Jack Ballington, Forester

by John Trotwood Moore

I WAS ON HIM, MY KNEE ON HIS BREAST.

"Grandfather," I said, "I don't want to hurt him, but you heard him give me the lie."

"I did," said the old man grimly. "I did, and I waited to see if you would strike. If you had not, I was going to knock you down with my crutch! Mount your horse and go to war, Jack Ballington, my grandson; for by the living God I know now I'll have a fighter in that war worthy the name of Rutherford when this cur turns coward and quits!"

CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST TENNESSEE

I do not know where you are, Eloise. I do not even know that you are alive; but if you are, I have the promise of Aunt Lucretia that this letter shall go to you; and Aunt Lucretia, you know, does not break her promises.

And if you be dead, Dear Heart, as I do deep in my mind fear, for I have not heard from you, nor Aunt Lucretia since that June day was turned into December in a night—that day when I went to the old familiar, sweet places, to find no longer there her who had made them sweet—why, what matters so much? For the passing of the soul of a dear one, when we see that it is passed, is such a natural thing at last, such a little change to make so great a transition! While they lived and life looked full and wholesome, it all seemed so large, their life and ours. But they go in a night, in a breath's draught. And then we see how small it was: a little finger-width zone across the world of things. A little too much heat, a little too much cold, a tiny vein broken, a severed cord, and it is whiffed out. Even in the fullness of strength and brave life a dash at bars on a great game horse....

Forgive me, dear one, if you be alive to read this; for I would not remind you now of a time you were different. 'Tis God's way, and since He has kept in my heart my love of you, and through your accident showed me your love for me, have we not His two greatest gifts for our very own?

And as to that other world, do you know what instinct tells me it is? That there we will have a hundred senses where we now have but five; and there we shall see the Thought as well as the Thing: every thought, every dream, every hope, every love, these we know not as words but as beautiful beings whom we shall meet face to face. And its only law is Balance, Compensation, Recompense, Poise; the Equation of the Universe. We wonder here why there should be such things as sin and sorrow and injustice. But there we shall know that sin is not sin, but the prism which shows us goodness, that sorrow is not sorrow but the prism of gladness, and that death, as we now know it, is not a stopping, but the prism through which we see another light. Here, on our little earth, with only our five small senses, we see only the prism. There we shall see the rays. It is the difference between the star and its light.

And if we hold the prism of sorrow here, Dear Heart, as I do now, shall I not hold a handful of the joys which stream through it there? For here 'tis a poem written, but there the meaning of it. Here 'tis the sun rising, there the dawn. Here the giving of alms, there the joy of the giving. Here it is the instrument that makes music, there the music. Here 'tis only a picture, there the soul that made it.