May we then pray with all true humility, like those poor prisoners bound in hell, but we with hope, they almost lacking in it, “Give us light—light—more light.”
CHAPTER II
To this dawn at the close of day I too had come. In weariness and weakness I had fallen down, unable of myself to reach that which I saw before me. I had remembrance of nothing more; I fell, and the blank rest of sleep, or death, sank numbly on the silent path. To sleep—to rise; to die—to live again, so came this life to me, falling in pain, in weakness, in dull doubt, inwoven with one silver thread—the joining link to heaven.
But what a sweet awakening! Never rose skylark in the summer air so free of care and pain as I—every hanging weight of hell had fallen like death’s bands, snapped by a living power. Soft, gentle, thrilling life was round me, busy and free from every worrying thought, and though I heard no music the very air was filled with hidden sound of life and love and freedom, true music of the soul and surest balm.
Still, from an adjoining chamber came the dreamy hum of the busy spinning-wheel, but because I was tired my eyes were closed, and I lay listening to the soothing sound. I felt no wish to stir, since weakness was being repaired by strength, which had in it nothing but life and purity, the strongest framework ever built.
So I lay, half sleeping, half awake, till roused by a voice speaking in the room without.
“Mother, give me a pearl, I’ve got to the ninth stitch.”
The voice awoke me to the life around. In some ways it was a child’s voice, yet filled with such sweet wisdom and clear cadence that never child on earth spoke like it.
The wheel stopped.
“Which is it, pink or white?”