I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's _Memoires_, and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost.

A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears.

From this moment my burden grew lighter.

The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone.

I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone.