About three weeks after it had passed from my possession, a small parcel came to me, and when I opened it I saw the little box in which I had always kept my treasure. With trembling fingers I opened it, and there lay my ring, changed indeed, but still my ring. The stones had been removed, and 329 over the vacancy caused by their removal, had been placed a scroll of gold, inscribed in black enamel with the word “Faith.” Fortunately, I was alone in my home, and I went to my room and falling on my knees, I laid the changed ring in my open palm before God. What I said, He knows, and there are many of my readers who will understand without my explanation. I thought God would see, and be sorry for me.
Was I not happy? Yes, at first very happy, but gradually my feelings changed. The beloved amulet, denuded of its splendor and value, was such an evident symbol of myself, and my fortune, that I could not help a kind of sorrowful astonishment, followed by a gush of passionate weeping. “O Robert! Robert!” I cried, and then both words and tears failed, and I laid my head on the bed, and was dumb; because my loss was so irreparable, that even God could not restore
“The weeping hopes, the memories beyond tears,
The many, many, blessed, unforgotten years.”
At that hour my heart was empty of all but grief.
Very soon, however, I heard my children’s voices on the stairs. They were talking softly but happily, and I rose and bathed my face, and to their eager call of “Mamma! Mamma!” I went to meet them. Then I showed them the changed ring, and I am sure that wherever Mr. Johnston was at that hour, his heart must have glowed with the warmth of the good wishes sent to him. I also tried to be pleased and happy, for I told myself, that if there had been any real reason for the grief I had just indulged, God would have spoken a word of comfort to me, yet when I showed Him the changed ring, He did not. My tears had been useless, for there is no deliverance through tears, unless God wipes them away.
So I placed the ring on my finger, and wore it that night, and when the mystery of sleep wrapped me like a garment, I found out that God had not been indifferent to my tears, and that He had royal compassion for the sorrowful and broken-hearted who had not dared to expect anything.
For a little while, I wore it constantly, thinking I could 330 accustom myself to its company, but it had been too long a part of myself and my life. A sudden glimpse of it could sometimes destroy a day’s work, and if I purposely looked at it, the heart overruled the head, and I was not able to write at all. It depressed me, and put down the soft pedal on all thought and mental expression. So I finally laid it away among the sacred things of my affections, my father’s, mother’s, and husband’s last letters, the lock of Robert’s dark hair just tinged with gray, the golden curls from my children’s brows, the flowers that had bloomed on their graves. Among such treasures it found its place—the last memento of a love and a life, dead, and gone forever.
Some of my readers will very likely say that I was foolishly superstitious regarding this ring, and evidently considered it as an amulet or charm. I will answer them in the words of a very learned man, who wrote on this subject, and then leave them to argue the question as it seems to appeal most powerfully to their experience, or their prejudices.
“As to Charms, a coin, a pebble, any trifle long carried on the person, becomes imbued with the personality. Sometimes they have such strange ways of remaining with one, that we cannot help suspecting they have a will of their own. Who has not been amazed at the persistency with which a coin, a key, a button, a pebble picked up and put in the pocket, stays there? Or how some card will lurk in our pocketbook, till it is plain it is there of its own intention. In a little time, we can’t help feeling as if these things know a great deal that we do not know; and we treat them with liking and respect, and even care.”