GROPING IN THE DARK.

11

perhaps call it envy or covetousness. I do not think it was properly either, yet I could only wonder and wonder, and thereat groan inwardly, that I should be so wretched, so wholly miserable, while others, of which to my mind that boy was the type, should look, and seem, and surely be so happy. I felt that he was very happy.

"It was his coming, his looks, his garments, his words, which gave me the first insight into that other world of life which I had never entered. I could not reason about it, I could not in any sensible way understand anything of it

excepting that there must be a sort of life altogether different from that I was leading—a state infinitely better, happier, more beautiful. He, that noble boy, had come really whence? Where was he going to? Had I indeed in any degree guessed at the truth respecting his home? It would not have seemed an incredible thing to me, had any one told me that he was an angel, and that he came straight from heaven. Readily could I have been made to believe this, when the week after that visit, he came again, with the lady who was his mother; but their coming explained all to me, and from that day I began to see things in their true light.

2

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DEATH! WHAT IS IT?

"A woman had died in the house; and her funeral was to take place that day. Before her last illness, or rather before its increase unto death, and during all its continuance, till the very night of her death, I had slept in her room, in a state of hushed and terrified, but then to me, unexplainable awe; I lived with her, and helped to attend her during her last days. She had long existed a mere miserable wreck of humanity, hideous to look upon. But she had always been kind to me, and I entertained such a sort of regard, and respect, and feeling for her, as made it very dreadful for me to witness her increased sufferings.

over.

"What death really meant I could not clearly understood. They came out from her room that last night, and said, ‘She is gone?’ they said it in such a way as made me shudder. DEAD! I kept thinking the word over and GONE--where? She was lying there on the bed, I saw that through a crack in the door to which I crept, when none were by. She certainly was there; what had gone? She was ‘dead.’ Could anything awaken her— could she hear― could she speak still? It was a mystery. I heard some of the other old women talking together—they seemed glad, for some that she was DEAD; that she would never

reason,

THE OLD WOMAN.

13

want for anything again, that her sufferings were over, they said. The silence about the house oppressed me; I could hardly breathe in it; it frightened me; and I went off, to get rid of my thoughts, with the other children, to a playhouse in a corner of the yard. But, before noon, I got tired of them; I could think of nothing but the DEAD old woman. It seemed wrong in me to think of anything else. She used to call me child, and dear, sometimes, and I loved her for that, if for no other reason. They were at dinner; I did not want to eat, so I went and hung around the door of the chamber where she still was sleeping. Wondering yet, and continually, what Death meant, and if she were happy, and if I should ever be happy, and, if so, would I be happy before I died, and if people could die whenever they wished to. Suddenly an uncontrollable desire seized me. I would find it all out at once. I would ask mammy! she could tell me what I wanted to know; she was dead—she must know all about it!

“I went softly into the room, and shut the door after me. Then I paused a moment, in doubt, for she was not lying on that bed in the corner of the room, where she had lain ever since I could recollect, but near the bed there was a high table, and a board upon it, and that was

14

THOUGHT FOR A DREAM.

covered with a cloth. Something told me she must be there; I had often seen her sleeping with the bed-clothes drawn over her head. I went up to the table carrying a chair with me, for I was bent on knowing all about it now. I placed the chair close beside the table, and then stood upon it, and uncovered her face. The sight that met my eyes took away my breath for a moment; I had never seen anything like it before, and her appearance startled me beyond measure. It was a horrid spectacle. The recollection makes me tremble to this day. If I had never seen another corpse that remembrance would tempt me to say, how horrible, as well as how wonderful, is death! Her face was always pale, but not of that hue—and it was always wrinkled, and had an ugly look, yet she was not ugly; there was now a fixedness, a rigidity, in the wrinkles and the colorless face, that made it awful beyond imagination. It struck such a chill, such a horror through me, that for many minutes, in my astonishment and terror, I forgot to ask what I intended to. Then again I recollected the object with which I went there, and said :—

66 6

Mammy, are you happy? Do you sleep

good?’

“No answer. I would have one. I had

A QUESTION: THE REPLY.

15

broken the awful silence, and was not to be quieted again. That silence, at least, could not chill me to quiet, it the rather hurried me on in my questioning. They would be coming back, and I must hear from her lips what I longed to know.

"Mammy,' I said, ‘do you have hateful dreams? Do you know what's going on here? Can you tell me what they're going to do with you? Mammy! wont you look at me? Are you sorry they moved you from the other bed? Oh, do say something!’

“I stooped over her; I had at first spoken in a whisper, but the last query was made in a loud voice. I bent further down—my face touched hers! God! what an embrace was that! The chair on which I stood, slipped, in my impetuous movement; I fell, and - fainted!

"When my consciousness returned, did I not see an angel standing there before me? Had I been dreaming ever since that day when we first met? These were my first thoughts when I saw the lady and the boy again. The corpse had been removed, but the broken board, and overturned chair, and table, told me what a sight must have been presented to the people when they came into that room.

“I have reason to remember a day of such