CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



seemed as if we knew but the words of language — 

 that he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. 

 The books we read together were, every page, and 

 every sentence of every page, all covered over with 

 light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim 

 or dark, unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. 

 Whether we perused with him a volume writ by a 

 nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and 

 the sky, or the volume revealed from Heaven, next 

 day we always knew and felt that something had 

 been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we 

 grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer 

 moral and religious air, with all our finer affections 

 towards other human beings, all our kindred and our 

 kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, or 

 with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent 

 fancy to embrace the dwellers in the uttermost re- 

 gions of the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain — 

 of joy or grief — of fear or hope — had our heart to 

 withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw 

 it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfec- 

 tions — may we venture to say, with all its virtues. 

 A repented folly— a confessed fault — a sin for which 

 we were truly contrite — a vice flung from us with 

 loathing and with shame — in such moods as these, 

 happier were we to see his serious and his solemn 

 smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by 



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