Yet I had not been left without intelligence of the coming sorrow. Three nights before her death, at the midnight, as I 157 lay thinking with the child asleep in my arms, the warning notice came. I knew then, that some of my family were called, and my thoughts went at once to my father. I either did not, or would not associate it with my child, until the symptoms of her dissolution were at hand. If it was an inimical Presence that predicted such relentless, inexorable doom, who would carry my little child safe through the river of death, and up to the celestial city? And as I mused on these things, a sweet Spanish tradition read years before came into my memory—that an angel sat outside the gate of heaven with shoes for the barefooted babies, who came there unshod—and I remembered that Edith had been laid to rest unshod, and had a passionate fit of weeping.
But comfort was at hand. The thought of the gate of heaven made me remember that heaven had twelve gates, and that they were always open. So then, when God took from us our beloved, He did not shut them up in the heavenly city. Its twelve gates stand open, and the angels ascend and descend; and go in and out on their heavenly messages. Jacob saw them; weeping mothers and good and suffering souls have seen them. No doubt, the child would be safely carried home. And I blessed God for the smile with which she went. Surely
“The Shepherd from His Fold,
Had smiled and drawn her unto Him.”
It was this thought which enabled me to dry my eyes, and to set my hands to the duty they had to perform. For the school was to meet late in September, and I had not done anything, as yet, towards the welfare of the next session. Yet I knew that if it was to be successful, I must set the key-note of enthusiasm and delight in the work, or all would be done with the left hand only; knew that if I went into the school room alert, and smiling, and with the air of a teacher expecting great things, I would have cheerful, busy, ardent girls around me; while if I showed depression and indifference, my attitude would have the same effect upon their spirits and ardor, that the putting down of the soft pedal has on the tones of a piano. 158 For it is not what a teacher does, it is what she makes her scholars do, that is of lasting value.
Knowing these things well, because taught by experience, I tried to give myself to my duties with all my heart, and
“So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, ‘Thou must,’
The Soul replies, ‘I can.’”