NO ANSWER.
And then, those who love him tell him that the loving hands were unclasped from his that he might forever reach upward, yearning, longing to clasp them again, that he might make his own hands purer, fitter to clasp an angel’s fingers.
That the bright tresses were hidden away under the coffin-lid, that their immortal sheen might gleam through every sunset and every dawning; heaven’s golden seal on the sunset of his joy, the morning of his hope, his faith. That the sweet eyes were darkened here that they might become to his sad heart the glowing light of the future. They say this to him, and he listens to them—maybe.
But if this does not happen to him, if his sweetheart lives on beside him, he finds that this mighty presence steals away—not love, for that is a bit of the infinite dropped down into our souls unbeknown to us, and so is immortal; but he steals the golden sheen of the hair, the eye’s bright luster, the young form’s strength and rounded beauty. Every day, every hour, he is losing something of what he proudly called his own.
You see we don’t own much of anything in this world: it’s curious, but so it is. And what we call our own don’t belong to us, not at all. That is one of the things that makes this such an extremely curious world to live in. Yes, we are situated extremely curious, as much so as the robins and swallows who build their nests on the waving tree-boughs.
We smile at the robin, with our wise, amused pity, who builds her tiny nest with such laborious care high up, out on the waving tree-top, swinging back and forth, back and forth, in every idle wind. Gathering her straws and bits of wood with such patient and tireless care to weave about the frail homes that are to be blown away by the chilly autumn winds, and they also to be driven southward before the snows.
But are not our homes, the sweet homes of our tenderest love, built upon just as insecure foundations, hanging over more mysterious depths, rocking to and fro, and swept to their ruin by a breath from the Unknown? Our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions: what are ye all but the sticks and straws that we weave about our frail nests? Throwing our whole hearts and souls into them, toiling over them, building them for an evanescent summer, to be swept away by the autumn winds. And we also, poor voyagers, blown away through a pathless waste.
But shall we not go unfearing, believing that He who made a balmy south to fulfill the little summer bird’s intuition, her blind hope and trust, has also prepared a place to fulfill our deathless longin’s, our soul’s strongest desires? And over the lonely way, the untried, desolate fields of the future, He will gently guide us thither.
But I am eppisodin’. I said I would relate in this epistol a instance of the devourin’ and insatiable vanity of man, and their invincible unwillingness to let well enough alone. And so, although it is gaulin’ to me, gaulin’ in the extreme, to speak of my companion’s weaknesses, yet, if medicine was not spread before patients, how could colic be cured, and cramps, and etcetery?