An American

by Belle Willey Gue

It was with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow that she left the scene of her recent activities ... she was carrying with her many sad memories of heroism and of suffering borne with patriotic patience ... her heart was heavy when she reflected upon the horrors she had witnessed, but her spirit was loyal to the sacred cause for which so many splendid lives had been sacrificed ... she could see, with prophetic vision, a happy and prosperous race of people taking the place of the down-trodden and pitiful company of cowering peasants with which she had been all too familiar ... it seemed to her that she could see the smiling faces of many happy children crowding along the narrow streets of the small villages of Cuba ... it seemed to her that she could almost hear old men relating the long-past horrors that had been common under the iron heel of the Spanish oppressor ... relating these remembered facts to those who shook their heads, half doubtingly, as they listened to them.

Ruth herself, was looking forward with bright anticipation to her return to her own beloved home ... dear to her, not only because of its intrinsic attractiveness, but also because of the precious memories it held of her parents whom she constantly mourned for and kept alive within her loving heart; for so it is, as I believe, that those who are beyond the earth yet live among us who are yet in human form; I think that those who are made welcome in the hearts of men and women continue, often, their stay within the circle of humanity; so long as mortals remember and long for them, so long will they care to wander among the hills and mountains and along the pleasant valleys and by the oceans and the rivers of the earth; if they should be forgotten by all humanity, it does not seem to me that they would often wish to look upon the moonlight or the sunlight of our world; if nowhere in our world their spirits could find a resting-place, it seems to me they would not care to stray among mortal men and women.

Freed souls, as I believe, are not compelled to associate with those who are uncongenial to them; they do not have to yield their finest taste and dearest wishes, as so many mortals do, to what is far beneath them ... far beneath their inner consciousness of right and wrong. They do not, as I hope, just because they made some sad mistake, go on suffering for dreary years, as many women have, because they saw no way of sure release except through death itself.

It is a pitiful but well-established fact that many wives and mothers have borne long years of martyrdom because, in their first youth, they made unfortunate matrimonial alliances.

There are so very many ways to put on binding-chains in human life; there are so many changes common to most mortals, steadfastness and truth are such rare qualities, that I sometimes wonder how men and women manage even as well as they do.

Sometimes, we criticize our fellow-men and fellow-women pretty harshly, but, then, perhaps, we only see one side, and if we could look down from some great height, perhaps we, then, would marvel that they do as well as they do, now, with human life.

There have been those who honestly expected that, when they would leave their earthly tenements, they would go to sleep, when they had gone across the unknown river that they knew as death's cold stream, and, maybe, sleep a thousand years or so; they must have dreaded that last, long sleep, especially if they, as might have happened, had never been very sound or very quiet sleepers ... if they had always seemed to be on guard and wakened at the slightest unfamiliar sound ... the thought that they would just lie silently within the narrow grave they must have known it was intended they should be put in must have been a most unpleasant one; they must have edged around it all they could and seldom mentioned it to anyone around them, and, yet, that horrid thought ... that last, long sleep ... must have, often, been present in their waking thoughts, and must have, even, sometimes, haunted them in their dreams.

But I believe that we go right on living when we leave the earth-plane; I believe that most of us will be wide awake and conscious from the very start of that larger life that we will, then, begin to live. I hope that we will find that we do not have to sleep at all unless we choose to do so.

Ruth Wakefield kept the memories of her parents in her heart and so she always had them with her where she went, and, now, that she was going back where they and she had spent so very many happy years together, it was natural that she should think of them even more than common; a feeling of deep sadness stole across her mind whenever she reflected on her parents and their home, somehow; she could not account for this at all ... she could not satisfy herself that she had any real reason for this feeling of sadness ... but it would creep over her in spite of her efforts to banish it from her mind; old Mage felt this and tried to cheer her dear young lady up ... little Tid-i-wats felt it and rubbed against her lovingly and purred her little happy song of comfort and content ... and, yet, Ruth Wakefield dreaded, while she longed for, her own home, and, as the vessel they were on drew near to Havana, this feeling of unaccountable sadness deepened with the girl ... she drew her breath in sharply and a deep and heart-felt sigh broke from her lips as they reached the landing-place and left the wild and treacherous waters far behind them.

Father Felix wondered if this evident sadness and dread were due, in part, to the experiences through which they had both passed, and also, the thought of the man whom Ruth had married surreptitiously would often cross the mind of the good Priest, for he knew well she often must remember him and his dashing, dark and manly beauty; old Mage almost cursed him in her fierce old heart when she noticed that Ruth was sad although she'd always been so glad to come back home.