“But it is a sleep only in a way, as I said. It is more than a sleep.”
“Sleep is pleasant, sleep is lovely!”
“But death is a long sleep--very long.”
“Oh, all the lovelier! Therefore I think nothing could be better than death.”
I said to myself, “Poor child, some day you may know what a pathetic truth you have spoken; some day you may say, out of a broken heart, ‘Come to me, O Death the compassionate! steep me in the merciful oblivion, O refuge of the sorrowful, friend of the forsaken and the desolate!’” Then I said aloud, “But this sleep is eternal.”
The word went over her head. Necessarily it would.
“Eternal. What is eternal?”
“Ah, that also is outside of your world, as yet. There is no way to make you understand it.”
It was a hopeless case. Words referring to things outside of her experience were a foreign language to her, and meaningless. She was like a little baby whose mother says to it, “Don’t put your finger in the candle flame; it will burn you.” Burn--it is a foreign word to the baby, and will have no terrors for it until experience shall have revealed its meaning. It is not worth while for mamma to make the remark, the baby will goo-goo cheerfully, and put its finger in the pretty flame--once. After these private reflections I said again that I did not think there was any way to make her understand the meaning of the word eternal. She was silent awhile, turning these deep matters over in the unworn machinery of her mind; then she gave up the puzzle and shifted her ground, saying:
“Well, there are those other words. What is good, and what is evil?”