It was a short, full life journey, and a joyous, undaunted heart that traversed it. Almost the most beautiful of its attributes was the joyousness.
He was "glad of Life because it gave him a chance to love and to work and to play."
He never failed to "look up at the stars."
He thought "every day of Christ."
Sometimes towards evening in dreary November, when the clouds hang heavy and low, covering all the sky, and the hills are solemn and sombre, and the wind is cold, and the lake black and sullen, a break in the dark veil lets through a splash of glorious sunshine. It is so very beautiful as it falls into the gloom that your breath draws in quick and you watch it with a thrill. Then you see that it moves towards you. All at once you are in the midst of it, it is falling round you and seems to have paused as if it meant to stay with you and go no farther.
While you revel in this wonderful light that has stopped to enfold you, suddenly it is not falling round you any more, and you see it moving steadily on again, out over the marsh with its bordering evergreens, touching with beauty every place it falls upon, forward up the valley, unwavering, without pause, till you are holding your breath as it begins to climb the hills away yonder.
It is gone.
The smoke blue clouds hang lower and heavier, the hills stand more grimly solemn and sombre, the wind is cold, the lake darker and more sullen, and the beauty has gone out of the marsh.
Then—then it is night.
But you do not forget the Light.