(Confused examination by crowded audience, over each other’s shoulders and under each other’s arms.  Disappointment begins to manifest itself.)

Sibyl. (not quite knowing why she and others are disappointed).  But you showed us this the other day!

L. Yes; but you would not look at it the other day.

Sibyl.  But was all that fine dream only about this?

L. What finer thing could a dream be about than this?  It is small, if you will; but when you begin to think of things rightly, the ideas of smallness and largeness pass away.  The making of this pyramid was in reality just as wonderful as the dream I have been telling you, and just as incomprehensible.  It was not, I suppose, as swift, but quite as grand things are done as swiftly.  When Neith makes crystals of snow, it needs a great deal more marshaling of the atoms, by her flaming arrows, than it does to make crystals like this one; and that is done in a moment.

Egypt.  But how you do puzzle us!  Why do you say Neith does it?  You don’t mean that she is a real spirit, do you?

L. What I mean, is of little consequence.  What the Egyptians meant, who called her “Neith,”—­or Homer, who called her “Athena,”—­or Solomon, who called her by a word which the Greeks render as “Sophia,” you must judge for yourselves.  But her testimony is always the same, and all nations have received it:  “I was by Him as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight; rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men.”

Mary.  But is not that only a personification?

L. If it be, what will you gain by unpersonifying it, or what right have you to do so?  Cannot you accept the image given you, in its life; and listen, like children, to the words which chiefly belong to you as children:  “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me”?

(They are all quiet for a minute or two; questions begin to appear in their eyes.)

I cannot talk to you any more to-day.  Take that rose-crystal away with you, and think.

LECTURE 3.

THE CRYSTAL LIFE

A very dull Lecture, willfully brought upon themselves by the elder children.  Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake.  Scene, the Schoolroom.

L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, Miss Mary, am I?

Mary.  Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any more stories.  You are quite spoiling the children:  the poor little things’ heads are turning round like kaleidoscopes:  and they don’t know in the least what you mean.  Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter:  to-day you must really tell us nothing but facts.

L. I am sworn; but you won’t like it, a bit.

Mary.  Now, first of all, what do you mean by “bricks"?—­Are the smallest particles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks?