Then, as they smoked, Edwin told his friend all about his vision and explained how dreadful he felt it would be to land in such an awful place when he came to leave this world.
"I guess you felt like saying a prayer about the time you found yourself in hell, didn't you?" Frank asked as Edwin finished relating the incident.
The awful picture of the future world that had been painted in words had caused Frank to shudder, for he was not prepared to die. It might have been Frank's manner and it might have been the tone in which the word "prayer" was spoken that caused Edwin to exclaim:
"Prayer! what is prayer?"
"Prayer," Frank replied, "is man's way of talking with God. When anybody tells God what he wants, he prays; and God has promised to hear his words and to help him out of his troubles. But the person who prays must speak from his heart and not try to say a lot of words that he has learned from some one else or from a book. A prayer from the heart is the only kind that God will hear."
"What do you mean by talking with God?" Edwin asked in a still more mystified tone, for he had never thought of man while still on the earth or in fact anywhere else, as speaking with God in heaven.
After Frank had explained that such a thing was possible, Edwin exclaimed:
"Who can make such a prayer? Do you know of any one who can?"
The twilight shades had all disappeared from the sky above, and it was already dark where Frank and Edwin were sitting, but inside the cozy living-room Amanda, seated beside a table, upon which a kerosene-lamp was burning, was quietly knitting. Pointing in her direction, Frank said, confidently:
"There's one who can pray. And she prays from the heart."