It came upon me as I walked among soft airs to-day. It was no
bodily lightness that moved me, for I was unstrung, listless,
indolent; but it was a sense that it was good to live, lonely and
crushed as I was; that there was something waiting for me which
deserved to be approached with a patient expectation--that life was
enriched, rather than made desolate by my grief and losses; that I
had treasure laid up in heaven. It came upon me as a fancy, but it
was something better than that, that one or other of my dear ones
had perhaps awaked in the other world, and had sent out a thought
in search of me. I had often thought that if, when we are born into
this world of ours, our first years are so dumb and unperceptive,
it might be even so in the world beyond; that we are there allowed
to rest a little, to sleep; and that has seemed to me to be perhaps
the explanation why, in those first sad days of grief, when the
mourner aches to have some communication with the vanished soul,
and when the soul that has passed the bounds of life would be
desiring too, one would think, to send some message back, why, I
say, there is no voice nor hint nor sign. Perhaps the reason why
our grief loses its sting after a season is that the soul we have
loved does contrive to send some healing influence into the
desolate heart.
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