The Heart-Fountain

So we go,—so little knowing what we touch and what touches us as we talk! We drop out a common piece of news,... and lo, on our right hand or our left, some heart has sunk under the news silently,—gone down in the great ocean of Fate, without even a bubble rising to tell its drowning pang. An this—God help us!—is what we call living!

—Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing, p 41.