“Then I understand you. I have seen her often—often at night; and I have started as if I had been asleep. But at night I see my mother just as she looked when I saw her before her death, only there seemed to be light around her head, and she moved easily and rapidly. Oh, how night after night I have been with her, toiling on to overtake her steps, or carried rapidly forward; sometimes she seems to give me instruction—sometimes I rise in the morning and think I will pray to her, or I will pray God to give her to me again; and I have made known my feelings to cousin, and she has laughed at me or chid me for being so babyish as to be thoughtful about dreams. But I see now that this was truly my mother, and I will watch to-night, and when she comes again, I will ask her about her soul—have we all souls?”
I think, now, that I could have placed the child in a position to comprehend these things a little better; but then I was confused with the extraordinary state of the child’s mind.
“Did God teach her that?” said the attendant.
“Did he not teach her that?” I turned away as I saw some one coming down the walk.
Did God teach that child? Was it the yet unfaded visions from which her soul was drawn, ere it became a tenant of the clayey tabernacle that was overshadowing her mind; the recollections of heaven illuminating its little earthly experience, growing dimmer and dimmer with time—was that the mother in the child, or was there, indeed, an appeal to its mind through its affections? Had she, shut out from all instructors during the day, denied all the knowledge which is the true foundation of a Christian’s life—denied it by father and relative—had she, in her bed, been met as little Samuel was met, by the voice of God, calling up the mind to its high destiny, and instructing it in the things that were to come?
I could not solve this enigma. But how innocent, how attractive to the spirit of goodness must have been the mind of that little girl; and it would not be strange, at least it would seem most meet, that her guardian spirit should find means to awaken in her a sense of her importance, and to invite her to goodness by her love for a departed mother. I turned round before I left the ground, and saw the little child standing beside the grave. She looked down steadily upon the uplifted earth, and then turned her face upward, and seemed to gaze with intense interest into the blue sky above. I would have given much to know the thoughts that had occupied her mind, to have seen how love for the perishing object below, how reverence for the purified spirit above were alternating in her mind. I am sure that her thoughts had in them more of maturity and truth relative to those objects of her contemplation, than they had of the things of this life.
I passed onward to the road, full of the idea of the child, who could not be deprived of knowledge. I had found an early flower—the chill of winter, its snows and its frosts, had forbidden its development—but a gentle ray from the sun of truth had called it forth; it was blossoming for man, delightful now, to be transplanted to its native heaven hereafter.
C.
The Sewing Girl.—The inequality of social life and domestic comfort in large cities, is, we presume, inseparable from a state of society as at present organized, and the bold reformer, even while he is preaching, is illustrating its incapacity for sudden change. So long as capital possesses supreme power, and the inherent quality of reproduction, there must be dependents and laborers. We cannot all ride in carriages, or there would be none to build them, and the present stock, we think, would in time grow ricketty upon the hands of the most adroit leveler. And if we descended into a race of pedestrians, we fear that we should in time, even if we divided the last dollar with a needy brother, be looked upon as soulless and decidedly shabby. We do not know that Fourier, even in his maddest dreams of social reformation and equality, ever seriously contemplated an era when boots should grow upon trees, without the aid of human hands, and coats come down like snow-flakes to cover our nakedness. We think not. And even if he had, there are certain disagreeable anticipations—aside from want of modesty—in wandering about on a wintry day, hunting for garments—to say nothing of having our beef killed and cooked to stay our appetites the while.