Man’s mechanism stands at the center of the universe with telegraph-lines extending in every direction.  It is a marvelous pilgrimage he is making through life while myriad influences stream in upon him.  It is no small thing to carry such a mind for three-score years under the glory of the heavens, through the glory of the earth, midst the majesty of the summer and the sanctity of the winter, while all things animate and inanimate rush in through open windows.  For one thus sensitively constituted every moment trembles with possibilities; every hour is big with destiny.  The neglected blow cannot afterward be struck on the cold iron; once the stamp is given to the soft metal it cannot be effaced.  Well did Ruskin say; “Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God’s presence and to bring the heavenly colors back to him—­at least in this world.”  We are accountable to God for our influence; this it is “that gives us pause.”

Gentle as is the atmosphere about us, it presses with a weight of fourteen pounds to the square inch.  No infant’s hand feels its weight; no leaf of aspen or wing of bird detects this heavy pressure, for the fluid air presses equally in all directions.  Just so gentle, yet powerful, is the moral atmosphere of a good man as it presses upon and shapes his kind.  He who hath made man in his own image hath endowed him with this forceful presence.  Ten-talent men, eminent in knowledge and refinement, eminent in art and wealth, do, indeed, illustrate this.  Proof also comes from obscurity, as pearls from homely oyster shells.  Working among the poor of London, an English author searched out the life-career of an apple woman.  Her history makes the story of kings and queens contemptible.  Events had appointed her to poverty, hunger, cold and two rooms in a tenement.  But there were three orphan boys sleeping in an ash-box whose lot was harder.  She dedicated her heart and life to the little waifs.  During two and forty years she mothered and reared some twenty orphans—­gave them home and bed and food; taught them all she knew; helped some to obtain a scant knowledge of the trades; helped others off to Canada and America.  The author says she had misshapen features, but that an exquisite smile was on the dead face.  It must have been so.  She “had a beautiful soul,” as Emerson said of Longfellow.  Poverty disfigured the apple woman’s garret, and want made it wretched, nevertheless, God’s most beautiful angels hovered over it.  Her life was a blossom event in London’s history.  Social reform has felt her influence.  Like a broken vase the perfume of her being will sweeten literature and society a thousand years after we are gone.