I see he wuz deeply rousted up for 2 cents is as high as he usually goes in betted. I see he felt deep and I didn’t blame him. Why,” sez he, “jest imagine, Samantha, a hull letter wrote like that! how I’d love to send one back to Uncle Nate Gowdey.
“How Uncle Nate’s eyes would open, and he wouldn’t want no spectacles nor nothin’ to read it with, would he? I wonder if I could do it,” sez he, a beginnin’ to be all rousted up.
But I sez, “Be calm,” for so deep is my mind that I grasped the difficuties of the undertaken’ at once. “How could yon send it, Josiah Allen? Where would you get a envelop? How could you get it into the mail bag?” Sez I, “When anybody would send a letter wrote like that, they would want to write it on sheets of lightnin’, and fold it up in the envelopin’ clouds of the skies, and it should be received by a kneelin’ and reverent soul. Who is Uncle Nate that he should get it? He has not a reverent Soul and he has also rheumatiz in his legs.”
And then I thought, so quick and active is my mind when it gets to startin’ off on a tower, I thought of what I had hearn a few days before, of how the secret had been learnt by somebody who lived right there in the village, of floatin’ letters up at sea from one ship to another, sigualin’ out in letters of flame -
“Help! I’m a sinkin’!” or “Danger ahead! Look out!”
And I thought what it must be to stand on a dusky night on a lone deck and see up on the broad, dark; lonesome sky above, a sudden message, a flash of vivid lightnin’, takin’ to itself the form of language. And I wondered to myself if in the future we should use the great pages of the night-sky to write messages from one city to another, or from sea to land, of danger and warnin’; and then I thought to myself, if souls clog-bound to earth are able to accomplish so much, who knows but the freed soul goin’ outward and onward from height to height of wisdom may yet be able to signal down from the Safe Land messages of help and warnin’ to the souls it loved below.
The souls a sailin’ and a driftin’ through the dark night of despair - a dashin’ along through fog and mist and darkness aginst rocks. What it would be to one kneelin’ in the lonesome night watches by a grave, if the dark sky could grow luminous and he could read, - “Do not despair! I am alive! I love you!”
Or, in the hour of the blackest temptation and dread, when the earth is hollow and the sky a black vault, and the only way of happiness on God’s earth seems down the dangerous, beautiful way, God-forbidden, what would it be to have the empty vault lit up with “Danger ahead! We will help you! be patient a little longer!”
Oh how fur my thoughts wuz a travellin’, and at what a good jog, but not one trace did my companion see on my forward of these thoughts that wuz a passin’ through my foretop: and at that very minute, we came up nigh enough to see that right back of the glitterin’ language overhead, went a long line of big, glowin’ stars of glory way up over our heads, and leadin’ down a gentle declivity and Josiah sez, “Let’s foller on, and see what it will lead us to, Samantha.”
“Wall,” sez I, “light is pretty generally, safe to foller, Josiah Allen.” And so we meandered along, keepin’ our 2 heads as nigh as we could under that long glitterin’ chain of golden drops that wuz high overhead. And on, and on, we follered it dilligently; till for the land’s sake! if it didn’t lead us to another one of them openwork buildin’s, fixed off beautiful, and we could see inside 2 big wells like, with acres of floor seemin’ly on each side of ’em, and crowds of folks a walkin’ about and settin’ at little tables and most all of ’em a drinkin’.