PASSING WORDS.
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passing word, mere sounding breath, how light its import seems! how "big with fate" it often proves! Not alone words that are the voice of daily thoughts, but words that are only the utterance of a transient emotion, forgotten soon as felt; words that are but an idly spoken impulse melt not away with the air that holds them, but assume mysterious shapes of good. or evil, to influence and haunt the hearer's life.
These passing words are seed scattered perchance by liberal, perchance by inconsequent hands; though lightly, unpremeditatedly dropped, if they fall upon receptive minds, upon open, fertile soils, they strike vigorous roots, germinate in silence and darkness, and, before we know that they are planted, bring forth grapes or thistles. Blessed are they whose paths on earth may be tracked by the good seed sown in passing words!
A passing word of truth may be likened to an ostrich egg chance-laid in sand. Warmed by the sun alone, without the help of brooding wings, untended and unwatched, the noble bird bursts, in
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