Beyond the gates

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BEYOND THE GATES.

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i BY .

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, »

AUTHOR Of "TETJB GATES AJAR," "TBI STORY 07 AVIS," ETC., ETC.

BOSTON:

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY.
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.

1883.

o

4r TO MY BROTHER,

STUART,

WHO PASSED BEYOND, AUGUST 29, 1888.

NOTE.

It should be said, that, at the time of the
departure of him to whose memory this little
book is consecrated, the work was already in
press; and that these pages owe more to his
criticism than can be acknowledged here.

E. S. P.

Gloucester, Massachusetts,
September, 1883.

BEYOND THE GATES.

I had been ill for several weeks with what
they called brain fever. The events which I
am about to relate happened on the fifteenth
day of my illness.

Before beginning to tell my story, it may
not be out of place to say a few words about
myself, in order to clarify to the imagination
of the reader points which would otherwise in-
volve numerous explanatory digressions, more
than commonly misplaced in a tale dealing
with the materials of this.

I am a woman forty years of age. My
father was a clergyman; he had been many
years dead. I was living, at the time I refer
to, in my mother's house in a factory town in
Massachusetts. The town need not be more

6 BEYOND THE GATES.

particularly mentioned, nor genuine family
names given, for obvious reasons. I was the
oldest of four children ; one of my sisters was
married, one was at home with us, and there
was a boy at college.

I was an unmarried, but not an unhappy
woman. I had reached a very busy, and some-
times I hoped a not altogether valueless, mid-
dle age. I had used life and loved it. Be-
yond the idle impulse of a weary moment,
which signifies no more than the reflex action
of a mental muscle, and which I had been in
the habit of rating accordingly, I had never
wished to die. I was well, vigorous, and ac-
tive. I was not of a dependent or a despon-
dent temperament.

I am not writing an autobiography, and
these things, not of importance in ^Lselves,
require only the briefest allusion. They will
serve to explain the general cast of my life,
which in turn may define the features of my
story.

There are two kinds of solitary : he who is
drawn by the inward, and he who chooses the

BEYOND THE GATES. 7

outward life. To this latter class I had be-
longed. Circumstances, which it is not neces-
sary to detail here, had thrust me into the one
as a means of self-preservation from the other,
while I was yet quite young.

I had been occupied more largely with the
experiences of other people than with my own.
I had been in the habit of being depended
upon. It had been my great good fortune to
be able to spend a part of my time among the
sick, the miserable, and the poor. It had been,
perhaps, my better chance to be obliged to
balance the emotional perils of such occupa-
tions by those of a different character. My
business was that of a school-teacher, but I had
traveled somewhat ; I had served as a nurse
during the latter years of the war ; in the San-
itary Commission; upon the Freedmen's Bu-
reau ; as an officer in a Woman's Prison, and
had done a little work for the State Bureau of
Labor among the factory operatives of our
own town. I had therefore, it will be seen,
been spared the deterioration of a monotonous
existence. At the time I was taken ill I was

8 BEYOND THE GATES.

managing a private school, rather large for the
corps of assistants which I could command,
and had overworked. I had been at home,
thus employed, with my mother who needed
me, for two years.

It may not be unsuitable, before proceeding
with my narrative, to say that I had been a
believer in the truths of the Christian religion;
not, however, a devotee. I had not the ecstatic
temperament, and was not known among my
friends for any higher order of piety than that
which is implied in trying to do one's duty
for Christ's sake, and saying little about it
or Him, — less than I wish I had sometimes.
It was natural to me to speak in other ways
than by words; that does not prove that it
was best. I had read a little, like all think-
ing people with any intellectual margin to
their lives, of the religious controversies of
the day, and had not been without my share
of pressure from the fashionable reluctance
to believe. Possibly this had affected a tem-
perament not too much inclined towards the
supernatural, but it had never conquered my

BEYOND THE GATES. 9

faith, which I think had grown to be dearer to
me because I had not kept it without a fight
for it. It certainly had become, for this rea-
son, of greater practical value. It certainly
had become, for this and every reason, the
most valuable thing I had, or hoped to have.
I believed in God and immortality, and in
the history of Jesus Christ. I respected and
practiced prayer, but chiefly decided what I
ought to do next minute. I loved life and
lived it. I neither feared death nor thought
much about it.

When I had been ill a fortnight, it occurred
to me that I was very sick, but not that I could
possibly die. I suffered a good deal at first ;
after that much less. There was great misery
for lack of sleep, and intolerable restlessness.
The worst, however, was the continuity of care.
Hose whL have borne heavy responsibUities
for any length of time will understand me.
The incessant burden pressed on : now a pupil
had fallen into some disgraceful escapade ; now
the investments of my mother's, of which I had

10 BEYOND THE GATES.

the charge, had failed on the dividends ; then
I had no remittance for the boy at college;
then my sister, in a heart-breaking emergency,
confided to me a peril against which I could
not lift a finger; the Governor held me re-
sponsible for the typhoid among the prisoners ;
I added eternal columns of statistics for the
Charity Boards, and found forever a mistake
in each report ; a dying soldier called to me in
piercing tones for a cup of water ; the black
girl to whom I read the Gospel of John,
drowned her baby ; I ran six looms in the mill
for the mother of six children till her seventh
should be born ; I staked the salvation of my
soul upon answering the argument of Strauss
to the satisfaction of an unbelieving friend,
and lost my wager; I heard my classes in
Logic, and was unable to repeat anything but
the " Walrus and the Carpenter," for the
" Barbara Celarent." Suddenly, one day, in
the thick of this brain-battle, I slipped upon a
pause, in which I distinctly heard a low voice
say,

" I3jut Thine eternal thoughts move on,
Thine undisturbed affairs."

BEYOND TEE GATE S. 11

It was my mother's voice. I perceived then
that she sat at my bedside in the red easy-
chair, repeating hymns, poor soul ! in the hope
of calming me.

I put out my hand and patted her arm, but
it did not occur to me to speak till I saw that
there were masses of pansies and some mignon-
ette upon the table, and I asked who sent
them, and she told me the school-girls had
kept them fresh there every day since I was
taken ill. I felt some pleasure that they
should take the trouble to select the flowers I
preferred. Then I asked her where the jelly
came from, and the grapes, and about other
trifles that I saw, such as accumulate in any
sick-room. Then she gave me the names of
different friends and neighbors who had been
so good as to remember me. Chiefly I was
touched by the sight of a straggly magenta
geranium which I noticed growing in a pot by
the window, and which a poor woman from
the mills had brought the day before. I asked
my mother if there were any letters, and she
said, many, but that I must not hear them

12 BEYOND THE GATES.

read ; she spoke of some from the prison.
The door-bell often rang softly, and I asked
why it was muffled, and who called. Alice
had come in, and said something in an under-
tone to mother about the Grand Army and
resolutions and sympathy; and she used the
names of different people I had almost for-
gotten, and this confused me. They stopped
talking, and I became at once very ill again.

The next point which I recall is turning to
see that the doctor was in the room. I was
in great suffering, and he gave me a few spoon-
fuls of something which he said would secure
sleep. I desired to ask him what it was, as I
objected to narcotics, and preferred to bear
whatever was before me with the eyes of my
mind open, but as soon as I tried to speak I
forgot what I wished to say.

I do not know how long it was before the
truth approached me, but it was towards even-
ing of that day, the fifteenth, as I say, of my
illness, that I said aloud :

" Mother, Tom is in the room. Why has
Tom come home ? "

BEYOND THE GATES. 13

Tom was my little brother at college. He
came towards the bed as I spoke. He had his
hat in his hand, and he put it up before his
eyes.

44 Mother ! " I repeated louder than before.
44 Why have you sent for Tom ? "

But Mother did not answer me. She leaned
over me. I saw her looking down. She had
the look that she had when my father died ;
though I was so young when that happened,
I had never forgotten my mother's look ; and
I had never seen it since, from that day until
this hour.

44 Mother ! am I so sick as that ? Mother ! "

44 Oh, my dear ! " cried Mother. 44 Oh my
dear, my dear ! " . . .

So after that I understood. I was greatly
startled that they should feel me to be danger-
ously ill ; but I was not alarmed.

44 It is nonsense," I said, after I had thought
about it a little while. 44 Dr. Shadow was al-
ways a croaker. I have no idea of dying ! I
have nursed too many sicker people than I am.
I don't intend to die! I am able to sit up
now, if I want to. Let me try."

14 BEYOND THE GATES.

" I '11 hold you," said Tom, softly enough.
This pleased me. He lifted all the pillows,
and held me straight out upon his mighty arms.
Tom was a great athlete — took the prizes at the
gymnasium. No weaker man could have sup-
ported me for fifteen minutes in the strained
position by which he found that he could give
me comfort and so gratify my whim. Tom held
me a long time ; I think it must have been an
hour ; but I began to suffer again, and could
not judge of time. I wondered how that big
boy got such infinite tenderness into those iron
muscles. I felt a great respect for human flesh
and bone and blood, and for the power and
preciousness of the living human body. It
seemed much more real to me, then, than the
spirit. It seemed an absurdity that any one
should suppose that I was in danger of being
done with life. I said : —

" I 'm going to live, Tom ! Tell Mother I
have no idea of dying. I prefer to live."

Tom nodded ; he did not speak ; I felt a hot
dash of tears on my face, which surprised me ;
I had not seen Tom cry since he lost the foot-
ball match when he was eleven years old.

BEYOND THE GATES. 15

They gave me something more out of the
spoon, again, I think, at that moment, and I
felt better. I said to Tom : —

" You see ! " and bade them send Mother to
lie down, and asked Alice to make her beef-tea,
and to be sure and make it as we did in the
army. I do not remember saying anything
more after this. I certainly did not suffer any
more. I felt quiet and assured. Nothing
farther troubled me. The room became so still
that I thought they must all have gone away,
and left me with the nurse, and that she, find-
ing me so well, had herself fallen asleep. This
rested me — to feel that I was no longer caus-
ing them pain — more than anything could
have done ; and I began to think the best thing
I could do would be to take a nap myself.

With this conviction quietly in mind I turned
over, with my face towards the wall, to go to
sleep. I grew calmer, and yet more calm, as I
lay there. There was a cross of Swiss carving
on the wall, hanging over a picture of my fa-
ther. Leonardo's Christ — the one from the
drawing for the Last Supper, that we all know

16 BEYOND THE GATES.

— hung above both these. Owing to my posi-
tion, I could not see the other pictures in the
room, which was large, and filled with little
things, the gifts of those who had been kind to
me in a life of many busy years. Only these
three objects — the cross, the Christ, and my
father — came within range of my eyes as the
power of sleep advanced. The room was dark-
ened, as it had been since I became so ill, so
that I was not sure whether it were night or
day. The clock was striking. I think it
struck two ; and I perceived the odor of the
mignonette. I think it was the last thing I
noticed before going to sleep, and I remem-
bered, as I did so, the theories which gave to
the sense of smell greater significance than
any of the rest ; and remembered to have read
that it was either the last or the first to give
way in the dying. (I could not recall, in .my
confused condition, which.) I thought of this
with pleased and idle interest ; but did not as-
sociate the thought with the alarm felt by my
friends about my condition.

I could have slept but a short, time when I

BEYOND THE GATES. 17

woke, feeling much easier. The cross, the
Christ, and the picture of my father looked at
me calmly from the wall on which the sick-
lamp cast a steady, soft light. Then I remem-
bered that it was night, of course, and felt
chagrined that I could have been confused on
this point.

The room seemed close to me, and I turned
over to ask for more air.

As I did so, I saw some one sitting in the
cushioned window-seat by the open window —
the eastern window. No one had occupied this
seat, on account of the draught and chill, since
my illness. As I looked steadily, I saw that
the person who sat there was my father.

His face was turned away, but his figure and
the contour of his noble head were not to be
mistaken. Although I was a mere girl when
herflied, I felt no hesitation about this. I knew
at once^and beyond •all doutft, that it was he.
I Experienced pleasure, Tbut little, if any, sur-
prise.

As I lay there looking at him, he turned and

regarded me. His deep eyes glowed with a

2

1.

K

18 BEYOND THE GATES.

soft, calm light ; but yet, I know not why, they
expressed more love than I had ever seen in
them before. He used to love us nervously and
passionately. He had now the look of one
whose whole nature is saturated with rest,. and
to whom the fitfulness, distrust, or distress of
intense feeling acting upon a super-sensitive
organization, were impossible. As he looked
towards me, he smiled. He had one of the
sweetest smiles that ever illuminated a mortal
face.

" Why, Father ! " I said aloud. He nodded
encouragingly, but did not speak.

"Father?" I repeated, "Father, is this
you?" He laughed a little, softly, putting
up one hand and tossing his hair off from his
forehead — an old way of his.

" What are you here for ? " I asked again.
" Did Mother send for you, too ? "

When I had said this, I felt confused and
troubled; for though I did not remember
that he was dead — I mean I did not put the
thought in any such form to myself, or use
that word or any of its synonyms — yet I re-

BEYOND THE GATES. 19

membered that he had been absent from our
family circle for a good while, and that if
Mother had sent for him because I had a brain
fever, it would have been for some reason not
according to her habit.

" It is strange," I said. " It is n't like her.
I don't understand the thing at all."

.Now, as I continued to look at the corner of
the room where my father was sitting, I saw
that he had risen from the cushioned window-
seat, and taken a step or two towards me. He
stopped, however, and stood quite still, and
looked at me most lovingly and longingly ; and
then it was that he held out his arms to me.

" Oh," cried I, " I wish I could come ! But
you don't know how sick I am. I have not
walked a step for over two weeks."

He did not speak even yet, but still held
out his arms with that look of unutterably
restful love. I felt the elemental tie between
parent and child draw me. It seemed to me
as if I had reached the foundation of all human
feeling ; as if I had gone down — how shall I
say it? — below the depths of all other love.

20 BEYOND THE GATE '8.

I had always known I loved him, but not .like
that. I was greatly moved.

" But you don't understand me," I repeated
with some agitation. " I canH walk." I
thought it very strange that he did not, in
consideration of my feebleness, come to me.

Then for the first time he spoke.

" Come," he said gently. His voice sounded
quite natural ; I only noticed that he spoke
under his breath, as if not to awake the nurse,
or any person who was in the room.

At this, I moved, and sat up on the edge of
my bed; although I did so easily enough, I
lost courage at that point. It seemed impos-
sible to go farther. I felt a little chilly, and
remembered, too, that I was not dressed. A
warm white woolen wrapper of my own, and
my slippers, were within reach, by the head of
the bed ; Alice wore them when she watched
with me. I put these things on, and then
paused, expecting to be overcome with ex-
haustion after the effort. To my surprise, I
did not feel tired at all. I believe, rather, I felt
a little stronger. As I put the clothes on, I

BEYOND THE GATES. 21

noticed the magenta geranium across the room.
These, I think, were the only things which at-
tracted my attention.

44 Come here to me," repeated Father ; he
spoke more decidedly, this time with a touch of
authority. I remembered hearing him speak
just so when Tom was learning to walk ; he
began by saying, 44 Come, sonny boy ! " but
when the baby played the coward, he said,
44 My son, come here ! "

As if I had been a baby, I obeyed. I put
my feet to the floor, and found that I stood
strongly. I experienced a slight giddiness for
a moment, but when this passed, my head felt
clearer than before. I walked steadily out
into the middle of the room. Each step was
firmer than the other. As I advanced, he
came to meet me. My heart throbbed. I
thought I should have fallen, not from weak-
ness, but from joy.

44 Don't be afraid," he said encouragingly ;
44 that is right. You are doing finely. Only
a few steps more. There ! "

It was done. I had crossed the distance

22 BEYOND THE GATES.

which separated us, and my dear Father, after
all those years, took me, as he used to do, into
his arms. ...

He was the first to speak, and he said : —

"You poor little girl! — But it is over
now."

"Yes, it is over now," I answered. I
thought he referred to the difficult walk across
the room, and to my long illness, now so hap-
pily at an end. He smiled and patted me on
the cheek, but made no other answer.

" I must tell Mother that you are here," I
said presently. I had not looked behind me
or about me. Since the first sight of my
father sitting in the window, I had not ob-
served any other person, and could not have
told who was in the room.

" Not yet," my father said. " We may not
speak to her at present. I think we had bet-
ter go."

I lifted my face to say, "Go where?" but
my lips did not form the question. It was
just as it used to be when he came from the
study and held out his hand, and said " Come,"

BEYOND THE GATES. 23

and I went anywhere with him, neither asking,
nor caring, so long as it was with him ; an4
then he used to play or walk with me, and I
forgot the whole world besides. I put my
hand in his without a question, and we moved
towards the door.

" I suppose you had better go this way," he
said, with a slight hesitation, as we passed out
and across the hall.

" Any way you like best," I said joyfully.
He smiled, and still keeping my hand, led me
down the stairs. As we went down, I heard
the little Swiss clock, above in my room, strike
the half hour after two.

I noticed everything in the hall as we de-
scended ; it was as if my vision, as well as the
muscles of motion, grew stronger with each mo-
ment. I saw the stair-carpeting with its faded
Brussels pattern, once rich, and remembered
counting the red roses on it the night I went
up with the fever on me ; reeling and half de-
lirious, wondering how I could possibly afford
to be sick. I saw the hat-tree with Tom's coat,
and Alice's blue Shetland shawl across the old

24

BEYOND THE GATES.

hair-cloth sofa. As we opened the door, I saw
the muffled bell. I stood for a moment upon
the threshold of my old home, not afraid but
perplexed.

My father seemed to understand my
thoughts perfectly, though I had not spoken,
and he paused for my reluctant mood. I
thought of all the years I had spent there. I
thought of my childhood and girlhood ; of the
tempestuous periods of life which that quiet
roof had hidden ; of the calms upon which it
had brooded. I thought of sorrows that I had
forgotten, and those which I had prayed in
vain to forget. I thought of temptations and
of mistakes and of sins, from which I had fled
back asking these four walls to shelter me. I
thought of the comfort and blessedness that
I had never failed to find in the old house. I
shrank from leaving it. It seemed like leav-
ing my body.

When the door had been opened, the night
air rushed in. I could see the stars, and
knew, rather than felt, that it was cold. As
we stood waiting, an icicle dropped from the

BEYOND THE GATES. 25

eaves, and fell, breaking into a dozen diamond
flashes at our feet. Beyond, it was dark.

" It seems to me a great exposure," I said
reluctantly, "to be taken out into a winter
night, — at such an hour, too ! I have been so
very sick."

"Are you cold?" asked my father gently.
After some thought I said : —

" No, sir."

For I was not cold. For the first time I
wondered why.

" Are you tired ? "

No, I was not tired.

" Are you afraid ? "

" A little, I think, sir."

" Would you like to go back, Molly, and
rest awhile ? "

" If you please, Papa."

The old baby-word came instinctively in
answer to the baby-name. He led me like a
child, and like a child I submitted. It was
like him to be so thoughtful of my weakness.
My dear father was always one of those rare
men who think of little things largely, and so

26 BEYOND THE GATES.

bring, especially into the lives of women, the
daily comfort which makes the infinite pre-
ciousness of life.

We went into the parlor and sat down. It
was warm there and pleasant. The furnace
was well on, and embers still in the grate.
The lamps were not lighted, yet the room was
not dark. I enjoyed being down there again
after all those weeks up-stairs, and was happy
in looking at the familiar things, the afghan
on the sofa, and the magazines on the table,
uncut because of my illness ; Mother's work-
basket, and Alice's music folded away.

"It was always a dear old room," said
Father, seating himself in his own chair, which
we had kept for twenty years in its old place.
He put his head back, and gazed peacefully
about.

When I felt rested, and better, I asked him
if we should start now.

"Just as you please," he said quietly.
" There is no hurry. We are never hurried."

" If we have anything to do," I said, "I had
rather do it now I think."

BEYOND TEE GATES. 27

"Very well," said Father "that is like you."
He rose and held out his hand again. I took
it once more, and once more we went out to
the threshold of our old home. This time I
felt more confidence, but when the night air
swept in, I could not help shrinking a little
in spite of myself, and showing the agitation
which overtook me.

" Father ! " I cried, " Father ! where are we
going?"

My father turned at this, and looked at me
solemnly. His face seemed to shine and glow.
He looked from what I felt was a great height.
He said : —

" Are you really afraid, Mary, to go any-
where with me ? "

"No, no! " I protested in a passion of regret
and trust, " my dear father ! I would go any
where in earth or Heaven with you ! "

" Then come," he said softly.

I clasped both hands, interlocking them
through his arm, and we shut the door and
went down the steps together and out into the
winter dawn.

II.

It was neither dark nor day; and as we
stepped into the village streets the confused
light trembled about us delicately. The stars
were still shining. Snow was on the ground ;
and I think it had freshly fallen in the night,
for I noticed that the way before us lay quite
white and untrodden. I looked back over my
shoulders as my father closed the gate, which
he did without noise. I meant to take a gaze
at the old house, from which, with a thrill at
the heart, I began to feel that I was parting
under strange and solemn conditions. But
when I glanced up the path which we had
taken, my attention was directed altogether
from the house, and from the slight sadness of
the thought I had about it.

The circumstance which arrested me was
this. Neither my father's foot nor mine had
left any print upon the walk. From the front

BEYOND THE GATES. 29

door to the street, the fine fair snow lay un-
broken ; it stirred, and rose in restless flakes
like winged creatures under the gentle wind,
flew a little way, and fell again, covering the
surface of the long white path with a foam so
light, it seemed as if thought itself could not
have passed upon it without impression. I can
hardly say why I did not call my father's at-
tention to this fact.

As we walked down the road the dawn be-
gan to deepen. The stars paled slowly. The
intense blue-black and purple of the night
sky gave way to the warm grays that precede
sunrise in our climate. I saw that the gold
and the rose were coming. It promised to be
a mild morning, warmer than for several days.
The deadly chill was out of the air. The snow
yielded on the outlines of the drifts, and re-
laxed as one looked at it, as snow does before
melting, and the icicles had an air of expecta-
tion, as if they hastened to surrender to the
annunciation of a warm and impatient win-
ter's day.

" It is going to thaw," I said aloud.

30 BEYOND THE GATES.

"It seems so to you," replied my father,
vaguely.

"But at least it is very pleasant," I insisted.

" I 'm glad you find it so," he said ; " I should
have been disappointed if it had struck you as
cold, or — gloomy — in any way."

It was still so early that all the village was
asleep. The blinds and curtains of the houses
were drawn and the doors yet locked. None of
our neighbors were astir, nor were there any
signs of traffic yet in the little shops. The
great factory-bell, which woke the operatives
at half-past four, had rung, but this was the
only evidence as yet of human life or motion.
It did not occur to me, till afterwards, to
wonder at the inconsistency between the hour
struck by my own Swiss clock and the factory
time.

I was more interested in another matter
which just then presented itself to me.

The village, as I say, was still asleep. Once
I heard the distant hoofs of a horse sent clat-
tering after the doctor, and ridden by a mes-
senger from a house in mortal need ; but this

BEYOND THE GATES, 31

was the only signal of awakened life. Up to
this, we two had seemed to be the only watch-
ers in all the world.

Now, as I turned to see if I could discover
whose horse it was and so who was in emer-
gency, I observed suddenly that the sidewalk
was full of people. I say full of people; I
mean that there was a group behind us ; a few,
also, before us; some, too, were crossing the
street. They conversed together standing at
the corners, or walked in twos, as father and
I were doing ; or strolled, some of them alone.
Some of them seemed to have immediate busi-
ness and to be in haste ; others sauntered as he
who has no occupation. Some talked and ges-
ticulated earnestly, or laughed loudly. Others
went with a thoughtful manner, speaking not
at all.

As I watched them I began to recognize
here and there, a man, or a woman ; — there
were more men than women among them, and
there were no children.

A few of these people, I soon saw, were old
neighbors of ours ; some I had known when I

32 BEYOND THE GATES.

was a child, and had forgotten till this moment.
Several of them bowed to us as we passed
along. One man stopped and waited for us,
and spoke to Father, who shook hands with
him ; intimating, however, pleasantly enough,
that he was in haste, and must be excused for
passing on.

" Yes, yes, I see," said the man with a
glance at me. I then distinctly saw this per-
son's face, and knew him beyond a doubt, for
an old neighbor, a certain Mr. Snarl, a miserly,
sanctimonious man — I had never liked him.

" Father ! " I stopped short. " Father, that
man is dead. He has been dead for twenty
years ! "

Now, at this, I began to tremble ; yet not
from fear, I think ; from amazement, rather,
and the great confusion which I felt.

" And there " — I pointed to a pale young
man who had been thrown from his carriage
(it was said because he was in no condition to
drive) — " there is Bobby Bend. He died last
winter."

" Well," said Father quietly, " and .what
then ? "

BEYOND THE GATES. 33

" And over there — why, certainly that is
Mrs. Mersey ! "

I had known Mrs. Mersey for a lovely
woman. She died of a fever contracted in the
care of a poor, neglected creature. I saw her
at this moment across and far down the street,
coming from a house where there was trouble.
She came with a swift, elastic motion, unlike
that of any of the others who were about us ;
the difference was marked, and yet one which
I should have found it at that time impossible
to describe. Perhaps I might have said that
she hovered above rather than touched the
earth ; but this would not have defined the
distinction. As I looked after her she disap-
peared ; in what direction I could not tell.

" So they are dead people," I said, with a
sort of triumph ; almost as if I had dared my
father to deny it. He smiled.

" Father, I begin to be perplexed. I have

heard of these hallucinations, of course, and

read the authenticated stories, but I never

supposed I could be a subject of such illusions.

It must be because I have been so sick."

8

34 BEYOND THE GATES.

" Partly because you have been so sick —
yes," said Father drawing down the corners of
his mouth, in that way he had when he was
amused. I went on to tell him that it seemed
natural to see him, but that I was surprised to
meet those others who had left us, and that I
did not find it altogether agreeable.

" Are you afraid ? " he asked me, as he had
before. No, I could not say that I was afraid.

" Then hasten on," he said in a different
tone, " our business is not with them, at pres-
ent. See ! we have already left them behind."

And, indeed, when I glanced back, I saw that
we had. We, too, were now traveling alone
together, and at a much faster speed, towards
the outskirts of the town. We were moving
eastward. Before us the splendid day was
coming up. The sky was unfolding, shade
above shade, paler at the edge, and glowing at
the heart, like the petals of a great rose.

