Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Well, I never heard the like!" exclaimed Dobbs, lost in wonder. "How can there be a bright side to death?—in a horrid coffin, with brass nails and tin-tacks that screw you down?"

Tears filled Janey's eyes. "Oh, Dobbs, you must learn better than that, or how will you ever be reconciled to death? Don't you know that when we die, we—our spirit, that is, for it is our spirit that lives and thinks—leave our body behind us? There's no more consciousness in our body, and it is put into the grave till the last day. It is like the shell that the silkworm casts away when it comes into the moth: the life is in the moth: not in the cast-off shell. You cannot think what trouble mamma has taken with us always to explain these things; and she has talked to me so much lately."

"And where does the spirit go—by which, I suppose, you mean the soul?" asked Dobbs.

Janey shook her head, to express her ignorance at the best. "It is all a mystery," she said; "but mamma has taught us to believe that there's a place for the departed, and that we shall be there. It is not to be supposed that the soul, a thing of life, could be boxed up in a coffin, Dobbs. When Jesus Christ said to the thief on the cross, 'To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise,' he meant that world. It is a place of light and rest."

"And the good and bad are there together?"

Again Janey shook her head. "Don't you remember, in the parable of the rich man and the beggar, there was a great gulf between them, and Abraham said that it could not be passed? I dare say it will be very peaceful and happy there: quite different from this world, where there's so much trouble and sickness. Why should I be afraid of death, Dobbs?"

Dobbs sat looking at her, and was some minutes before she spoke. "Not afraid to die!" she slowly said. "Well, I should be."

Janey's eyes were wet. "Nobody need be afraid to die when they have learnt to trust in God. Don't you know," she answered with something like enthusiasm, "that many people, when dying, have seen Jesus waiting for them? What does it matter, then, where our bodies are put? We are going to be with Jesus. Indeed, Dobbs, there's nothing sad in dying, if you only can look at it in the right way. It is those who look at it in the wrong way that are afraid to die."

"The child's as learned as a minister!" was Dobbs's inward comment. "Ours told us last Sunday evening at Chapel that we were all on the high road to perdition. I'd rather listen to her creed than to his: it sounds more encouraging. Their ma hasn't brought 'em up amiss; and that's the truth!"

The soliloquy was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Halliburton. Almost immediately afterwards some visitors came in—Mary Ashley and Anna Lynn. It was the first time Mary had been there, and she had come to bring Janey some more books. She was one of those graceful children whom it is pleasant to look at. A contrast in attire she presented to the little Quakeress, with her silk dress, her straw hat, trimmed with a wreath of flowers and white ribbons, her dark curls falling beneath it. She was much younger than her brother Henry; but there was a great resemblance between them—in the refined features, the bright complexion, and the soft dark eyes. Somehow, through a remark made by Dobbs, the conversation turned upon Jane's inability to recover; and Mary Ashley heard with extreme wonder that death was not dreaded. "Her ma has taught her different," was Dobbs's comment.