" This is he of whom I have spoken elsewhere,--in the
magic mirror of whose memory (as to the last he saw of this wonder or
of that) "a stony statuesqueness prevails, to produce an effect the
weirdest of all; for there every living thing stands arrested in the
attitude or gesture it presented at the fine instant to which his
thought returns to find it,--seized in the midst, it may be, of the
gayest, most spirited, or most passionate action,--laughter, dance,
rage, conflict; and so fixed as unchangeable as the stone faces of the
gods, forever and forever." In the midst of a Burmese jungle I have
tried that sad experiment by its reverse, and, gazing into _my_ magic
mirror, have beheld my own dear home, and the old, familiar faces,--all
stony, pale, and dim. At such times, how painfully the exile's heart is
tried by the apparition of any object, however insignificant, to which
his happy childhood was accustomed! I think my heart was never more
sharply wrung than once at Prome, in the porch of a grim old temple of
Guadma;--a kitten was playing with a feather there.
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