The snow was melting on the moors towards
which we bent our steps ; the water stood
here and there in pools, and glistened. A
little winter bird — some chickadee or wood-

BEYOND THE GATES. 85

pecker — was bathing in one of these pools ;
his tiny brown body glowed in the brightness,
flashing to and fro. He chirped and twittered
and seemed bursting with joy. As we ap-
proached the moors, the stalks of the sumachs,
the mulberries, the golden-rod, and asters, all
the wayside weeds and the brown things that
we never know and never love till winter, rose
beautiful from the snow; the icicles melted and
dripped from them; the dead-gold-colored
leaves of the low oaks rustled ; at a distance
we heard the sweet sough from a grove of
pines; behind us the morning bells of the
village broke into bubbles of cheerful sound.
As we walked on together I felt myself be-
come stronger at every step ; my heart grew
light.

" It is a good world," I cried, " it is a good
world ! "

"So it is," said my father heartily, "and
yet — my dear daughter " — He hesitated ;
so long that I looked into his face earnestly,
and iihen I saw that a strange gravity had
settled upon it. It was not like any look that
I had ever seen there before.

36 BEYOND THE GATES.

" I Have better things to show you," he said
gently.

" I do not understand you, sir."

" We have only begun our journey, Mary ;
and — if you do not understand — but I
thought you would have done so by this time
— I wonder if she is going to be frightened
after all!"

We were now well out upon the moors, alone
together, on the side of the hill. The town
looked far behind us and insignificant. The
earth dwindled and the sky grew, as we looked
from one to the other. It seemed to me that
I had never before noticed how small a portion
of our range of vision is filled by the surface
of earth, and what occupies it ; and how im-
mense the proportion of the heavens. As we
stood there, it seemed to overwhelm us.

" Rise," said my father in a voice of solemn
authority, " rise quickly ! "

I struggled at his words, for he seemed to
slip from me, and I feared to lose him. I
struggled and struck out into the air ; I felt a
wild excitement, like one plunged into a deep

BEYOND THE GATES. 37

sea, and desperately swimming, as animals do,
and a few men, from blind instinct, haying
never learned. My father spoke encourag-
ingly, and with tenderness. He never once let
go my hand. I felt myself, beyond all doubt,
soaring — slowly and weakly — but surely as-
cending above the solid ground.

" See ! there is nothing to fear," he said
from time to time. I did not answer. My
heart beat fast. I exerted all my strength
and took a stronger stroke. I felt that I
gained upon myself. I closed my eyes, look-
ing neither above nor below.

Suddenly, as gently as the opening of a
water lily, and yet as swiftly as the cleaving
of the lightning, there came to me a thought
which made my brain whirl, and I cried aloud :

44 Father, am I dead ? " My hands slipped
— I grew dizzy — wavered — and fluttered.
I was sure that I should fall. At that instant
I was caught with the iron of tenderness and
held, like a very young child, in my father's
arms. He said nothing, only patted me on
the cheek, as we ascended, he seeing, and I

88 BEYOND THE GATES.

blind ; he strength, and I weakness ; he who
knew all, and I who knew nothing, silently with
the rising sun athwart the rose-lit air.

I was awed, more than there are words to
say ; but I felt no more f gar than I used to do
when he carried me on his shoulder up the
garden walk, after it grew dark, when I was
tired out with play.

in.

I USE the words "ascension" and " arising"
in the superficial sense of earthly imagery. Of
course, carefully speaking, there can be no up
or down to the motion of beings detached from
a revolving globe, and set adrift in space. I
thought of this in the first moment, with the
keenness which distinguishes between knowl-
edge and experience. I knew when our jour-
ney came to an end, by the gradual cessation
of our rapid motion ; but at first I did not in-
cline to investigate beyond this fact. Whether
I was only tired, or giddy, or whether a little
of what we used to call faintness overcame
me, I can hardly say. If this were so, it was
rather a spiritual than a physical disability ;
it was a faintness of the soul. Now I found
this more energetic than the bodily sensations
I had known. I scarcely sought to wrestle
against it, but lay quite still, where we had
come to a halt.

40 BEYOND THE GATES.

I wish to say here, that if you ask me where
this was, I must answer that I do not know.
I must say distinctly that, though after the
act of dying I departed from the surface of
the earth, and reached the confines of a differ-
ent locality, I cannot yet instruct another
where this place may be.

My impression that it was not a vast dis-
tance (measured, I mean, by an astronomical
scale) from our globe, is a strong one, which,
however, I cannot satisfactorily defend. There
seemed to be flowers about me; I wondered
what they were, but lay with my face hidden
in my arm, not caring yet to look about. I
thought of that old-fashioned allegory called
"The Distant Hills," where the good girl,
when she died, sank upon a bed of violets ; but
the bad girl slipped upon rolling stones be-
neath a tottering ruin. This trifling memory
occupied me for some moments ; yet it had so
great significance to me, that I recall it, even
now, with pungent gratitude.

"I shall remember what I have read."
This was my first thought in the new state

BEYOND THE GATES. 41

to which I had come. Minna was the name
of the girl in the allegory. The illustrations
were very poor, but had that uncanny fascina-
tion which haunts allegorical pictures — often
the more powerful because of their rudeness.

As I lay there, still not caring, or even not
daring to look up, the fact that I was crush-
ing flowers beneath me became more apparent ;
a delicate perfume arose and surrounded me ;
it was like and yet unlike any that I had ever
known; its familiarity entranced, its novelty
allured me. Suddenly I perceived what it
was —

" Mignonette ! "

I laughed at my own dullness in detecting
it, and could not help wondering whether it
were accident or design that had given me for
my first experience in the new life, the gratifi-
cation of a little personal taste like this. For
a few moments I yielded to the pure and ex-
quisite perfume, which stole into my whole
nature, or it seemed to me so then. After-
wards I learned how little I knew of my " whole
nature " at that time.

42 BEYOND TEE GATES.

Presently I took courage, and lifted my
head. I hardly know what I expected to see.
Visions of the Golden City in the Apocalypse
had flitted before me. I thought of the River
of Death in the " Pilgrim's Progress," of the
last scene in the " Voyage of Life," of The-
remin's "Awakening," of several famous books
and pictures which I had read or seen, describ-
ing what we call Heaven. These works of the
human imagination — stored away perhaps in
the frontal lobes of the brain, as scientists
used to tell us — had influenced my anticipa-
tions more than I could have believed possible
till that moment.

I was indeed in a beautiful place ; but it
did not look, in any respect, as I had expected.
No ; I think not in any respect. Many things
which happened to me later, I can describe
more vividly than I can this first impression.
In one way it was a complex, in another, a
marvelously simple one. Chiefly, I think I
had a consciousness of safety — infinite safety.
All my soul drew a long breath — " Nothing
more can happen to me ! " Yet, at the same

BEYOND THE GATES. 48

time, I felt that I was at the outset of all ex-
perience. It was as if my heart cried aloud,
" Where shall I begin ? "

I looked about and abroad. My father
stood at a little distance from me, conversing
with some friends. I did not know them.
They had great brightness and beauty of ap-
pearance. So, also, had he. He had altered
perceptibly since he met me in the lower world,
and seemed to glow and become absorbent
of light from some source yet unseen. This
struck me forcibly in all the people whom I
saw — there were many of them, going to and
fro busily — that they were receptive and re-
flecting beings. They differed greatly in the
degree in which they gave this impression ; but
all gave it. Some were quite pale, though
pure in color ; others glowed and shone. Yet
when I say color, I use an earthly word, which
does not express my meaning. It was more
the atmosphere or penumbra, in which each
moved, that I refer to, perhaps, than the tint
of their bodies. They had bodies, very like
such as I was used to. I saw that I myself

44 BEYOND THE GATES.

was not, or so it appeared, greatly changed.
I had form and dress, and I moved at will,
and experienced sensations of pleasure and,
above all, of magnificent health. For a while
I was absorbed, without investigating details,
in the mere sense of physical ease and power.
I did not wish to speak, or to be spoken to,
nor even to stir and exercise my splendid
strength. It was more than enough to feel it,
after all those weeks of pain. I lay back
again upon the mignonette; as I did so, I
noticed that the flowers where my form had
pressed them were not bruised; they had
sprung erect again ; they had not wilted, nor
even hung their heads as if they were hurt —
I lay back upon, and deep within, the mignon-
ette, and, drowned in the delicate odor, gazed
about me.

Yes ; I was truly in a wonderful place. It
was in the country (as we should say below),
though I saw signs of large centres of life, out-
lines of distant architecture far away. There
were hills, and vast distances, and vistas of hill
tints in the atmosphere. There were forests

BEYOND THE GATES. 45

of great depth. There was an expanse of
shining water. There were fields of fine ex-
tent and color, undulating like green seas.
The sun was high — if it were the sun. At
least there was great brilliance about me.
Flowers must have been abundant, for the air
was alive with perfumes.

When I have said this, I seem to have said
little or nothing. Certain it is that these first
impressions came to me in broad masses, like
the sweep of a large brush or blender upon
canvas. Of details I received few, for a long
time. I was overcome with a sense of Nature
— freedom — health — beauty, as if — how
shall I say it ? — as if for the first time I
understood what generic terms meant ; as if I
had entered into the secret of all abstract
glory; as if what we had known as philosoph-
ical or as poetical phrases were now become
attainable facts, each possessing that individ-
ual existence which dreamers upon earth dare
to believe, and of which no doubter can be
taught.

I am afraid I do not express this with any-

46 BEYOND THE GATES.

thing like the simplicity with which I felt it ;
and to describe it with anything resembling the
power would be impossible.

I felt my smallness and ignorance in view of
the wonders which lay before me. "I shall
have time enough to study them," I thought,
but the thought itself thrilled me throughout,
and proved far more of an excitant than a seda-
tive. I rose slowly, and stood trembling among
the mignonette. I shielded my eyes with my
hand, not from any glare or dazzle or strain,
but only from the presence and the pressure of
beauty, and so stood looking off. As I did so,
certain words came to mind with the haunting
voice of a broken quotation :

"Neither have entered into the heart of
man " —

" The things which God hath prepared " —

It was a relief to me to see my father com-
ing towards me at that moment, for I had, per-
haps, undergone as much keen emotion as one
well bears, compressed into a short space of
time. He met me smiling.

44 And how is it, Mary ? "

BEYOND THE GATES. 47

" My first Bible verse has just occurred to
me, Father — the first religious thought I 've
had in Heaven yet ! " I tried to speak lightly,
feeling too deeply for endurance. I repeated
the words to him, for he asked me what they
were which had come to me.

"That is a pleasant experience," he said
quietly. " It differs with us all. I have seen
people enter in a transport of haste to see the
Lord Himself — noticing nothing, forgetting
everything. I have seen others come in a trans-

" And I had scarcely thought about seeing
Him till now ! " I felt ashamed of this. But
my father comforted me by a look.

"Each comes to his own by his own," he
said. " The nature is never forced. Here we
unfold like a leaf, a flower. He expects noth-
ing of us but to be natural."

This seemed to me a deep saying ; and the
more I thought of it the deeper it seemed. I
said so as we walked, separate still from the
others, through the beautiful weather. The
change from a New England winter to the cli-

48

BEYOND THE GATE8.

mate in which I found myself was, in itself,
not the least of the great effects and delights
which I experienced that first day.

If nothing was expected of us but to be nat-
ural, it was the more necessary that it should
be natural to be right.

I felt the full force of this conviction as it
had never been possible to feel it in the other
state of being, where I was under restraint.
The meaning of liberty broke upon me like a
sunburst. Freedom was in and of itself the
highest law. Had I thought that death was to
mean release from personal obedience? Lo,
death itself was but the elevation of moral
claims, from lower to higher. I perceived how
all demands of the larger upon the lesser self
must be increased in the condition to which I
had arrived. I felt overpowered for the moment
with the intensity of these claims. It seemed
to me that I had never really known before,
what obligation meant. Conduct was now the
least of difficulties. For impulse, which lay
behind conduct, for all force which wrought out
fact in me, I had become accountable.

BEYOND THE GATES. 49

" As nearly as I can make it out, Father,"
I said, " henceforth I shall be responsible for
my nature."

44 Something like that ; not altogether."

44 The force of circumstance and heredity,"
— I began, using the old earthly patois. " Of
course I 'm not to be called to account for what
I start with here, any more than I was for what
I started with there. That would be neither
science nor philosophy."

44 We are neither unscientific nor unphilo-
sophical, you will find," said my father, pa-
tiently.

44 1 am very dull, sir. Be patient with me.
What I am trying to say, I believe, is that I
shall feel the deepest mortification if I do not
find it natural to do right. This feeling is so
keen, that to be wrong must be the most unnat-
ural thing in the world. There is certainly a
great difference from what it used to be ; I
cannot explain it. Already I am ashamed of
the smallness of my thoughts when I first
looked about in this place. Already I cannot
understand why I did not spring like a f oun-

4

50 BEYOND THE GATES.

tain to the Highest, to the Best. But then,
Father, I never was a devotee, you know."

