she had been broken off, and the same vision which had changed the rose-bush with all its flowers, and buds, and branchlets, and branches, into a stem and a tree, and at last into one invisible germ and seed, seemed now to change my little friend and her brothers and sisters, her parents too and all her family, into one being which, like an old oak tree, started from an invisible stem, or an invisible seed, or from an invisible thought, and that divine thought was man, as the other divine thought had been rose. Perhaps I did not see it so fully then as I see it now, and I certainly did not reason about it. I simply felt that in the death of my little friend, something of myself had gone, though she was no relation, but only a stray human friend. We see many things as children which we cannot see as grown-up men and women, for, as Longfellow said, “the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts.” Nay, I feel convinced that He who spoke the parable of the vine had seen the same vision when He said: “I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.” And it is on this vision, or this parable of the vine, that immediately afterwards follows the lesson, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” In loving one another we are in truth loving the others as ourselves, as one with ourselves; and while we are loving Him who is the vine, we are loving the branches, ourselves—aye, even our own little selves. Such vague visions or intuitions often remain with us for life, but while they seem to be the same, they vary as we vary ourselves. We imagine we saw their deepest meaning from the first, but, like a parable, they gain in meaning every time they come back to us. CHAPTER II CHILDHOOD AT DESSAU