grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speak-
ing eyes -- how beautiful to me! For was not this my
darling, and was not all this mute wonder and interest
and homage a most eloquent tribute and unforced
compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother feels
when women, whether strangers or friends, take her
new baby, and close themselves about it with one
eager impulse, and bend their heads over it in a
tranced adoration that makes all the rest of the uni-
verse vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it
were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and
that there is no other satisfied ambition, whether of
king, conqueror, or poet, that ever reaches half-way to
that serene far summit or yields half so divine a con-
tentment.