CHAPTER VIII.
AN ECHO FROM THE SUMMER-LAND.
The Summer-land is so near to this mundane sphere of yours, my friends, that I am often led to question why it is you cannot often hear the sounds of its busy, active life. But I know that the din and bustle, the cares, turmoils, and perplexities of mortal existence have dulled your hearing, and sealed your senses to the beautiful, internal, ever-new life and activities of the spiritual universe, and that only in a few instances can you sense the presence and power of invisible, potent beings.
But I have to record one instance of perception of spiritual things, that I may term an echo from the Summer-land; an echo that brought music, heart-ease and peace to two weary, suffering human hearts, yet encased in the temple of flesh.
Recently a rare case of suffering and devotion has come to my knowledge. A woman, young in years, yet a mother and widow, was struggling on in spite of want, poverty, and pain, seeking to earn a subsistence for her two children, grew weary, faint, and exhausted, when her little ones were taken from her without a moment’s warning, and hurried into the spirit world by what you of earth call an accident. They were together at play, when an embankment caved in and buried them beneath its ruins.
The poor mother was nearly wild with grief. She became ill, and in a little time it was found that she could never see again. The shock to her system, together with previous exhaustion from over-work, had paralyzed the optic nerve, and she was blind.
Upon a lower floor of the humble tenement where this poor woman lived dwelt another, a noble soul, one who had seen better days, but had also been brought to a condition of extreme poverty by the hand of adversity. This was a poor, middle-aged woman, who was employed as night-nurse at a public hospital in the city. She had always presented a kindly, friendly manner to the widow and her children, but nothing of a special nature had been observed.
Suddenly, however, as the terrible catastrophe that hurled the two children into eternity occurred, this woman seemed to arouse to the distress of her neighbor; and when it was found that the poor woman was ill and in need, all the heroism of her nature was called forth. She hastened to the bedside of the suffering one, nursed and attended to her wants with rare devotion, neglected her own comfort for the sake of her neighbor, and finally gave up her situation at the hospital, in order to be with her at all times her presence was required.
At the time of the accident, as the situation of the poor mother became known, a few sympathetic persons contributed certain sums of money for her relief; but in a little while these became exhausted, and she was again penniless; then did the kind nurse take prompt action. Not content with caring for the sufferer, she brought her down to her own more comfortable apartments, shared her little store with her while it lasted, and watched and tended her like a mother caring for a well-loved child.
But the invalid was unhappy, aye, wildly unhappy. Her children dead, her home broken up, herself bereft of sight, a weak, miserable wreck of her former self, dependent upon the bounty of another, and that other a poor woman, almost a stranger,—what had she left to live for? Surely nothing, she thought, and daily she longed and prayed for death to come to her deliverance.
Before a great while, however, the slender resources of our nurse had given out; then it was that she sought and obtained a kind of cheap needle-work that she could take home, and at the same time attend to the wants of her charge.