“And if he shall answer, saying, ‘What are men to me? they are fools, all fools! Let them die!’--tell him again this story: ‘There was a streamlet once: it burst forth from beneath the snow on a mountain’s crown; and the snow made a cove over it. It ran on pure and blue and clear as the sky above it, and the banks of snow made its cradle. Then it came to a spot where the snow ended; and two ways lay before it by which it might journey; one, on the mountain ridges, past rocks and stones, and down long sunlit slopes to the sea; and the other, down a chasm. And the stream hesitated: it twirled and purled, and went this way and went that. It MIGHT have been, that it would have forced its way past rocks and ridges and along mountain slopes, and made a path for itself where no path had been; the banks would have grown green, and the mountain daisy would have grown beside it; and all night the stars would have looked at their faces in it; and down the long sunny slopes the sun would have played on it by day; and the wood dove would have built her nest in the trees beside it; and singing, singing, always singing, it would have made its way at last to the great sea, whose far-off call all waters hear. “‘But it hesitated.--It might have been, that, had but some hand been there to move but one stone from its path, it would have forced its way past rocks and ridges, and found its way to the great sea--it might have been! But no hand was there. The streamlet gathered itself together, and (it might be, that it was even in its haste to rush onwards to the sea!)--it made one leap into the abyss.