And in one home in the city, made beautiful by love and earnest endeavor, and a wide, kindly charity that never wearies in the Master’s work for the poor, the sinful, and the unthankful, there hangs a picture that Patsey Muldoon adores. It is Dilsey Quinn idealized, as happiness and health might have made her. The sunrise gleam in her eyes stirs one with indescribable emotion. She looks out so bravely sweet, so touched and informed by the most sacred of all knowledges. The high courage is illumined by the love that considered not itself; the tenderness seems to say, “to the uttermost,” through pain and toil and discouragements; never quenched in the darkest of times, but, even when blown about by adverse winds, still lighting some soul. The face seems ripened to bloom and fragrance, and speaks of a heavenly ministry begun when the earthly was laid down.
And the old story comes true oftener than we think. Two put in the garden to keep and dress it, to watch over the little wild roses of adverse circumstances, crowded out of even the space and the sun needed to grow rightfully, out of the freshness and dew of happiness, yet making their way up from noisome environments, and struggling for the light and human care to fit them for the Garden of the Lord.
And these two, who go on their way in reunited love, understand the mystery of Dilsey Quinn’s short life, and that the strange fine threads that connect us here are so many chords of the greater harmony of human love in its redemption. All their days will be hallowed by its tender remembrance, their work more fervent, their faith more enduring.
And thus it came to pass that the little bruised flowers of the slums lived not in vain.