When I had uttered these words I felt a re-
coil from myself, and sense of discord. I was
making excuses for myself. That used to be a
fault of the past life. One did not do it here.
It was as if I had committed some grave social
indecorum. I felt myself blushing. My fa-
ther noticed my embarrassment, and called my
attention to a brook by which we were walk-
ing, beginning to talk of its peculiar translu-
cence and rhythm, and other little novelties,
thus kindly diverting me from my distress, and
teaching me how we were spared everything we
could be in heaven, even in trifles like this. I
was not so much as permitted to bear the edge
of .my regret, without the velvet of tenderness
interposing to blunt the smart. It used to be
thought among us below that one must be al-
lowed to suffer from error, to learn. It seemed
to be found here, that one learned by being
saved from suffering. I wondered how it
would be in the case of a really grave wrong
which I might be so miserable as to commit ;

BEYOND THE GATES. ' 61

and if I should ever be so unfortunate as to
discover by personal experience.

This train of thought went on while I was
examining the brook. It had brilliant colors
in the shallows, where certain strange agates
formed pebbles of great beauty. There were
also shells. A brook with shells enchanted
me. I gathered some of them ; they had opal-
ine tints, and some were transparent as spun
glass ; they glittered in the hand, and did not
dull when out of the water, like the shells we
were used to. The shadows of strange trees
hung across the tiny brown current, and un-
familiar birds flashed like tossed jewels over-
head, through the branches and against the
wonderful color of the sky. The birds were
singing. One among them had a marvelous
note. I listened to it for some time before I
discovered that this bird was singing a Te
Deum. How I knew that it was a Te Deum
I cannot say. The others were more like
earthly birds, except for the thrilling sweet-
ness of their notes . — and I could not see this
one, for fche seemed to be hidden from sight

52 BEYOND THE GATES.

upon her nest. I observed that the bird upon
the nest sang here as well as that upon the
bough; and that I understood her: "Te Deum
laudamus — laudamus " as distinctly as if I
had been listening to a human voice.

When I had comprehended this, and stood
entranced to listen, I began to catch the same
melody in the murmur of the water, and per-
ceived, to my astonishment, that the two, the
brook and the bird, carried parts of the har-
mony of a solemn and majestic mass. Appar-
ently these were but portions of the whole, but
all which it was permitted me to hear. My
father explained to me that it was not every
natural beauty which had the power to join in
such surpassing chorals ; these were selected,
for reasons which he did not attempt to speci-
fy. I surmised that they were some of the
simplest of the wonders of this mythical world,
which were entrusted to new-comers, as being
first within the range of their capacities. I
was enraptured with what I heard. The light
throbbed about me. The sweet harmony rang
on. I bathed my face in the musical water —

BEYOND THE GATES. 63

it was as if I absorbed the sound at the pores
of my skin. Dimly I received a hint of the
possible existence of a sense or senses of which
I had never heard.

What wonders were to come ! What knowl-
edge, what marvel, what stimulation and sat-
isfaction ! And I had but just begun ! I was
overwhelmed with this thought, and looked
about ; I knew not which way to turn ; I had
not what to say. Where was the first step ?
What was the next delight? The fire of dis-
covery kindled in my veins. Let us hasten,
that we may investigate Heaven !

44 Shall we go on ? " asked Father, regard-
ing me earnestly.

44 Yes, yes ! " I cried, " let us go on. Let
us see more — learn all. What a world have
I come to ! Let us begin at the beginning, and
go to the end of it ! Come quickly ! "

I caught his hand, and we started on my
eager mood. I felt almost a superabundance
of vitality, and sprang along ; there was ever-
lasting health within my bounding arteries ;
there was eternal vigor in myfirm muscle and

54 BEYOND THE GATES.

sinews. How shall I express, to one who has
never experienced it, the consciousness of life
that can never die ?

I could have leaped, flown, or danced like a
child. I knew not how to walk sedately, like
others whom I saw about us, who looked at me
smiling, as older people look at the young on
earth. " I, too, have felt thus — and thus." I
wanted to exercise the power of my arms and
limbs. I longed to test the triumphant poise
of my nerve. My brain grew clearer and
clearer, while for the gladness in my heart
there is not any earthly word. As I bounded
on, I looked more curiously at the construction
of the body in which I found myself. It was,
and yet it was not, like that which I had worn
on earth. I seemed to have slipped out of one
garment into another. Perhaps it was nearer
the truth to say that it was like casting off
an outer for an inner dress. There were ner-
vous and arterial and other systems, it seemed,
to which I had been accustomed. I cannot ex-
plain wherein they differed, as they surely did,
and did enormously, from their representatives

BEYOND THE GATES. 55

below. If I say that I felt as if I had got into
the soul of a body^ shall I be understood ? It
was as if I had been encased, one body within
the other, to use a small earthly comparison,
like the ivory figures which curious Chinese
carvers cut within temple windows. I was
constantly surprised at this. I do not know
what I had expected, but assuredly nothing
like the fact. Vague visions of gaseous or
meteoric angelic forms have their place in the
imaginations of most of us below ; we picture
our future selves as a kind of nebulosity.
When I felt the spiritual flesh, when I used
the strange muscle, when I heard the new
heart-beat of my heavenly identity, I remem-
bered certain words, with a sting of mortifica-
tion that I had known them all my life, and
paid so cool a heed to them : " There is a ter-
restrial body, and there is a celestial body."
The glory of the terrestrial was one. Behold,
the glory of the celestial was another. St.
Paul had set this tremendous assertion revolv-
ing in the sky of the human mind, like a star
which we had not brought into our astronomy.

56 BEYOND THE GATES.

It was not a bint or a hope that he gave ; it
was the affirmation of a man who presumed to
know. In common with most of his readers,
I had received his statement with a poor in-
credulity or cold disregard. Nothing in the
whole range of what we used to call the Bible,
had been more explicit than those words ; nei-
ther metaphor, nor allegory, nor parable be-
fogged them ; they were as clear cut as the
dictum of Descartes. I recalled them with
confusion, as I bounded over the elastic and
wondrously-tinted grass.

Never before, at least, had I known what
the color of green should be ; resembling, while
differing from that called by the name on earth
— a development of a color, a blossom from a
bud, a marvel from a commonplace. Thus the
sweet and common clothing which God had
given to our familiar earth, transfigured,
wrapped again the hills and fields of Heaven.
And oh, what else ? what next ? I turned to my
father to ask him in which direction we were
going ; at this moment an arrest of the whole
current of feeling checked me like a great dam.

%

BEYOND THE GATES. 57

Up to this point I had gone dizzily on ; I
had experienced the thousand diversions of a
traveler in a foreign land ; and, like such a
traveler, I had become oblivious of that which
I had left. The terrible incapacity of the hu-
man mind to retain more than one class of
strong impressions at once, was temporarily
increased by the strain of this, the greatest of
all human experiences. The new had expelled
the old. In an intense revulsion of feeling, too
strong for expression, I turned my back on the
beautiful landscape. All Heaven was before
me, but dear, daily love was behind.

" Father," I said, choking, " I never forgot
them before in all my life. Take me home !
Let me go at once. I am not fit to be alive
if Heaven itself can lead me to neglect my
mother."

IV.

In my distress I turned and would have fled,
which way I knew not. I was swept up like
a weed on a surge of self-reproach and longing.
What was eternal life if she had found out
that I was dead ? What were the splendors of
Paradise, if she missed me ? It was made evi-
dent to me that my father was gratified at the
turn my impulses had taken, but he intimated
that it might not be possible to follow them,
and that this was a matter which must be in-
vestigated before acting. This surprised me,
and I inquired of him eagerly — yet, I think
not passionately, not angrily, as I should once
have done at the thwarting of such a wish
as that — what he meant by the doubt he
raised.

" It is not always permitted," he said grave-
ly. " We cannot return when we would. We
go upon these errands when it is Willed. I

BEYOND THE GATES. 69

will go and learn what the Will may be for
you touching this matter. Stay here and wait
for me."

Before I could speak, he had departed swift-
ly, with the great and glad motion of those who
go upon sure business in this happy place ; as if
he himself, at least, obeyed unseen directions,
and obeyed them with his whole being. To
me, so lately from a lower life, and still so
choked with its errors, this loving obedience of
the soul to a great central Force which I felt
on every hand, but comprehended not, as yet,
affected me like the discovery of a truth in sci-
ence. It was as if I had found a new law
of gravitation, to be mastered only by infinite
attention. I fell to thinking more quietly after
my father had left me alone. There came a
subsidence to my tempestuous impulse, which
astonished myself. I felt myself drawn and
shaped, even like a wave by the tide, by some-
thing mightier far than my own wish. But
there was this about the state of feeling into
which I had come : that which controlled me
was not only greater, it was dearer than my

60 BEYOND TEE GATES.

desire. Already a calmness conquered my
storm. Already my heart awaited, without
outburst or out-thrust, the expression of that
other desire which should decide my fate in
this most precious matter. All the old rebel-
lion was gone, even as the protest of a woman
goes on earth before the progress of a mighty
love. I no longer argued and explained. I
did not require or insist. Was it possible that
I did not even doubt ? The mysterious, celes-
tial law of gravitation grappled me. I could no
more presume to understand it than I could
withstand it.

I had not been what is called a submissive
person. All my life, obedience had torn me in
twain. Below, it had cost me all I had to give,
to cultivate what believers called trust in God.

I had indeed trjed, in a desperate and faulty
fashion, but I had often been bitterly ashamed
at the best result which I could achieve, feel-
ing that I scarcely deserved to count myself
among His children, or to call myself by the
Name which represented the absolute obedience
of the strongest nature that human history had

BEYOND THE GATES. 61

known. Always, under all, I had doubted
whether I accepted God's will because I
wanted to, so much as because I had to. This
fear had given me much pain, but being of an
active temperament, far, perhaps too far, re-
moved from mysticism, I had gone on to the
next fight, or the next duty, without settling
my difficulties ; and so like others of my sort,
battled along through life, as best or as worst
I might. I had always hurried more than I
had grown. To be sure, I was not altogether
to blame for this, since circumstances had
driven me fast, and I had yielded to them not
always for my own sake ; but clearly, it may
be as much of a misfortune to be too busy, as
to be idle ; and one whose .subtlest effects are
latest perceived. I could now understand it to
be reasonable, that if I had taken more time
on earth to cultivate myself for the conditions
of Heaven, I might have had a different ex-
perience at the outset of this life, in which one
was never in a hurry.

My father returned from his somewhat pro-
tracted absence, while I was thinking of these

62 BEYOND THE GATES.

things thus quietly. My calmer mood went
out to meet his face, from which I saw at once
what was the result of his errand, and so a
gentle process prepared me for my disappoint-
ment when he said that it was not Willed that
I should go to her at this immediate time.
He advised me to rest awhile before taking
the journey, and to seek this rest at once. No
reasons were given for this command; yet
strangely, I felt it to be the most reasonable
thing in the world.

No ; blessedly no ! I did not argue, or pro-
test, I did not dash out my wild wish, I did
not ask or answer anything — how wonderful !

Had I needed proof any longer that I was
dead and in Heaven, this marvelous adjust
ment of my will to that other would in itself
have told me what and where I was.

I cannot say that this process took place
without effort. I found a certain magnificent
effort in it, like that involved in the free use of
my muscles ; but it took place without pain.
I did indeed ask, —

"Will it be long?"

BEYOND THE GATES. 63

" Not long."

" That is kind in Him ! " I remember say-
ing, as we moved away. For now, I found
that I thought first rather of what He gave
than of what He denied. It seemed to me
that I had acquired a new instinct. My being
was larger by the acquisition of a fresh power.
I felt a little as I used to do below, when I
had conquered a new language.

I had met, and by his loving mercy I had
mastered, my first trial in the eternal life.
This was to be remembered. It was like the
shifting of a plate upon a camera.

More wearied than I had thought by the
effort, I was glad to sink down beneath the
trees in a nook my father showed me, and
yield to the drowsiness which stole upon me
after the great excitement of the day. It was
not yet dark, but I was indeed tired. A sin-
gular subsidence, not like our twilight, but still
reminding one of it, had fallen upon the vivid
color of the air. No one was passing; the
spot was secluded ; my father bade me fare-
well for the present, saying that he should re-
turn again ; and I was left alone.

64 BEYOND THE GATES.

The grass was softer than eider of the
lower world; and lighter than snow-flakes,
the leaves that fell from low-hanging boughs
about me. Distantly, I heard moving water ;
and more near, sleepy birds. More distant
yet, I caught, and lost, and caught again,
fragments of orchestral music. I felt infinite
security. I had the blessedness of weariness
which knew it could not miss of sleep. Dreams
stole upon me with motion and touch so ex-
quisite' that I thought : " Sleep itself is a new
joy; what we had below was only a hint of
the real thing," as I sank into deep and
deeper rest.

Do not think that I forgot my love and
longing to be elsewhere. I think the wish to
see her and to comfort her grew clearer every
moment. But stronger still, like a comrade
marching beside it, I felt the pacing of that
great desire which had become dearer than
my own.

V.

When I waked, I was still alone. There
seemed to have been showers, for the leaves
and grass about me were wet ; yet I felt no
chill or dampness, or any kind of injury from
this fact. Rather I had a certain refreshment,
as if my sleeping senses had drunk of the peace
and power of the dew which flashed far and
near about me. The intense excitement under
which I had labored since coining to this place
was calmed. All the fevers of feeling were
laid. I could not have said whether there had
been what below we called night, or how the
passage of time had marked itself; I only
knew that I had experienced the recuperation
of night, and that I sprang to the next duty
or delight of existence with the vigor of re-
curring day.

