"When I was yet very small I began wondering and asking questions about things I could neither understand nor believe. It was while we were back in Kentucky I was sent to the pasture to watch the cows. There was a pond in the low end of the pasture where the reeds grew and where all was very quiet around. I was sitting beside the water, wondering perhaps if something strange and beautiful would appear from its depths as in fairy stories, when I saw a hideous, mud-colored grub creeping slowly above the water-line and climbing the reed. I was tempted to knock it back out of sight, it was so ugly. But I only watched. Very soon its muddy shell cracked open, something with wings crept out and the shell fell back to the place from which it had come. The new creature spread its wings slowly. They dried, turning as they did so into silver gauze, which he spread out like bits of shining lace. Then he went skimming away across the pond and over the dandelions and grass flowers, even over the heads of the grazing cows. In all my life I had never dreamed of anything so wonderful nor had any fairy story ever been told me that was so marvelous as what I had just seen. I looked back to the pond. A ray of sun was shining so that I could see the bottom. The cast-off shell was lying there in the mud. There were others around it like it, except they had life in them. They crept up and maybe looked at the empty shell. One touched it and turned away.
"After a time the new creature with the silvery wings came again and rested on the reed. His reflection showed in the water. Perhaps he could see those who were as he had been, creeping in the mud. But he had no way of telling them that they would one day become creatures of the upper world of sun-shine and flowers and sky, for the only world they knew was mud. And then I thought of people—and that we are yet dwelling in the world of mud. The Bible calls it the 'earth.' It says 'there is a natural body'—do you remember—'There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. The first is of the earth—earthy.' And it is not until we have left the old body that we can know the life on wings—the life up in God's big fields of sun-shine that we call heaven.
"As I watched the shining creature sitting on the reed, I thought perhaps it was a mother wishing she could tell her child down below to be brave and not mind the mud, for at longest it can last but a little while. Of course there was no way the one could speak and the other hear. But it was a helpful thought. Do you ever think of your mother this way? Do you ever feel when you are in the gloom that she is not very far away, and only waiting until you have been changed, to tell you many things? The Bible calls it 'when this mortal shall have put on Immortality.'"
"Immortality," the man repeated, as if to himself. It was the title of the new poem he so liked. Then he said, almost reverently, "Go on, Ann."
"I believe," she said simply, "that's why I am so happy when I'm singing 'I'm a pilgrim.' It is my soul you hear singing, Abraham—that part of me that will not die, that is shouting on the way. Wasn't God good to plan it all so lovely?"
Abraham Lincoln turned slowly and looked down on Ann Rutledge.
The moon was throwing its first gleams across the river. In the pale light the face and hair with its pale red-gold halo seemed to stand out from the shadowy background like something ethereal and unreal. The man gazed at it. It was so shining—so happy.
"You were sobbin' in the cellar not so long ago," he said.
"That was the darkness—but always the light comes back."