Oh, ye parents, shall I preach to you, as well as to your children? Ye who, when your daily task is done, sit brooding o’er the loss of some fondly remembered child, now sleeping its long sleep in death, take heart if ye have loved it; then it is not dead, but lives again within you. Love cannot die, for it is as immortal as the soul. Like Jacob’s ladder, it is the broad pathway from Paradise to earth, by which our little ones come back to us in visions and in dreams to give us assurance of the tender care of God. [[264]]
RUBYWINGS.
CHAPTER I.
THE JOURNEY.
Come with me for an hour, out of the hard, stony by-ways and hot, dusty thoroughfares of this work-a-day city.
Mount behind me on the broad wings of this carrier-bird, which most men have, yet which no mortal hath ever seen! Sit close and fear not, for our pillion is soft and easy, the steed safe. Now mount and away!
“Where silvery songs of bird and bee,
Of leaf and lake and stream,