Thoughts from the Heart

— 7 —

— A Human Being —

A child — hardly had life dawned in his eyes when the fates let down a veil between it and him. They toyed with him and made sport of him, as though they held some grudge against him; until, when he was about to step into the seventh of his years, they robbed him of a mother, at the very time when he needed her most, in that hard season.

He was not one to ask questions, as little ones usually do, nor did he press insistently in the pursuit of knowledge; rather, he saw more than they see, and heard with two keen ears; and so he understood, with all his awareness — in the midst of his play and merriment — and decided on the spot...

If he committed a mistake, he did not care, because he tried everything for a pleasure native to his own soul, without seeking the

help of others — indeed, without letting his inner self be worked upon by them.

His mind, which was always at work, was a raw mind; habits, for all their abundance, had not been given the chance to take root in it. Nor was it stamped by the divergent currents that surrounded him.

He loved play as no boy like him ever loved it: he never wearied of it, nor did his need for it abate, nor did his hard muscles tire of it, until a late hour of the evening.

And he was forever busy devising pranks for all the people of the house, small and great without exception. If one of them fell into one of those pranks of his, or nearly did, he would begin to laugh and set others laughing, his exquisitely formed features break-ing open upon a present happiness — as though life for him were some rare, delightful thing with which the jaws of the hours are filled, and which comes out of him in broken bursts of laughter.

He was, besides, light and win-ning of manner, pure of heart; he could hardly leave the house for a moment without the family feeling an emptiness where he had been.

He was likewise pleasant in company without descending into triviality, even if his companion sensed in him, at first sight, a native rawness of temper and a self-willed arrogance.

And he was pure of intention, frank of opinion — often to the point of much embarrassing the situation, whenever an adversary sought to strike at him slyly, at the expense of his good nature.

From the time his mother was taken from him, a sister three years his elder took charge of him — took charge of him with attachment and with ardor...