As I rose from the grass, I noticed a four-
leaved clover, and remembering the pretty lit-

66 BEYOND THE GATES.

tie superstition we used to have about it, I
plucked it, and held it to my face, and so
learned that the rain-drop in this new land had
perfume ; an exquisite scent ; as if into the es-
sence of brown earth and spicy roots, and aro-
matic green things, such as summer rain distills
with us from out a fresh-washed world, there
were mingled an inconceivable odor drawn out
of the heart of the sky. Metaphysicians used
to tell us that no man ever imagined a new
perfume, even in his dreams. I could see that
they were right, for anything like the perfume
of clover after a rain in Heaven, had never
entered into my sense or soul before. I saved
the clover " for good luck," as I used to do.

Overhead there was a marvel. There seemed
to have been clouds — their passing and break-
ing, and flitting — and now, behold the heavens
themselves, bared of all their storm-drapery,
had drawn across their dazzling forms a veil
of glory. From what, for want of better
knowledge, I still called East to West, and
North to South, one supernal prism swept.
The whole canopy of the sky was a rainbow.

BEYOND THE GATES. 67

It is impossible to describe this sight in any
earthly tongue, to any dwellers of the earth. I
stood beneath it, as a drop stands beneath the
ocean. For a time I could only feel the surge
of beauty — mere beauty — roll above me.
Then, I think, as the dew had fallen from the
leaf, so I sunk upon my knees. I prayed be-
cause it was natural to pray, and felt God in
my soul as the prism feels the primary color,
while I thanked Him that I was immortally
alive. It had never been like this before, to
pray ; nay, prayer itself was now one of the
discoveries of Heaven. It throbbed through
me like the beat of a new heart. It seemed to
me that He must be very near me. Almost it
was, as if He and I were alone together in the
Universe. For the first time, the passionate
wish to be taken into His very visible presence,

— that intense desire which I had heard of,
as overpowering so many of the newly dead,

— began to take possession of me. But I
put it aside, since it was not permitted, and
a consciousness of my unfitness came to me,
which made the wish itself seem a kind of

68 BEYOND THE GATES.

mistake. I think this feeling was not unlike
what we called below a sense of sin. I did
not give it that name at that time. It had
come to me so naturally and gradually, that
there was no strain or pain about it. Yet when
I had it, I could no longer" conceive of being
without it. It seemed to me that I was a
stronger and wiser woman for it. A certain
gentleness and humility different from what I
had been used to, in my life of activity, where-
in so many depended on me, and on the de-
cided faculties of my nature, accompanied the
growing sense of personal unworthiness with
which I entered on the blessedness of everlast-
ing life.

I watched the rainbow of the sky till it had
begun to fade — an event in itself an exquisite
wonder, for each tint of the prism flashed out
and ran in lightning across the heavens before
falling to its place in the primary color, till
at last the whole spectacle was resolved into
the three elements, the red, the yellow, and the
blue; which themselves moved on and away,
like a conqueror dismissing a pageant.

BEYOND THE GATES. 69

When this gorgeous scene had ended, I
was surprised to find that though dead and
in Heaven, I was hungry. I gathered fruits
which grew near, of strange form and flavor,
but delicious to the taste past anything I had
ever eaten, and I drank of the brook where
the shells were, feeling greatly invigorated
thereby. I was beginning to wonder where
my father was, when I saw him coming to-
wards me. He greeted me with his old good-
morning Mas, laying his hand upon my head in
a benediction that filled my soul.

As we moved on together, I asked him if he
remembered how we used to say below :

" What a heavenly day ! "

Many people seemed to be passing on the
road which we had chosen, but as we walked
on they grew fewer.

"There are those who wish to speak with
you," he said with a slight hesitation, " but all
things can wait here; we learn to wait our-
selves. You are to go to your mother now."

"And not with you?" I asked, having a
certain fear of the mystery of my undertaking.

70 BEYOND THE GATES.

He shook his head with a look more nearly-
like disappointment than anything I had seen
upon his face in this new life ; explaining to
me, however, with cheerful acquiescence, that
it was not Willed that he should join me on
my journey.

" Tell her that I come shortly," he added,
" and that I come alone. She will understand.
And have no fear; you have much to learn,
but it will come syllable by syllable."

Now swiftly, at the instant while he spoke
with me, I found myself alone and in a moun-
tainous region, from which a great outlook
was before me. I saw the kingdoms of heaven
and the glory of them, spread out before me
like a map. A mist of the colors of amethyst
and emerald interfused, enwrapped the out-
lines of the landscape. All details grew
blurred and beautiful like a dream at which
one snatches vainly in the morning. Off, and
beyond, the infinite ether throbbed. Yonder,
like a speck upon a sunbeam, swam the tiny
globe which we called earth. Stars and suns
flashed and faded, revolving and waiting in

BEYOND THE GATES. 71

their places. Surely it was growing dark, for
they sprang out like mighty light-houses upon
the grayness of the void.

The splendors of the Southern cross streamed
far into the strange light, neither of night nor
day, not of twilight or dawn, which surrounded
me.

Colored suns, of which astronomers had in-
deed taught us, poured undreamed-of light upon
unknown planets. I passed worlds whose lu-
minaries gave them scarlet, green, and purple
days. " These too," I thought, " I shall one
day visit." I flashed through currents of
awful color, and measures of awful night. I
felt more than I perceived, and wondered more
than I feared. It was some moments before I
realized, by these few astronomical details,
that I was adrift, alone upon the mystery and
mightiness of Space.

Of this strange and solitary journey, I can
speak so imperfectly, that it were better almost
to leave it out of my narrative. Yet, when I
remember how I have sometimes heard those
still upon earth conceive, with the great fear

72 BEYOND THE GATEB.

and ignorance inseparable from earth-trained
imagination, of such transits of the soul from
point to point in ether, I should be glad to ex-
press at least the incomplete impression which
I received from this experience.

The strongest of these, and the sweetest,
was the sense of safety — and still the sense of
safety; unassailable, everlasting; blessed be-
yond the thought of an insecure life to com-
pass. To be dead was to be dead to danger,
dead to fear. To be dead was to be alive to
a sense of assured good chance that nothing in
the universe could shake.

So I felt no dread, believe me, though much
awe and amazement, as I took my first journey
from Heaven to earth. I have elsewhere said
that the distance, by astronomical calculation,
was in itself perhaps not enormous. I had an
impression that I was crossing a great sphere
or penumbra, belonging to the earth itself, and
having a certain relation to it, like the soul to
the body of a man.

Was Heaven located within or upon this
world-soul ? The question occurred t» me, but

BEYOND THE GATES. 73

up to this time, I am still unable to answer it.
The transit itself was swift and subtle as a
thought. Indeed, it seemed to me that thought
itself might have been my vehicle of convey-
ance ; or perhaps I should say, feeling. My
love and longing took me up like pollen taken
by the wind. As I approached the spot where
my dear ones dwelt and sorrowed for me, de-
sire and speed both increased by a mighty mo-
mentum.

Now I did not find this journey as difficult
as that other, when I had departed, a freshly-
freed soul, from earth to Heaven. I learned
that I was now subject to other natural laws.
A celestial gravitation controlled the celestial
body, as that of the earth had compelled the
other. I was upborne in space by this new
and mysterious influence. Yet there was no
dispute between it and the other law, the eter-
nal law of love, which drew me down. Be-
tween soul and body, in the heavenly exist-
ence, there could be no more conflict than
between light and an ether wave.

I do not say that I performed this journey

74 BEYOND THE GATES.

without effort or intelligence. The little knowl-
edge I ever had was taxed in view of the gran-
deurs and the mysteries around me. Shall
I be believed if I say that I recalled all the
.*_ _ geo^phy tot »y lile . .
teacher had left still somewhat freshly im-
printed on the memory? that the facts of
physics recurred to me, even in that inroad
of feeling? and that I guided myself to the
Massachusetts town as I would have found it
upon a globe at school ? Already I learned
that no acquisition of one life is lost in the
next. Already I thanked God for everything
I knew, only wishing, with the passion of ig-
norance newly revealed to itself by the dawn
of wisdom, that my poor human acquirements
had ever truly deserved the high name of
study, or stored my thought with its eternal
results.

VI.

As I approached the scene of my former
life, I met many people. I had struck a realm
of spirits who at first perplexed me. They
did not look happy, and seemed possessed by
great unrest. I observed that, though they
fluttered and moved impatiently, none rose
far above the surface of the earth. Most of
them were employed in one way or another
upon it. Some bought and sold ; some eat and
drank; others occupied themselves in coarse
pleasures, from which one could but turn away
the eyes. There were those who were busied
in more refined ways : — students with eyes
fastened to dusty volumes ; virtuosos who hung
about a picture, a statue, a tapestry, that had
enslaved them; one musical creature I saw,
who ought to have been of exquisite organiza-
tion, judging from his hands — he played per-
petually upon an instrument that he could

/

76 BEYOND THE GATES.

not tune ; women, I saw too, who robed and
disrobed without a glint of pleasure in their
faded faces.

There were ruder souls than any of these —
but one sought for them in the dens of the
earth; their dead hands still were red with
stains of blood, and in their dead hearts reigned
the remnants of hideous passions.

Of all these appearances, which I still found
it natural to call phenomena as I should onc6
hare done, it will be remembered that I re-
ceived the temporary and imperfect impression
of a person passing swiftly through a crowd,
so that I do not wish my account to be ac-
cepted for anything more trustworthy than
it is.

While I was wondering greatly what it
meant, some one joined and spoke to me fa-
miliarly, and, turning, I saw it to be that
old neighbor, Mrs. Mersey, to whom I have
alluded, who, like myself, seemed to be bent
upon an errand, and to be but a visitor upon
the earth. She was a most lovely spirit, as
she had always been, and I grasped her hand

BEYOND THE GATES. 77

cordially while we swept on rapidly together
to our journey's end.

"Do tell me," I whispered, as soon as I
could draw her near enough, " who all these
people are, and what it means. I fear to
guess. And yet indeed they seem like the
dead who cannot get away."

c4 Alas," she sighed, " you have said it.
They loved nothing, they lived for nothing,
they believed in nothing, they cultivated
themselves for nothing but the earth. They
simply lack the spiritual momentum to get
away from it. It is as much the working of a
natural law as the progress of a fever. Many
of my duties have been among such as these.
I know them well. They need time and tact
in treatment, and oh, the greatest patience !
At first it discouraged me, but I am learning
the enthusiasm of my work."

" These, then," I said, " were those I saw in
that first hour, when my father led me out of
the house, and through the street. I saw you
among them, Mrs. Mersey, but I knew even
then that you were not of them. But surely

'

78 BEYOND THE GATES.

they do not stay forever prisoners of the earth ?
Surely such a blot on the face of spiritual life
cannot but fade away? I am a new-comer.
I am still quite ignorant, you see. But I do
not understand, any more than I did before,
how that could be."

"They have their choice," she answered
vaguely. But when I saw the high solemnity
of her aspect, I feared to press my questions.
I could not, however, or I did not forbear say-
ing:—

" At least you must have already persuaded
many to -sever themselves from such a condi-
tion as this ? "

"Already some, I hope," she replied eva-
sively, as she moved away. She always had
remarkably fine manners, of which death had
by no means deprived her. I admired her
graciousness and dignity as she passed from
my side to that of one we met, who, in a de-
jected voice, called her by her name, and in-
timated that he wished to speak with her. He
was a pale and restless youth, and I thought,
but was not sure, for we separated so quickly,

BEYOND THE GATES. 79

that it. was the little fellow I spoke of, Bobby
Bend. I looked back, after I had advanced
some distance on my way, and saw the two
together, conversing earnestly. While I was
still watching them, it seemed to me, though I
cannot be positive upon this point, that they
had changed their course, and were quietly
ascending, she leading, he following, above the
dismal sphere in which she found the lad, and
that his heavy, awkward, downward motions
became freer, struggling upward, as I gazed.

I had now come to the location of my old
home, and, as I passed through the familiar
village streets, I saw that night was coming
on. I met many whom I knew, both of those
called dead and living. The former recog-
nized me, but the latter saw me not. No one
detained me, however, for I felt in haste which
I could not conceal.

With high-beating heart, I approached the
dear old house. No one was astir. As I
turned the handle of the door, a soft, sickening
touch crawled around my wrist; recoiling, I
found that I was entwisted in a piece of crape
that the wind had blown against me.

80 BEYOND THE GATES.

I went in softly ; but I might have spared
myself the pains. No one heard me, though
the heavy door creaked, I thought, as emphat-
ically as it always had — loudest when we were
out latest, and longest when we shut it quick-
est. I went into the parlor and stood, for a
moment, uncertain what to do.

Alice was there, and my married sister
Jane, with her husband and little boy. They
sat about the fire, conversing sadly. Alice's
pretty eyes were disfigured with crying. They
spoke constantly of me. Alice was relating to
Jane and her family the particulars of my ill-
ness. I was touched to hear her call me " pa-
tient and sweet ; " — none the less because she
had often told me I was the most impatient
member of the family.

