[Gutenberg 10826] • The Book-Bills of Narcissus / An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne

Yes! it was the same old Narcissus, and he was wielding just the same old magic, I could see, as in our class-rooms and playgrounds five years before. What is it in him that made all men take him so on his own terms, made his talk hold one so, though it so often stumbled in the dark, and fell dumb on many a verbal cul-de-sac? Whatever it is, Samuel felt it, and, with that fine worshipful spirit of his--an attitude which always reminds me of the elders listening to the boy Jesus--was doing that homage for which no beauty or greatness ever appeals to him in vain. What an eye for soul has Samuel!