I must lose her and all,—­all who spoke to me of the same things,—­that the cold wave must rush over me.  She waited till my tears were spent, then rising, took from a little box a bunch of golden amaranths or everlasting flowers, and gave them to me.  They were very fragrant.  “They came,” she said, “from Madeira.”  These flowers stayed with me seventeen years.  “Madeira” seemed to me the fortunate isle, apart in the blue ocean from all of ill or dread.  Whenever I saw a sail passing in the distance,—­if it bore itself with fulness of beautiful certainty,—­I felt that it was going to Madeira.  Those thoughts are all gone now.  No Madeira exists for me now,—­no fortunate purple isle,—­and all these hopes and fancies are lifted from the sea into the sky.  Yet I thank the charms that fixed them here so long,—­fixed them till perfumes like those of the golden flowers were drawn from the earth, teaching me to know my birth-place.

’I can tell little else of this time,—­indeed, I remember little, except the state of feeling in which I lived.  For I lived, and when this is the case, there is little to tell in the form of thought.  We meet—­at least those who are true to their instincts meet—­a succession of persons through our lives, all of whom have some peculiar errand to us.  There is an outer circle, whose existence we perceive, but with whom we stand in no real relation.  They tell us the news, they act on us in the offices of society, they show us kindness and aversion; but their influence does not penetrate; we are nothing to them, nor they to us, except as a part of the world’s furniture.  Another circle, within this, are dear and near to us.  We know them and of what kind they are.  They are to us not mere facts, but intelligible thoughts of the divine mind.  We like to see how they are unfolded; we like to meet them and part from them:  we like their action upon us and the pause that succeeds and enables us to appreciate its quality.  Often we leave them on our path, and return no more, but we bear them in our memory, tales which have been told, and whose meaning has been felt.

’But yet a nearer group there are, beings born under the same star, and bound with us in a common destiny.  These are not mere acquaintances, mere friends, but, when we meet, are sharers of our very existence.  There is no separation; the same thought is given at the same moment to both,—­indeed, it is born of the meeting, and would not otherwise have been called into existence at all.  These not only know themselves more, but are more for having met, and regions of their being, which would else have laid sealed in cold obstruction, burst into leaf and bloom and song.

’The times of these meetings are fated, nor will either party be able ever to meet any other person in the same way.  Both seem to rise at a glance into that part of the heavens where the word can be spoken, by which they are revealed