No one had observed my entrance. Of
course I was prepared for this, but I cannot
tell why I should have felt it, as I certainly
did. A low bamboo chair, cushioned with
green cretonne^ stood by the table. I had a
fancy for this chair, and, pleased that they had
left it unoccupied, advanced and took it, in the

BEYOND THE GATES. 81

old way. It was with something almost like a
shock, that I found myself unnoticed in the
very centre of their group.

While I sat there, Jane moved to fix the
fire, and, in returning, made as if she would
take the bamboo chair.

"Oh, don't! -" said Alice, sobbing freshly.
Jane's own tears sprang, and she turned away.

"It seems to me," said my brother-in-law,
looking about with the patient grimace of a
business man compelled to waste time at a
funeral, " that there has a cold draught come
into this room from somewhere. Nobody has
left the front door open, I hope ? I '11 go and
see."

He. went, glad of the excuse to stir about,
poor fellow, and I presume he took a com-
fortable smoke outside.

The little boy started after his father, but

was bidden back, and crawled up into the chair

where I was sitting. I took the child upon

my lap, and let him stay. No one removed

him, he grew so quiet, and he was soon asleep

in my arms. This pleased me; but I could

6

82 BEYOND THE GATES.

not be contented long, so I kissed the boy and
put him down. He cried bitterly, and ran
to his mother for comfort.

While they were occupied with him, I stole
away. I thought I knew where Mother would
be, and was ashamed of myself at the reluc-
tance I certainly had to enter my own room,
under these exciting circumstances.

Conquering this timidity, as unwomanly and
unworthy, I went up and opened the familiar
door. I had begun to learn that neither sound
nor sight followed my motions now, so that I
was not surprised at attracting no attention
from the lonely occupant of the room. I closed
the door — from long habit I still made an
effort to turn the latch softly — and resolutely
examined what I saw.

My mother was there, as I had expected.
The room was cold — there was no fire, — and
she had on her heavy blanket shawl. The gas
was lighted, and one of my red candles, but
both burned dimly. The poor woman's ma-
genta geranium had frozen. My mother sat
in the red easy-chair, which, being a huge, old-

BEYOND THE GATES. 83

fashioned thing, surrounded and shielded her
from the draught. My clothes, and medicines,
and all the little signs of sickness had been
removed. The room was swept, and orderly.
Above the bed, the pictures and the carved
cross looked down.

Below them, calm as sleep, and cold as
frost, and terrible as silence, lay that which
had been I.

She did not shrink. She was sitting close
beside it. She gazed at it with the tenderness
which death itself could not affright. Mother
was not crying. She did not look as if she
had shed tears for a long time. But her wan-
ness and the drawn lines about her mouth
were hard to see. Her aged hands trembled
as she cut the locks of hair from the neck of
the dead. She was growing to be an old
woman. And I — her first-born — I had been
her staff of life, and on me she had thought to
lean in her widowed age. She seemed to me
to have grown feeble fast in the time since I
had left her.

All my soul rushed to my lips, and I cried

84 BEYOND THE. GATES.

out — it seemed that either the dead or the
living must hear that cry —

" Mother ! Oh, my dear mother 1 "

But deaf as life, she sat before me. She
had just cut off the lock of hair she wanted ; as
I spoke, the curling ends of it twined around
her fingers ; I tried to snatch it away, thinking
thus to arrest her attention.

The lock of hair trembled, turned, and clung
the closer to the living hand. She pressed it
to her lips with the passion of desolation.

" But, Mother," I cried once more, " I am
here" I flung my arms about her and kissed
her again and again. I called and entreated
her by every dear name that household love
had taught us. I besought her to turn, to se'fe,
to hear, to believe, to be comforted. I told her
how blest was I, how bountiful was death.

" I am alive," I said. "I am alive ! I see
you, I touch you, hear you, love you, hold
you! » I tried argument and severity; I tried
tenderness and ridicule.

She turned at this : it seemed to me that she
regarded me. She stretched her arms out;

BEYOND THE GATES. 85

her aged hands groped to and fro as if she felt
for something and found it not ; she shook her
head, her dim eyes gazed blankly into mine.
She sighed patiently, and rose as if to leave the
room, but hesitated, — covered the face of the
dead body — caressed it once or twice as if it
had been a living infant — and then, taking
up her Bible, which had been upon the chair
beside her, dropped upon her knees, and hold-
ing the book against her sunken cheek, aban-
doned herself to silent prayer.

This was more than I could bear just then,
and, thinking to collect myself by a few mo-
ments' solitude, I left her. But as I stood in
the dark hall, uncertain and unquiet, I noticed
a long, narrow line of light at my feet, and,
following it confusedly, found that it came
from the crack in the closed, but unlatched
door of another well-remembered room. I
pushed the door open hurriedly and closed it
behind me.

My brother sat in this room alone. His fire
was blazing cheerfully and, flashing, revealed
the deer's-head from the Adirondacks, the

86 BEYOND THE GATE 8.

stuffed rose-curlew from Florida, the gull's wing
from Cape Ann, the gun and rifle and bamboo
fish-pole, the class photographs over the man-
tel, the feminine features on porcelain in vel-
vet frames, all the little trappings with which
I was familiar. Tom had been trying to study,
but his Homer lay pushed away, with crumpled
leaves, upon the table. Buried in his lexicon
— one strong elbow intervening — down, like
a hero thrown, the boy's face had gone.

"Tom," I said quietly — I always spoke
quietly to Tom, who had a constitutional fear
of what he called " emotions " — " Tom, you 'd
better be studying your Greek. I 'd much
rather see you. Come, I '11 help you."

He did not move, poor fellow, and as I came
nearer, I saw, to my heart-break, that our Tom
was crying. Sobs shook his huge frame, and
down between the iron fingers, toughened by
base-ball matches, tears had streamed upon the
pages of the Odyssey.

" Tom, Tom, old fellow, don't / " I cried,
and, hungry as love, I took the boy. I got
upon the arm of the smoking chair, as I used

BEYOND THE GATE 8. 87

to, and so had my hands about his neck, and
my cheek upon his curly hair, and would
have soothed him. Indeed, he did grow calm,
and calmer, as if he yielded to my touch ; and
presently he lifted his wet faee, and looked
about the room, half ashamed, half defiant, as
if to ask who saw that.

"Come, Tom," I tried again. "It really
is n't so bad as you think. And there is Moth-
er catching cold in that room. Go and get her
away from the body. It is no place for her.
She '11 get sick. Nobody can manage her as
well as you."

As if he heard me, he arose. As if he knew
me, he looked for the flashing of an instant
into my eyes.

" I don't see how a girl of her sense can be
dead" said the boy aloud. He stretched his
arms once above his head, and out into the
bright, empty room, and I heard him groan in
a way that wrung my heart. I went impul-
sively to him, and as his arms closed, they
closed about me strongly. He stood for a mo-
ment quite still. I could feel the nervous strain
subsiding all over his big soul and body.

88 BEYOND THE GATES.

" Hush," I whispered. " I 'm no more dead
than you are."

If he heard, what he felt, God knows. I
speak of a mystery. No optical illusion, no
tactual hallucination could hold the boy who
took all the medals at the gymnasium. The
hearty, healthy fellow could receive no abnormal
sign from the love and longing of the dead. Only
spirit unto spirit could attempt that strange
out-reaching. Spirit unto spirit, was it done ?
Still, I relate a mystery, and what shall I say ?
His professor in the class-room of metaphysics
would teach him next week that grief owns the
law of the rhythm of motion ; and that at the
oscillation of the pendulum the excitement of
anguish shall subside into apathy which mourn-
ers alike treat as a disloyalty to the dead, and
court as a nervous relief to the living.

Be this as it may, the boy grew suddenly
calm, and even cheerful, and followed me at
once. I led him directly to his mother, and
left them for a time alone together.

After this my own calm, because my own
confidence, increased. My dreary sense of

BEYOND THE GATES. 89

helplessness before the suffering ot those I
loved, gave place to the consciousness of power
to reach them. I detected this power in my-
self in an undeveloped form, and realized that
it might require exercise and culture, like all
other powers, if I would make valuable use of
it. I could already regard the cultivation of
the faculty which would enable love to defy
death, and spirit to conquer matter, as likely
to be one of the occupations of a full life.

I went out into the fresh air for a time to
think these thoughts through by myself, undis-
turbed by the sight of grief that I could not
remove ; and strolled up and down the village
streets in the frosty night.

When I returned to the house they had all
separated for the night, sadly seeking sleep in
view of fce events of L morrow, when, L I
had already inferred, the funeral would take
place.

I spent the night among them, chiefly with
my mother and Tom, passing unnoticed from
room to room, and comforting them in such
ways as I found possible. The boy had locked

90 BEYOND THE GATES.

his door, but after a few trials I found myself
able to pass the medium of this resisting mat-
ter, and to enter and depart according to my
will. Tom finished his lesson in the Odyssey,
and I sat by and helped him when I could.
This I found possible in simple ways, which
I may explain farther at another time. We
had often studied together, and his mind
the more readily, therefore, responded to the
influence of my own. He was soon well asleep,
and I was free to give all my attention to my
poor mother. Of those long and solemn hours,
what shall I say ? I thought she would never,
never rest. I held her in these arms the live-
long night. With these hands I caressed and
calmed her. With these lips I kissed her.
With this breath I warmed her cold brow and
fingers. With all my soul and body I willed
that I would comfort her, and I believe, thank
God, I did. At dawn she slept peacefully ;
she slept late, and rose refreshed. I remained
closely by her throughout the day.

They did their best, let me say, to provide
me with a Christian funeral, partly in accor-

BEYOND THE GATES. 91

dance with some wishes I had expressed in
writing, partly from the impulse of their own
good sense. Not a curtain was drawn to dark-
en the house of death. The blessed winter sun-
shine flowed in like the current of a broad
stream, through low, wide windows. No ghast-
ly "funeral flowers" filled the room; there was
only a cluster of red pinks upon the coffin, and
the air was sweet but not heavy with the car-
nation perfume that they knew I loved. My
dead body and face they had covered with a
deep red pall, just shaded off the black, as dark
as darkness could be, and yet be redness. Not
a bell was tolled. Not a tear — at least, I
mean, by those nearest me — not a tear was
shed. As the body was carried from the house,
the voices of unseen singers lifted the German
funeral chant : —

"Go forth ! go on, with solemn song,
Short is the way ; the rest is long ! "

At the grave they sang : —

" Softly now the light of day,"

since my mother had asked for one of the old

92 BEYOND THE GATES.

hymns ; and besides the usual Scriptural Burial
Service, a friend, who was dear to me, read Mrs.
Browning's " Sleep."

It was all as I would have had it, and I
looked on peacefully. If I could have spoken
I would have said: "You have buried me
cheerfully, as Christians ought, as a Christian
ought to be."

I was greatly touched, I must admit, at the
grief of some of the poor, plain people who fol-
lowed my body on its final journey to the vil-
lage church-yard. The woman who sent the
magenta geranium refused to be comforted,
and there were one or two young girls whom I
had been so fortunate as to assist in difficul-
ties, who, I think, did truly mourn. Some of
my boys from the Grand Army were there, too,
— some, I mean, whom it had been my privi-
lege to care for in the hospitals in the old war
days. They came in uniform, and held their
caps before their eyes. It did please me to see
them there.

When the brief service at the grave was
over, I would have gone home with my mother,

BEYOND THE GATES. 93

feeling that she needed me more than ever;
but as I turned to do so, I was approached by
a spirit whose presence I had not observed.
It proved to be my father. He detained me,
explaining that I should remain where I was,
feeling no fear, but making no protest, till the
Will governing my next movement anight be
made known to me. So I bade my mother
good-by, and Tom, as well as I could in the
surprise and confusion, and watched them
all as they went away. She, as she walked,
seemed to those about her to be leaning only
upon her son. But I beheld my father ten-
derly hastening close beside her, while he sup-
ported her with the arm which had never failed
her yet, in all their loving lives. Therefore I
could let her go, without distress.

The funeral procession departed slowly; the
grave was filled; one of the mill-girls came
back and threw in some arbor vitae and a
flower or two, — the sexton hurried her, and
both went away. It grew dusk, dark. I and
my body were left alone together.

Of that solemn watch, it is not for me to

94 BEYOND THE GATES.

chatter to any other soul. Memories over-
swept me, which only we two could share.
Hopes possessed me which it were not possible
to explain to another organization. Regret,
resolve, awe, and joy, every high human emo-
tion excepting fear, battled about us. While
I knelt tfrere in the windless night, I heard
chanting from a long distance, but yet distinct
to the dead, that is to the living ear. As I
listened, the sound deepened, approaching,
and a group of singing spirits swept by in
the starlit air, poised like birds, or thoughts,
above me :

"It is sown a natural — it is raised a spir-
itual body"

"Death I where is thy sting? — Gravel
— thy victory ? "

" Believing in -Jfe, though he were dead, yet
shall he live."

I tried my voice, and joined, for I could no
longer help it, in the thrilling chorus. It was
the first time since I died, that I had felt my-
self invited or inclined to share the occupa-
tions of others, in the life I had entered.

BEYOND THE GATES. 95

Kneeling there, in the happy night, by my
own grave, I lifted all my soul and sense into
the immortal words, now for the first time
comprehensible to me :

" I believe, I believe in the resurrection of
the dead."

