WE remember as it were yesterday the first time we saw her, thoughit was a brief glance, and she was so quickly forgotten that most ofus had passed into the supper-room and the rest had reached thedoor, heedless of the stranger, when one of our party, perhaps morethoughtful than the others, cast her eyes on the quiet little figurethat stood, near the fire as if irresolute, whether to follow orremain. With lady-like politeness she received the excuses which oneof the gentlemen offered for having preceded her, and entered theroom.
She was very slight, and thin, and pale, her, eyes were of a lightgray and her hair inclined to redness, but her forehead, was broadand smooth and, about her thin lips there hovered an expression ofsweetness and repose.
We have forgotten now what first led us to feel that beneath thatunprepossessing exterior were concealed the pulses of a warm,generous heart, and the powers of a strong and cultivated mind, butwe remember well the morning that she set her seal upon our heart.
It was a clear, cold, brilliant morning in March. The whole broadcountry was covered with a thick crust of hard, glittering snow, andevery tree was encased in ice. The oaks and elms and chestnuts andbeeches from their trunks upward and outward to their minutesttwigs, and the pines and firs with their greenness shining through,sparkled like diamonds and. emeralds in the brightness of the sun.
O, it was a glorious morning, and we have seldom since been so youngin feeling as never we are sure in years, as when we walked forthinto its bracing air. And Aunt Rachel--she enjoyed it; the broad icyfields, the difficult ascent of the steep slippery hills and the"duckies" down them, and the crackling of the icicles as we thrustour way through the bristling under-brush of those diamond-cressedwoods. We loved even to eat the icicles that hung from the pineswith their pungent flavour, strong as though their pointed leaveshad been steeped in boiling water. It was a pleasure to taste aswell as see the trees.
As we entered the "Main Road" and were passing along by the "Asylumfor the Insane," a clear, pleasant voice from one of the cells inthe upper story, accosted us: "Good morning, ladies." We looked upand bowed in reply to the salutation. "It is a beautiful morning,"he continued, "and I should like myself to take a walk down on 'MainStreet,' but my folks have sent me here to be shut up because theysay I am crazy, but I am sure I am not crazy, and I can't see whythey should think so." And we thought the same as we listened to thecalm, pleasant tones of his voice, till he added, "It will soon makeme beside myself to be with this wild, screaming set; and it doesn'tdo them any good either to shut them up here. What they want is theGrace of God, and I'll put the Grace of God into them."
His voice grew wild and excited, but we knew that a whole volume oftruth had been uttered in those simple words: "What they want is theGrace of God."
The Grace of God. How many has it saved--rescued--from madness! howhave prayer and watchfulness been blest in conquering self, insubduing rampant passion and the wild, disorderly vagaries of thebrain!
As we listen, the low whispered prayer of a Hall when he felt thebillows of angry passion about to sweep over his soul, "O, Lamb ofGod, calm my perturbed spirit," we feel that but for suchinterceding prayer and that watchfulness which accompanied it, theinsanity to which he was temporarily subject would have won the samemastery over the mighty powers of his mind as over those of Swift,and the glory of his "wide fame" as well as the peace of his "humblehope," would have been exchanged for the vagaries of the madman orthe drivellings of the idiot.
The Grace of God. We thought of John Randolph, with his sway overthe minds of others, with a "wit and eloquence that recalled thesplendours of ancient oratory," yet with so little command overhimself that his weak frame sometimes sank beneath the excitement ofhis temper, and gusts of passion were succeeded by fainting-fits;and when the one desire of his heart was denied, when a love mightyas every other passion of his soul failed him, his grief,ungovernable and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the"taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his brain. Butwhen the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt"the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor adevice of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but anexistence to be felt and understood as the whisperings of one's ownheart;" his prayer of, "Lord! I believe, help thou my unbelief," wasanswered in calm and peace to his soul.
"The saddest thought," said Aunt Rachel, as we turned away from thatgloomy edifice, "the saddest thought connected with that buildingis, that so large a number of its unhappy inmates have brought theirmisery upon themselves, are the victims of their own irregular andindulged passions."
As we turned and looked upon her smooth brow, her serious and sereneeyes and her sweet, calm mouth, we marked a look of subduedsuffering mingled with an expression of Christian triumph; and weknew that she had felt "the ploughings of grief;" that she hadlearned "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and grow strong;" but,though we wondered deeply, we never knew in what form she had beencalled "to pass under the rod;" but we heard a voice that said,
"Fear not; when thou passest through the waters, I will be withthee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."
Nay, fear not, weak and fainting soul, Though the wild waters round thee roll, He will sustain thy faltering way, Will be thy sure, unfailing stay.
And though it were the fabled stream Whose waves were fire of fearful gleam, He still would bear thee safely through The fire, but cleanse thy soul anew.
THE END.
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