George Eliot. 143 



strange -woman. Completely fascinated, she went 

 almost daily for hours to sit with her. This continued 

 for many days, the lady using the utmost freedom, and 

 not without feeling that the attention was pleasing to 

 the queer, plain, and unpretending Englishwoman. One 

 day she discovered by chance who her companion 

 really was. Never before, as she said, had she felt such 

 mortification. She went timidly to George Eliot's room 

 and took her hand in hers, but shrank back unable to 

 speak, while the tears rolled down her cheeks. " What 

 is wrong?" was asked, and then the explanation came, 

 " I didn't know who you were. I never suspected it 

 was you ! " Then came George Eliot's turn to be em- 

 barrassed. " You did not know I was George Eliot, but 

 you were drawn to plain me all for my own self, a 

 woman? I am so happy!" She kissed the American 

 lady tenderly, and the true friendship thus formed knew 

 no end, but ripened to the close. 



The finest thing not in her works that I know this 

 genius to have said is this : Standing one day leaning 

 upon the mantel she remarked: "I can imagine the 

 coming of a day when the effort to relieve human being? 

 in distress will be as involuntary upon the part of the 

 beholder as to clasp this mantel would be this moment 

 on my part were I about to fall." There's an ideal for 

 you ! Christ might have said that. 



The state here imagined is akin to her friend Her- 

 bert Spencer's grand paragraph. 