It was not long thereafter that I received
the summons to return. I should have been
glad to go home once more, but was able to
check my own preference without wilful pro-
test, or an aching heart. The conviction that
all was well with my darlings and myself, for
life and for death, nad now become 1 intense
yet simple thing, like consciousness itself.

I went as, and where I was bidden, joyfully.

VII.

Upon reentering the wonderful place which
I had begun to call Heaven, and to which I
still give that name, though not, I must say*
with perfect assurance that the word is prop-
erly applied to that phase of the life of which
I am the yet most ignorant recorder, I found
myself more weary than I had been at any
time since my change came. I was looking
about, uncertain where to go, feeling, for the
first time, rather homeless in this new country,
when I was approached by a stranger, who in-
quired of me what I sought :

" Best," I said promptly.

" A familiar quest," observed the stranger,
smiling.

" You are right, sir. It is a thing I have
been seeking for forty years."

** And never found? "

** Never found,"

BEYOND THE GATES. 97

" I will assist you," he said gently, " that is,
if you wish it. What will you have first? "

44 Sleep, I think, first, then food. I have
been through exciting scenes. I have a touch
— a faint one — of what below we called ex-
haustion. Yet now I am conscious in advance
of the rest which is sure to come. Already I
feel it, like the ebbing of the wave that goes
to form the flow of the next. How blessed to
know that one carCt be ill ! "

" How do you know that ? " asked my com-
panion.

44 On the whole, I don't know that I do," I
answered, with embarrassment, " I suppose it
is a remnant of one's old religious teaching :
4 The inhabitant shall not say I am sick.'
Surely there were such words."

44 And you trusted them? " asked the stran-
ger.

44 The Bible was a hard book to accept," I
said quickly, " I would not have you overesti-
mate my faith. I tried to believe that it was
God's message. I think I did believe it. But
the reason was clear to me. I could not get
past that if I wished to."

98 BEYOND THE GATES.

" What, then, was the reason," inquired my
friend, solemnly, "why you trusted the mes-
sage called the Word of God, as received by
the believing among His children on earth ? "

" Surely," I urged, " there is but one reason.
I refer to the history of our Lord. I do not
know whether all in this place are Christians ;
but I was one. — Sir ! I anticipate your ques-
tion. I was a most imperfect, useless one —
to my sorrow and my shame I say it — but, so
far as I went, I was an honest one."

"Did you love Him? — Him whom you
called Lord?" asked the stranger, with an air
of reserve. I replied that I thought I could
truly say that He was dear to me.

I began to be deeply moved by this conver-
sation. I stole a look at the stranger, whom
I had at first scarcely noticed, except as one
among many passing souls. He was a man of
surpassing majesty of mien, and for loveliness
of feature I had seen no mortal to vie with
him. "This," I thought, "must be one of the
beings we called angels." Astonishing bright-
ness rayed from him at every motion, and his

BEYOND TEE GATES. 99

noble face was like the sun itself. He moved
beside me like any other spirit, and conde-
scended to me so familiarly, yet with so unap-
proachable a dignity, that my heart went out
to him as breath upon the air. It did not
occur to me to ask him who he was, or whither
he led me. It was enough that he led, and
I followed without question or reply. We
walked and talked for a long time together.

He renewed the conversation by asking me
whether I had really staked my immortal ex-
istence upon the promise of that obscure, un-
educated Jew, twenty centuries in his grave,
— that plain man who lived a fanatic's life,
and died a felon's death, and whose teachings
had given rise to such bigotry and error upon
the earth. I answered that I had never been
what is commonly called a devout person, not
having a spiritual temperament, but that I had
not held our Master responsible for the mis-
takes of either his friends or his foes, and that
the greatest regret I had brought with me into
Heaven was that I had been so unworthy to
bear His blessed name. He next inquired of

100 BEYOND THE GATES.

me, if I truly believed that I owed my entrance
upon my present life to the interposition of
Him of whom we spoke.

"Sir," I said, "you touch upon sacred
nerves. I should find it hard to tell you how
utterly I believe that immortality is the gift of
Jesus Christ to the human soul."

" I believed this on earth," I added, " I be-
lieve it in Heaven. I do not know it yet, how-
ever. I am a new-comer ; I am still very igno-
rant. No one has instructed me. I hope to
learn 'syllable by syllable.' I am impatient
to be taught ; yet I am patient to be ignorant
till I am found worthy to learn. It may be,
that you, sir, who evidently are of a higher
order of life than ours, are sent to enlighten
me?"

My companion smiled, neither dissenting
from, nor assenting to my question, and only
asked me in reply, if I had yet spoken with
the Lord. I said that I had not even seen
Him ; nay, that I had not even asked to see
Him. My friend inquired why this was, and
I told him frankly that it was partly because

fa fa

fa fa

fa fa

fa *

fa fa

BEYOND THE GATES. 101

I was so occupied at first — nay, most of the
time until I was called below.

"I had not much room to think. I was
taken from event to event, like a traveler.
This matter that you speak of seemed out of
place in every way at that time."

Then I went on to say that my remissness
was owing partly to a tittle real self-distrust,
because I feared I was not the kind of believer
to whom He would feel quickly drawn ; that I
felt afraid to propose such a preposterous
thing as being brought into His presence;
that I supposed, -when He saw fit to reveal
Himself to me, I should be summoned in some
orderly way, suitable to this celestial commu-
nity; that, in fact, though I had cherished
this most sweet and solemn desire, I had not
mentioned it before, not even to my own
father who conducted me to this place.

"I have not spoken of it," I said, "to any
body but to you."

The stranger's face wore a remarkable ex-
pression when I said this ; as if I had deeply
gratified him, and there glittered from his en-

102 BEYOND THE GATES.

tire form and features such brightness as well-
nigh dazzled me. It was as if, where a lesser
being would have spoken, or stirred, he shone.
I felt as if I conversed with him by radiance,
and that living light had become a vocabulary
between us. I have elsewhere spoken of the
quality of reflecting light as marked among the
ordinary inhabitants of this new life ; but in
this case I was aware of a distinction, due, I
thought, to the superior order of existence to
which my friend belonged. He did not, like
the others, reflect ; he radiated glory. More
and more, as we had converse together, this
impressed, until it awed me. We remained
together for a long time. People who met us,
greeted the angel with marked reverence, and
turned upon me glances of sympathetic delight ;
but no one interrupted us. We continued our
walk into a more retired place, by the shore of
a sea, and there we had deep communion.

My friend had inquired if I were still faint,
and if I preferred to turn aside for food and
rest ; but when he asked me the question I
was amazed to find that I no longer had the

BEYOND THE GATES. 103

need of either. Such delight had I in his
presence, such invigoration in his sympathy,
that glorious recuperation had set in upon my
earth-caused weariness. Such power had the
soul upon the celestial body! Food for the
first was force to the other.

It seemed to me that I had never known re-
freshment of either before ; and that Heaven
itself could contain no nutriment that would
satisfy me after this upon which I fed in that
high hour.

It is not possible for me to repeat the solemn
words of that interview. We spoke of grave
and sacred themes. He gave me great counsel
and fine sympathy. He gave me affectionate
rebuke and unfathomable resolve. We talked
of those inner experiences which, on earth, the
soul protects, like struggling flame, between
itself and the sheltering hand of God. We
spoke much of the Master, and of my poor
hope that I might be permitted after I had
been a long time in Heaven, to become worthy
to see Him, though at the vast distance of my
unworthiness. Of that unworthiness too, we

M I

104 BEYOND THE GATES.

spoke most earnestly; while we did so, the
sense of it grew within me like a new soul ; yet
so divinely did my friend extend his tenderness
to me, that I was strengthened far more than
weakened by these finer perceptions of my un-
fitness, which he himself had aroused in me.
The counsel that he gave me, Eternity could
not divert out of my memory, and the comfort
which I had from him I treasure to this hour.
"Here," N I thought, "here, at last, I find re-
proof as gentle as sympathy, and sympathy as
invigorating as reproof. Now, for the first
time in all my life, I find myself truly under-
stood. What could I not become if I pos-
sessed the friendship of such a being ! How
shall I develop myself so as to obtain it?
How can I endure to be deprived of it ? Is
this too, like friendship on earth, a snatch, a
compromise, a heart-ache, a mirror in which
one looks only long enough to know that it is
dashed away? Have I begun that old pain
again, here ? "

For I knew, as I sat in that solemn hour
with my face to the sea and my soul with him,

BE TON D THE GATES. 105

while sweeter than any song of all the waves
of Heaven or earth to sea-lovers sounded his
voice who did commune with me, — verily I
knew, for then and forever, that earth had been
a void to me because I had him not, and that
Heaven could be no Heaven to me without
him.

All which I had known of human love ; all
that I had missed ; the dreams from which I had
been startled; the hopes that had evaded me ;
the patience which comes from knowing that
one may not even try not to be misunderstood ;
the struggle to keep a solitary heart sweet ; the
anticipation of desolate age which casts its
shadow backward upon the dial of middle life ;
the paralysis of feeling which creeps on with its
disuse ; the distrust of one's own atrophied fac-
ulties of loving ; the sluggish wonder if one is
ceasing to be lovable ; the growing difficulty of
explaining oneself even when it is necessary,
because no one being more than any other cares
for the explanation ; the things which a lonely
life converts into silence that cannot be bro-
ken, swept upon me like rapids, as, turning to

* i

106 BEYOND THE GATES.

look into his dazzling face, I said : " This —
all this he understands."

But when, thus turning, I would have told
him so, for there seemed to be no poor pride in
Heaven, forbidding soul to tell the truth to soul,
— when I turned, my friend had risen, and was
departing from me, as swiftly and mysteriously
as he came. I did not cry out to him to stay,
for I felt ashamed ; nor did I tell him how he
had bereft me, for that seemed a childish folly.
I think I only stood and looked at him.

" If there is any way of being worthy of your
friendship," I said below my breath, "I will
have it, if I toil for half Eternity to get it."

Now, though these words were scarcely ar-
ticulate, I think he heard them, and turning,
with a smile which will haunt my dreams and
stir my deeds as long as I shall live, he laid
his hand upon my head, and blessed me — but
what he said I shall tell no man — and so de-
parted from me, and I was left upon the shore
alone, fallen, I think, in a kind of sleep or swoon.

When I awoke, I was greatly calmed and
strengthened, but disinclined, at first, to move.
I had the reaction from what I knew was the

BEYOND THE GATES. 107

intensest experience of my life, and it took
time to adjust my feelings to my thoughts.

A young girl came up while I sat there upon
the sands, and employed herself in gathering
certain marvelous weeds that the sea had tossed
up. These weeds fed upon the air, as they had
upon the water, remaining fresh upon the girl's
garments, which she decorated with them. She
did not address me, but strolled up and down
silently. Presently, feeling moved by the as-
surance of congeniality which one detects so
much more quickly in Heaven than on earth, I
said to the young girl : —

" Can you tell me the name of the angel —
you must have met him — who has but just
left me, and with whom I have been convers-
ing?"

" Do you then truly not know ? " she asked,
shading her eyes with her hand, and looking off
in the direction my friend had taken ; then back
again, with a fine, compassionate surprise at me.

" Indeed I know not."

" That was the Master who spoke with you."

" What did you say ? "

" That was our Lord Himself."

>

vm.

After the experience related in the last
chapter, I remained for some time in solitude.
Speech seemed incoherence, and effort impos-
sible.' I needed a pause to adapt myself to my
awe and my happiness ; upon neither of which
will it be necessary for me to dwell. Yet I
think I may be understood if I say that from
this hour I found that what we call Heaven
had truly begun for me. Now indeed for the
first time I may say that I believed without
wonder in the life everlasting ; since now, for
the first time, I had a reason sufficient for the
continuance of existence. A force like the
cohesion of atoms held me to eternal hope.
Brighter than the dawn of friendship upon a
heart bereft, more solemn than the sunrise of
love itself upon a life which had thought itself
unloved, stole on the power of the Presence to
which I had been admitted in so surprising, and

BEYOND THE GATES. 109

yet, after all, how natural a way ! Henceforth
the knowledge that this experience might be
renewed for me at any turn of thought or act,
would illuminate joy itself, so that 4' it should
have no need of the sun to lighten it." I
recalled these words, as one recalls a famil-
iar quotation repeated for the first time on
some foreign locality of which it is descriptive.
Now I knew what he meant, who wrote : " The
Lamb is the Light thereof."

When I came to myself, I observed the
young girl who had before addressed me still
strolling on the shore. She beckoned, and I
went to her, with a new meekness in my heart.
What will He have me to do? If, by the
lips of this young thing, He choose to instruct
me, let me glory in the humility with which I
will be a learner !

All things seemed to be so exquisitely or-
dered for us in this new life, all flowed so
naturally, like one sound-wave into another,
with ease so apparent, yet under law so superb,
that already I was certain Heaven contained

110 BEYOND THE GATES.

no accidents, and no trivialities; as it did no
shocks or revolutions.

" If you like," said the young girl, " we will
cross the sea."

" But how ? " I asked, for I saw no boat.

" Can you not, then, walk upon the water
yet ? " she answered. " Many of us do, as He
did once below. But we no longer call such
things miracles. They are natural powers.
Yet it is an art to use them. One has to
learn it, as we did swimming, or such things, in
the old times."

