One case of this I will mention, which is
typical of many. There came among us an extremely lively and rather
whimsical spirit, more like a boy than a man. I wondered at first why he
was chosen for this work, because he seemed both fitful and even
capricious; but I gradually realised in him an extraordinary fineness of
perception, and a swiftness of intuition almost unrivalled. He had a
power of weighing almost by instinct the constituent elements of
character, which seemed to me something like the power of tonality in a
musician, the gift of recognising, by pure faculty, what any notes may
be, however confusedly jangled on an instrument. It was wonderful to me
how often his instantaneous judgments proved more sagacious than our
carefully formed conclusions.
This boy became extraordinarily attractive to an older woman who was one
of our number, who was solitary and abstracted, and of an intense
seriousness of devotion to her work. It was evident both that she felt
his charm intensely and that her disposition was wholly alien to the
disposition of the boy himself. In fact, she simply bored him.
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