"One night, lying on my lounge when very tired, my children all around me in full romp and hilarity and laughter, half awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country. It was not in Persia, although more than oriental luxuries crowned the cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there; and I saw the sun rise and watched to see it set, but it set not. And I saw people in holiday attire, and I said, 'When will they put off all this, and put on workman's garb, and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?' But they never put off the holiday attire.

"And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab was to be seen. And I went into the chapel of the great town, and I said: 'Where do the poor worship, and where are the benches on which they sit?' And the answer was made me, 'We have no poor in this country.'

"And then I wandered out to find the hovels of the destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold; but not a tear could I see, not a sigh could I hear; and I was bewildered, and I sat down under the branches of a great tree, and I said, 'Where am I, and whence comes all this scene?' And then out from among the leaves and up the flowery paths and across the bright streams, there came a beautiful group thronging all about me, and as I saw them come I thought I knew their step, and as they shouted I thought I knew their voices, but they were so gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never before witnessed, that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped their hands and shouted 'Welcome! Welcome!' the mystery all vanished, and I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all together again in our new home in Heaven.

"And I looked around, and I said, 'Are we all here?' And the voices of many generations responded, 'All here!' And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks, and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all together began to leap and shout and sing, 'Home, home, home, home!'"

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