her feet, to have with them a share in her impartial affection; and remembering that I was a stranger in the house, and compared but poorly with the others, the undisguised preference she showed for me, and the wish to have me almost constantly with her, seemed a great mystery virtual office mongkok. One afternoon, as I sat alone with her, she made the remark that my reading lessons had ceased. “Oh yes, I can read perfectly well now,” I answered. “May I read to you from this book?” Saying which, I put my hand towards a volume lying on the couch at her side. It differed from the other books I had seen, in its smaller size and blue binding. “No, not in this book,” she said, with a shade of annoyance in her voice, putting out her hand to prevent my taking it. “Have I made another mistake?” I asked, withdrawing my hand. “I am very ignorant.” “Yes, poor boy, you are very ignorant,” she returned, placing her hand on my forehead. “You must know that this is a mother’s book, and only a mother may read in it.” “I am afraid,” I said, with a sigh, “that it will be a long time before I cease to offend you with such mistakes.” “There is no occasion to say that, for you have not offended me, only you make me feel sorry. Every day when you are with me I try to teach you something, to smooth the path for you; but you must remember, my son, that others cannot feel towards you as I do, and it may come to pass that they will sometimes be offended with you, because their love is less than mine.” “But why do you care so much for me?” I asked, emboldened by her words. “Once I thought that you only of all in the house would never love me: what has changed your feelings towards me, for I know that they have changed?” She looked at me, smiling a little sadly, but did not reply. “I think I should be happier for knowing,” I resumed, caressing her hand. “Will you not tell me?” There was a strange trouble on her face as her eyes glanced away and then returned to mine again, while her lips quivered, as if with unspoken words. Then she answered: “No, I cannot tell you now. It would make you happy, perhaps, but the proper time has not yet arrived. You must be patient, and learn, for you have much to learn. It is my desire that you should know all those things concerning the family of which you are ignorant, and when I say all, I mean not only those suitable to one in your present condition, as a son of the house, but also those higher matters which belong to the heads of the house — to the father and mother wine wset.” Then, casting away all caution, I answered: “It is precisely a knowledge of those greater matters concerning the family which I have been hungering after ever since I came into the house.” “I know it,” she returned. “This hunger you speak of was partly the cause of your fever, and it is in you, keeping you feverish and feeble still; but for this, instead of being a prisoner here, you would now be abroad, feeling the sun and wind on your face.” “And if you know that,” I pleaded, “why do you not now impart the knowledge that can make me whole? For surely, all those lesser matters — those things suitable for one in my condition to know — can be learned afterwards, in due time. For they are not of pressing importance, but the other is to me a matter of life and death, if you only knew it.” “I know everything,” she returned quickly. But a cloud had come over her face at my concluding words, and a startled look into her eyes. “Life and death! do you know what you are saying?” she exclaimed, fixing her eyes on me with such intense earnestness in them that mine fell abashed before their gaze. Then, after a while, she drew my head down against her knees, and spoke with a strange tenderness. “d to exercise a little patience, my son, that you do not acquiesce in what I say to you, and fear to trust your future in my hands? My time is short for all that I have to do, yet I also must be patient and wait, although for me it is hardest. For now your coming, which I did not regard at first, seeing in you only a pilgrim like others — one who through accidents of travel had been cast away and left homeless in the world, until we found and gave you shelter — now, it has brought something new into my life: and if this fresh hope, which is only an old, perished hope born again, ever finds fulfillment, then death will lose much of its bitterness. But there are difficulties in the way which only time, and the energy of a soul that centers all its faculties in one desire, one enterprise, can overcome. And the chief difficulty I find is in yourself — in that strange, untoward disposition so often revealed in your conversation, which you have shown even now; for to be thus questioned and pressed, and to have my judgment doubted, would have greatly offended me in another. Remember this, and do not abuse the privilege you enjoy: remember that you must greatly change before I can share with you the secrets of my heart that concern you. And bear in mind, my son, that I am not rebuking you for a want of knowledge; for I know that for many deficiencies you are not blameworthy. I know, for instance, that nature has denied to you that melodious and flexible voice in which it is our custom every day to render homage to the Father, to express all the sacred feelings of our hearts, all our love for each other, the joy we have in life, and even our griefs and sorrows. For grief is like a dark, oppressive cloud, until from lip and hand it breaks in the rain of melody, and we are lightened, so that even the things that are painful give to life a new and chastened glory. And as with music, so with all other arts. There is a twofold pleasure in contemplating our Father’s works: in the first and lower kind you share with us; but the second and more noble, springing from the first, is ours through that faculty by means of which the beauty and harmony of the visible world become transmuted in the soul, which is like a pencil of glass receiving the white sunbeam into itself, and changing it to red, green, and violet-colored light: thus nature transmutes itself in our minds, and is expressed in art. But in you this second faculty is wanting, else you would not willingly forego so great a pleasure as its exercise affords, and love nature like one that loves his fellow-man, but has no words to express so sweet a feeling. For the happiness of love with sympathy, when made known and returned, is increased an hundredfold; and in all artistic work we commune not with blind, irrational nature, but with the unseen spirit which is in nature, inspiring our hearts, returning love for love, and rewarding our labor with enduring bliss. Therefore it is your misfortune, not your fault, that you are deprived of this supreme solace and happiness MD Senses.”
