At last
he came to a dull, brown volume. He read the name, opened it in the
centre, and where he opened began to read. It was a chapter on property
that he fell upon--Communism, Fourierism, St. Simonism, in a work on
Political Economy. He read down one page and turned over to the next; he
read down that without changing his posture by an inch; he read the next,
and the next, kneeling up all the while with the book in his hand, and his
lips parted.
All he read he did not fully understand; the thoughts were new to him; but
this was the fellow's startled joy in the book--the thoughts were his, they
belonged to him. He had never thought them before, but they were his.
He laughed silently and internally, with the still intensity of triumphant
joy.
So, then, all thinking creatures did not send up the one cry--"As thou,
dear Lord, has created things in the beginning, so are they now, so ought
they to be, so will they be, world without end; and it doesn't concern us
what they are. Amen." There were men to whom not only kopjes and stones
were calling out imperatively, "What are we, and how came we here?
Understand us, and know us;" but to whom even the old, old relations
between man and man, and the customs of the ages called, and could not be
made still and forgotten.
The boy's heavy body quivered with excitement.
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