Thus we gradually overtook and
passed each boat in succession until we had the river to
ourselves again.
Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.
-------------
While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose
banks our Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the
stars, come out of their horizon still; for there circulates a
finer blood than Lavoisier has discovered the laws of,--the
blood, not of kindred merely, but of kindness, whose pulse still
beats at any distance and forever.
True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
Not founded upon human consanguinity.
It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
Superior to family and station.
After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or
unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more
emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made
aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been
times when our Friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty
a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven
unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what
we aspired to be.
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