Two years in the French West Indies. Partie 2

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they draw it just all like you !—it is yourself : they ought to make it talk.) — " Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these days, Cyrillia." — " Ah ! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. C'est yon bel moune moin /ai—y bel, joli moune! . . . Moin sé causé épi y.". . . . . . And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought :—Cursed be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul may be like another,—that one affection may be replaced by another,—that individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned on earth, but only the general characteristic of a class or type, to be sought and found and utilized at will ! . . . Self-curséd he who • denies the divinity of love ! Each heart, each brain in the billions of humanity,—even so surely as sorrow lives,—feels and thinks in some special way unlike any other ; and goodness in each has its unlikeness to all other goodness,—and thus its own infinite preciousness ; for however humble, however small, it is something all alone, and God never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common ; and Death, in removing a life— the simplest life ignored,—removes what never will reappear through the eternity of eternities,—since every being is the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others. . . . T o some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile : to me that smile would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life ! . . .


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