no one,--not to her mother, nor to her spiritual guide; for had she not
passed to a region beyond theirs? As well might those on the hither side
of mortality instruct the souls gone beyond the veil as souls outside a
great affliction guide those who are struggling in it. That is a mighty
baptism, and only Christ can go down with us into those waters.

Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor only marked that she was more than ever
conscientious in every duty, and that she brought to life's daily
realities something of the calmness and disengagedness of one whose soul
has been wrenched by a mighty shock from all moorings here below. Hopes
did not excite, fears did not alarm her; life had no force strong enough
to awaken a thrill within; and the only subjects on which she ever spoke
with any degree of ardor were religious subjects.

One who should have seen moving about the daily ministrations of the
cottage a pale girl, whose steps were firm, whose eye was calm, whose
hands were ever busy, would scarce imagine that through that silent
heart were passing tides of thought that measured a universe; but it was
even so. Through that one gap of sorrow flowed in the whole awful
mystery of existence, and silently, as she spun and sewed, she thought
over and over again all that she had ever been taught, and compared and
revolved it by the light of a dawning inward revelation.

Sorrow is the great birth-agony of immortal powers,--sorrow is the great
searcher and revealer of hearts, the great test of truth; for Plato has
wisely said, sorrow will not endure sophisms,--all shams and unrealities
melt in the fire of that awful furnace. Sorrow reveals forces in
ourselves we never dreamed of. The soul, a bound and sleeping prisoner,
hears her knock on her cell-door, and wakens. Oh, how narrow the walls!
oh, how close and dark the grated window! how the long useless wings