Tune, tune your harps, your harps, ye saints in glory,
All is well, all is well.
I will rehearse, rehearse the pleasing story,
All is well, all is well!
Bright angels are from glory come,
They’re round my bed, they’re in my room,
They wait to waft my Spirit home,
All is well, all is well!
SCARCELY CREDIBLE, BUT TRUE.
A strange adventure befell me, at the age of between eight and nine years, which has always left a vivid impression on my mind; and I cannot resist the prompting to insert here a short summary of it. I will leave my readers to judge of it for themselves.
I had obtained grandmother’s permission to visit some little girls at the house of their father, Mr. Cox; which was granted on condition that I should be sure to come home before nightfall.
It was about a mile and a half distant from home by the main road, though less than a mile through the woods. Much of that part of the country was at that time uncultivated and abounded with wild beasts of every description of the period.
I got safely to Mr. C.’s; and had a day so happy that it was only the threatening clouds of an approaching storm which warned me that it was high time to start for home. I set out by the roadway, but Mrs. Cox called me back and sent two of her daughters to escort me through the woods by the shorter paths, familiar to them on their way to school. We had gone about half the distance through the woods, when sharp lightning and heavy thunder announced that the storm was close at hand; and the children left me at a point from which, as they supposed, I could not miss my further way. They gave me directions how to proceed. I followed them, as I supposed; but the darkness soon became intense, and the storm burst in all its fury. The thunder and lightning were terrific, the rain fell in torrents, and I was a very little girl alone in the woods. I heard the distant cries of the inhabitants of the wilderness, and hurriedly pressed forward in the hope of following the right track, but constantly changing my idea of which direction to take. After long wanderings in this way, I fancied it to be about midnight, when the howling of the winds rose to be nearly that of a tornado, and the crashing of falling trees, torn up by the roots, seemed to surround me in all directions.
I had been twenty times on my knees, in childish prayer to God to take me home; but perhaps God in heaven is too abstract an idea to be realized by a child of that age, and I would instinctively find myself addressing my great-grandfather, who was the only person whose death I had ever witnessed. I had known him to be good and kind. He was a man of unusual stature and strength. Him I could understand to be in heaven, and powerful to save me. I remember I prayed with my eyes closed, fearing I should behold some terrible phantom, for in our family experience and tradition there had been many strange stories.
I wandered all through that terrible night, and only rested on my knees, when praying to God and the angels (especially him, my grandfather) to protect me. Storm-beaten and drenched as I then was I sat down and cried bitterly. Suddenly my attention was arrested by an unusual sound, as of boughs breaking and twigs crackling. I looked in the direction of the sound and saw, standing high upon the trunk of a fallen tree, a large, good-natured looking dog, which I supposed to be Mr. Cox’s dog, “Rover.” Immediately fear left me. I felt him to be rescue and safety. I called to him, “Rover, Rover!” and tried to get near him, but he turned from me leading the way. I followed; he looking back frequently, as if to see whether or not I followed him. After wandering some time through zig-zag routes, he brought me to Deacon Demarest’s place, which I recognized, as the house had recently been burned and I could not mistake it. At this point he loitered a moment, and came so near me that I reached out my hand to caress him, but could or did not touch him, although he pressed against me palpably several times.
He “waggled himself” so like a dog, and seemed so kind to me that I became fondly attached to him. On I went, following him through cross-lots and over fences, startling the cattle to their feet, and causing a great jingling of cowbells, never looking back, but intently following the dog, fearing to lose sight of him for a moment, lest he should leave me. At last we came to my home. The house stood about a hundred feet from the road. There were two gates of entrance to the door-yard or grounds: one a foot-gate, the other for carriages, etc. I opened the small gate and held it open, supposing the dog would pass through it; but judge of my amazement to see him instead of doing so, scale the great gate with a bound and meet me face to face on the other side, but no longer a dog! (Perhaps, at that instant, it was a fleeting vision of a dog, but it is certain he disappeared and was no more seen), while the noble form of my great-grandfather, with his loving smile, for a moment stood before me at the gate, by the early morning light. I gave a scream which brought my grandfather from the house to the door, exclaiming, “Great God! the child has been out in the woods all night.”
I was put to bed, from which I did not rise for a week. At times it was feared that I never should rise from it, such was the effect of the exposure, fatigue, and fright of that terrible night. Mr. Redfield (mentioned on page [8], etc.) had spent the evening and night at our house, and was told how I had disobeyed my orders to return home before dark, and that I was evidently detained at Mr. Cox’s. He said, before starting in the morning, that he would stop at Mr. Cox’s on his way to mill, and see about me. On his informing Mr. Cox that I had not returned home, the latter hastened to our house in great fright lest evil had befallen me from the animals or other adventure of the woods. He found me of course safe and asleep in my grandmother’s bed. He was a devout Methodist, and knelt by my bedside and prayed over me with thanks to God that I had been preserved through the terrors of that night of storm in those wild woods, and, as I was told afterward, sobs of all the female members of the family accompanied his prayer.