* * * * * [Sidenote: Agony in the voice.] It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during the access of a great agony. The effect is entirely involuntary and often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguish or conflict of which the language itself gives no expression. * * * * * [Sidenote: A sympathetic God.] The great Hearer of Prayer regards each heart in its own scope of vision, and helps not less the mistaken than the enlightened distress. And for that matter, who is enlightened? who carries to God’s throne a trouble or a temptation in which there is _not_ somewhere a misconception or a mistake? * * * * * [Sidenote: Transient uplifting.] We hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more devout element of man’s nature than never to have any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and he fall again. * * * * * [Sidenote: Coincidence.] When a man has a sensitive or sore spot in his heart, from the pain of which he would gladly flee to the ends of the earth, it is marvellous what coincidences of events will be found to press upon it wherever he may go. * * * * * [Sidenote: Silence of deep emotion.] They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. * * * * * [Sidenote: Innocence.] There is something pleading and pitiful in the simplicity of perfect ignorance,—a rare and delicate beauty in its freshness, like the morning-glory cup, which, once withered by the heat, no second morning can restore. * * * * * [Sidenote: World conflicts.] “This is such a beautiful world,” said Agnes, “who would think it would be such a hard one to live in?—such battles and conflicts as people have here!” * * * * * [Sidenote: Nervous sensibility.]