The summer sun beat oppressively down upon the heads of August Blair and Aimee Herne, as they walked their horses slowly down the hilly road. Aimee took off her hat and fanned her heated face: “Mercy! the lower regions can’t be much hotter than this!”
August laughed as he flicked at the overhanging branches of the trees with his whip: “According to all accounts there isn’t very much shade there.”
“Just at present I could imagine only a mitigation of heat and a perpetual breeze, as fitly belonging to that plane of existence,” replied Aimee, in that light tone which either means nothing or hits the truth without positive conception of its being such.
“That speech embodies every person’s idea of heaven, doesn’t it? We wish most earnestly for the condition we find lacking to our comfort in this world; thus, to-day a cool wind and shade seem most desirable; next week it might be quite different——”
“A fire for instance,” said Aimee sarcastically.
“That is another of man’s ideas constructed from the purely material, and grafted into the spiritual tree; burning by fire is man’s conception of the worst possible torment. Our ideas of the hereafter—and incidentally of heaven—are very vague and uncertain; no mind can build higher than its purest ideal, and our knowledge gained only from the material world cannot grasp the spiritual. We speculate a little, and take a flight in this or that direction; but like a bird at night—bewildered by the arc lights in the street we fall back to earth—and material things for all our types of happiness.”
Aimee threw up her hand impatiently, “Oh, what ideas! I don’t want to talk about such things; I prefer thinking how pleasant it is under this great old oak. Let us rest here, August.”
“All right,” he answered as he alighted and assisted her from the saddle. They seated themselves on a grassy knoll at the foot of the tree, and restfully watched the horses crop the short, sweet grass.
August’s thought seemed to persistently linger on the subject of the beyond: “There could be nothing more heavenly than this—were one’s mind but in perfect accord with one’s surroundings,” said he.
“Which very seldom happens to be the case,” answered Aimee.