As the warmth of burning coals
revivified my hand, I saw something in the fire,--a face,--the very one
these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes
were open now,--large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride
sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The
mouth,--oh, those lips! _ever uttered they a prayer_? They look,
trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand
before the I AM, will they _ever_ plead? It is hard to think the Deity
maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery
group. Other forms of coal took the human face. I saw two. Whose were
they? One was like unto my mother. How little I remember of her! and yet
this was like my memory,--sweetly gentle, loving past expression's
power, no taint of earth therein. Another came up. I did not know it.
Something whispered, "It is of you." I almost heard the words with my
outward ears. I looked around the room. No one was with me. Stillness
reigned in the house.
"It takes Mr. Axtell a very long time to take his tea," I thought; "he
must know more of hunger's power than I.--I will look at the fire no
more," I said, slowly, to myself, and closed my eyelids, somewhat
willing to drop after all that they had endured that day.
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