I inquired one day for a certain writer of world-wide--I mean of earth-wide--celebrity, who, I had learned, was a temporary visitor in the city, and whom I wished to meet. I will not for sufficient reasons mention the name of this man, who had been called the genius of his century, below. I had anticipated that a great ovation would be given him, in which I desired to join, and I was surprised that his presence made little or no stir in our community. Upon investigating the facts, I learned that his public influence was, so far, but a slight one, though it had gradually gained, and was likely to increase with time. He had been a man whose splendid powers were dedicated to the temporary and worldly aspects of Truth, whose private life was selfish and cruel, who had written the most famous poem of his age, but “by all his searching” had not found out God. In the conditions of the eternal life, this genius had been obliged to set itself to learning the alphabet of spiritual truth; he was still a pupil, rather than a master among us, and I was told that he himself ardently objected to receiving a deference which was not as yet his due; having set the might of his great nature as strenuously now to the spiritual, as once to the intellectual task; in which, I must say, I was not without expectation that he would ultimately outvie us all. On the same day when this distinguished man entered and left our city (having quietly accomplished his errand), I heard the confusion of some public excitement at a distance, and hastening to see what it meant, I discovered that the object of it was a plain, I thought in her earthly life she must have been a poor woman, obscure, perhaps, and timid. The people pressed towards her, and received her into the town by acclamation. They crowned her with amaranth and flung lilies in her path. The authorities of the city officially met her; the people of influence hastened to beseech her to do honor to their homes by her modest presence; we crowded for a sight of her, we begged for a word from her, we bewildered her with our tributes, till she hid her blushing face and was swept out of our sight. “But who is this,” I asked an eager passer, “to whom such an extraordinary reception is tendered? I have seen nothing like it since I came here.” “Is it possible you do not know ---- ----?”