“This is the Easter lesson which I wish you girls might all take to yourselves. As in the winter silence of the earth, the hepaticas send out their rootlets toward the best soil, so in the silence of your own inner lives are you here and now also sending out rootlets, either toward the soil which will give you a healthful, wholesome growth, or toward the barren places where you must cease to grow. Avoid the rocks of indolence and evil influence, the waste places of selfishness; but reach far out for the good, wholesome soil of good books, of a love and knowledge of the out-of-doors, of friends who make you better, of study which will enrich your lives. And as the flowers find themselves more firmly rooted year by year, so will you find yourselves growing in strength and self-control, in sincerity and firmness of purpose. Then, and only then, will you experience the real Easter—the awakening to the realization in your hearts that you, through your own seeking, have found that better part, which can never be taken away from you.”
In the silence that followed, while the organ played softly, Virginia touched with gentle fingers the tiny hepaticas in her lap. Was she sending out rootlets toward the right soil, she wondered? In the years to come would people seek her, as she sought the hepaticas in the spring, because she had found that “better part”? “That is why we go to Miss King and Miss Wallace,” she thought to herself, “because they have found the best soil, and have grown sweeter every year.” And, deep in her heart, she resolved to try harder than ever to avoid the rocks and the sand, and to send her rootlets deep down into the soil which Miss King had described.
Then she heard Dorothy by her side ask if they might sing the hymn of her choosing, and they rose to sing words which somehow held to-day a new and deeper meaning:
“Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our feverish ways;
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.”
Silently they all passed out of the little chapel, and turned homeward. The sun, sinking lower, cast long shadows among the pines, and gilded with a farewell glow the chapel windows. Virginia, Priscilla, and Dorothy took the woodsy path that led to the campus. No one cared to talk very much. When they reached The Hermitage Dorothy went with them to their room; and as they filled bowls of water for the tired little hepaticas, and arranged them thoughtfully, for they some way seemed more like persons than ever before, she said all at once—looking out of the window to hide her embarrassment:
“I just thought I’d tell you that I know I haven’t been growing in very good soil this year; but I’m going to put out new roots now, and I’m not going to send them into sand either.”