46 1 have only been here a short time," I
said, half amused at the little celestial " airs "
my young friend wore so sweetly. " I know
but little yet. Can you teach me how to walk
on water ? "

"It would take so much time," said the
young girl, " that I think we should not wait for
that. We go on to the next duty, now. You
had better learn, I think, from somebody wiser
than I. I will take you over another way."

A great and beautiful shell, not unlike a
nautilus, was floating near us, on the incoming

BEYOND THE GATES. Ill

tide, and my companion motioned to me to step
into this. I obeyed her, laughing, but without
any hesitation. " Neither shall there be any
more death," I thought as I glanced over the
rose-tinted edges of the frail thing into the
water, deeper than any I had ever seen, but un-
clouded, so that I looked to the bottom of the
sea. The girl herself stepped out upon the
waves with a practiced air, and lightly drawing
the great shell with one hand, bore me after her,
as one bears a sledge upon ice. As we came
into mid-water we began to meet others, some
walking, as she did, some rowing or drifting
like myself. Upon the opposite shore uprose
the outlines of a more thickly settled commu-
nity than any I had yet seen.

Watching this with interest that deepened
as we approached the shore, I selfishly or un-
courteously forgot to converse with my com-
panion, who did not disturb my silence until
we landed. As she gave me her hand, she
said in a quick, direct tone :

" Well, Miss Mary, I see that you do not
know me, after all."

112 BEYOND TEE GATES.

I felt, as I had already done once or twice
before, a certain social embarrassment (which
in itself instructed me, as perpetuating one of
the minor emotions of life below that I had
hardly expected to renew) before my lovely
guide, as I shook my head, struggling with the
phantasmal memories evoked by her words. No,
I did not know her.

" I am Marie Sauv6e. I hope you remem-
ber."

She said these words in French. The change
of language served instantly to recall the long
train of impressions stored away, who knew
how or where, about the name and memory of
this girl.

" Marie Sauv^e ! You — here ! " I ex-
claimed in her own tongue.

At the name, now, the whole story, like the
bright side of a dark-lantern, flashed. It was
a tale of sorrow and shame, as sad, perhaps, as
any that it had been my lot to meet. So far
as I had ever known, the little French girl,
thrown in my way while I was serving in bar-
racks at Washington, had baffled every effort I

BEYOND THE GATES. 113

had made to win her affection or her confi-
dence, and had gone out of my life as the this-
tle-down flies on the wind. She had cost me
many of those precious drops of the soul's
blood which all such endeavor drains ; and in
the laboratory of memory I had labelled them,
" Worse than Wasted," and sadly wondered
if I should do the same again for such another
need, at just such hopeless expenditure, and
had reminded myself that it was not good
spiritual economy, and said that I would never
repeat the experience, and known all the while
that I should.

Now here, a spirit saved, shining as the air
of Heaven, " without spot or any such thing "—
here, wiser in heavenly lore than I, longer with
Him than I, nearer to Him than I, dearer to
Him, perhaps, than I — here was Marie Sau-
v£e.

" I do not know how to apologize," I said,

struggling with my emotion, " for the way in

which I spoke to you just now. Why should

you not be here ? Why, indeed ? Why am

I here? Why" —

8

114 BRYOND THE GATES.

"Dear Miss Mary," cried the girl, inter-
rupting me passionately, " but for you it might
never have been as it is. Or never for ages —
I cannot say. I might have been a ghost,
bound yet to the hated ghost of the old life.
It was your doing, at the first — down there —
all those years ago. Miss Mary, you were the
first person I ever loved. You did n't know
it. I had no idea of telling you. But I did, I
loved you. After you went away, I loved you ;
ever since then, I loved you. I said, I will be
fit to love her before I die. And then I said,
I will go where she is going, for I shall never
get at her anywhere else. And when I en-
tered this place — for I had no friend or relative
here that I knew, to meet me — I was more
frightened than it is possible for any one like
you to understand, and wondered what place
there could be for one like me in all this coun-
try, and how I could ever get accustomed to
their ways, and whether I should shock and
grieve them — you can't understand that; I
dreaded it so, I was afraid I should swear after
I got to Heaven; I was afraid I might say

BEYOND THE GATES. 115

some evil word, and shame them all, and shame
myself more than I could ever get over. I
knew I was n't educated for any such society,
. I knew there was n't anything in me that would
be at home here, but just " —

" But just what, Marie ? " I asked, with a
humility deeper than I could have expressed.

"But just my love for you, Miss Mary.
That was all. I had nothing to come to
Heaven on, but loving you and meaning to be
a better girl because I loved you. That was
truly all."

" That is impossible ! " I said quickly. " Your
love for me never brought you here of itself
alone. You are mistaken about this. It is
neither Christianity nor philosophy."

"There is no mistake," persisted the girl,
with gentle obstinacy, smiling delightedly at
my dogmatism, " I came here because I loved
you. Do you not see? In loving you, I
loved — for the first time in my life I loved
— goodness. I really did. And when I got
to this place, I found out that goodness was
the same as God. And I had been getting

116 BEYOND THE GATES.

the love of God into my heart, all that time,
in that strange way, and never knew how it
was with me, until — Oh, Miss Mary, who do
you think it was, who, that met me within an
hour after I died ? "

" It was our Master," she added in an awe-
struck, yet rapturous whisper, that thrilled me
through. " It was He Himself. He was the
first, for I had nobody, as I told you, belong-
ing to me in this holy place, to care for a wretch
like me. — He was the first to meet me I And
it was He who taught me everything I had to
learn. It was He who made me feel ac-
quainted and at home. It was He who took
me on from love of you, to love of Him, as
you put one foot after another in learning to
walk after you have had a terrible sickness.
And it was He who never reminded me —
never once reminded me — of the sinful crea-
ture I had been. Never, by one word or look,
from that hour to this day, has He let me feel
ashamed in Heaven. That is what He is ! "
cried the girl, turning upon me, in a little sud-
den, sharp way she used to have ; her face and

BEYOND THE GATES. 117

form were so transfigured before me, as she
spoke, that it seemed as if she quivered with
excess of light, and were about to break away
and diffuse herself upon the radiant air, like
song, or happy speech, or melting color.

" Die for Him ! " she said after a passion-
ate silence. " If I could die everlastingly and
everlastingly and everlastingly, to give Him
any pleasure, or to save Him any pain — But
then, that's nothing," she added, "I love
Him. That is all that means. — And I've
only got to live everlastingly instead. That
is the way He has treated me — me 1 "

IX.

The shore upon which we had landed, was
thickly populated, as I have said. Through a
sweep of surpassingly beautiful suburbs, we
approached the streets of a town. It is hard
to say why I should have been surprised at
finding in this place the signs of human traffic,
philanthropy, art, and study — what otherwise
I expected, who can say ? My impressions, as
Marie Sauv^e led me through the city, had
the confusion of sudden pleasure. The width
and shining cleanliness of the streets, the
beauty and glittering material of the houses,
the frequent presence of libraries, museums,
public gardens, signs of attention to the wants
of animals, and places of shelter for travel-
ers such as I had never seen in the most
advanced and benevolent of cities below, —
these were the points which struck me most
forcibly.

BEYOND THE GATES. 119

The next thing, which in a different mood
might have been the first that impressed me
was the remarkable expression of the faces
that I met or passed. No thoughtful person
can have failed to observe, in any throng, the
preponderant look of unrest and dissatisfaction
in the human eye. Nothing, to a fine vision,
so emphasizes the isolation of being, as the
faces of people in a crowd. In this new com-
munity to which I had been brought, that old
effect was replaced by a delightful change. I
perceived, indeed, great intentness of purpose
here, as in all thickly-settled regions ; the coun-
tenances that passed me indicated close con-
servation of social force and economy of intel-
lectual energy; these were people trained by
attrition with many influences, and balanced
with the conflict of various interests. But
these were men and women, busy without
hurry, efficacious without waste ; they had am-
bition without unscrupulousness, power without
tyranny, success without vanity, care without
anxiety, effort without exhaustion, — hope, fear,
toil, uncertainty it seemed, elation it was sure

120 BEYOND THE GATES.

— but a repose that it was impossible to call
by any other name than divine, controlled their
movements, which were like the pendulum of a
golden clock whose works are out of sight. I
watched these people with delight. Great num-
bers of them seemed to be students, thronging
what we should call below colleges, seminaries,
or schools of art, or music, or science. The pro-
portion of persons pursuing some form of intel-
lectual acquisition struck me as large. My
little guide, to whom I mentioned this, assented
to the fact, pointing out to me a certain insti-
tution we had passed, at which she herself was,
she said, something like a primary scholar, and
from which she had been given a holiday to
meet me as she did, and conduct me through
the journey which had been appointed for me
on that day. I inquired of her what her stud-
ies might be like ; but she told me that she was
hardly wise enough as yet to explain to me
what I could learn for myself when I had
been longer in this place, and when my leisure
came for investigating its attractions at my
own will.

BEYOND THE GATES. 121

"I am uncommonly ignorant, you know,"
said Marie Sauv^e humbly, "I have every-
thing to learn. There is book knowledge and
thought knowledge and soul knowledge, and I
have not any of these. I was as much of what
you used to call a heathen, as any Fiji-Islander
you gave your missionaries to. I have so much
to learn, that 1 am not sent yet upon other
business such as I should like."

Upon my asking Marie Sauv^e what busi-
ness this might be, she hesitated. "I have
become ambitious in Heaven," she answered
slowly. "I shall never be content till I am
fit to be sent to the worst woman that can be
found — no matter which side of death — I
don't care in what world — I want to be sent
to one that nobody else will touch ; I think I
might know how to save her. It is a tremen-
dous ambition ! " she repeated. " Preposterous
for the greatest angel there is here! And
yet I — /mean to do it."

I was led on in this way by Marie Sauv^e,
through and out of the city into the western
suburbs; we had approached from the east,

122 BEYOND THE GATES.

and bad walked a long distance. There did
not occur to me, I think, till we had made the
circuit of the beautiful town, one thing, which,
when I did observe it, struck me as, on the
whole, the most impressive that I had noticed.
" I have not seen," I said, stopping suddenly,
" I have not seen a poor person in all this

city."

" Nor an aged one, have you ? " asked Ma-
rie Sauvde, smiling.

" Now that I think of it, — no. Nor a sick
one. Not a beggar. Not a cripple. Not a
mourner. Not — and yet what have we here ?
This biding, by which you are leading me,
bears a device above the door, the last I should
ever have expected to find here"

It was an imposing building, of a certain
translucent material that had the massiveness
of inarble, with the delicacy of tirin agate il-
luminated from within. The rear of this build-
ing gave upon the open country, with a back,
ground of hills, and the vision of the sea which
I had crossed. People strolled about the
grounds, which had more than the magnifi-

BEYOND THE GATES. 123

cence of Oriental gardens. Music came from
the building, and the saunterers, whom I saw,
seemed nevertheless not to be idlers, but per-
sons busily employed in various ways — I
should have said, under the close direction
of others who guided them. The inscription
above the door of this building was a word, in
a tongue unknown to me, meaning "Hospital,"
as I was told.

"They are the sick at heart," said Marie
Sauv£e, in answer to my look of perplexity,
"who are healed there. And they are the
sifek of soul ; those who were most unready for
the new life; they whose spiritual being was
diseased through inaction, they are the invalids
of Heaven. There they are put under treat-
ment, and slowly cured. With some, it takes
long. I was there myself when I first came,
for a little ; it will be a most interesting place
for you to visit, by-and-by."

I inquired who were the physicians of this
celestial sanitarium.

" They who unite the natural love of healing
to the highest spiritual development."

124 BEYOND THE OATEB.

" By no means, then, necessarily they who
were skilled in the treatment of diseases on
earth ? " I asked, laughing.

" Such are oftener among the patients,"
said Marie Sauv£e sadly. To me, so lately
from the earth, and our low earthly way of
finding amusement in facts of this nature, this
girl's gravity was a rebuke. I thanked her
for it, and we passed by the hospital — which
I secretly made up my mind to investigate at
another time — and so out into the wider
country, more sparsely settled, but it seemed
to me more beautiful than that we had left
behind.

" There," I said, at length, "is to my taste
the loveliest spot we have seen yet. That is
the most homelike of all these homes."

We stopped before a small and quiet house
built of curiously inlaid woods, that reminded
me of Sorrento work as a great achievement
may remind one of a first and faint suggestion.
So exquisite was the carving and coloring, that
on a larger scale the effect might have inter-
fered with the solidity of the building, but so

BEYOND THE GATES. 125

modest were the proportions of this charming
house, that its dignity was only enhanced by
its delicacy. It was shielded by trees, some
familiar to me, others strange. There were
flowers — not too many ; birds ; and I noticed
a fine dog sunning himself upon the steps.
The sweep of landscape from all the win-
dows of this house must have been grand.
The wind drove up from the sea. The light,
which had a peculiar depth and color, remind-
ing me of that which on earth flows from un-
der the edge of a breaking storm-cloud at the
hour preceding sunset, formed an aureola about
the house. When my companion suggested
my examining this place, since it so attracted
me, I hesitated, but yielding to her wiser judg-
ment, strolled across the little lawn, and stood,
uncertain, at the threshold. The dog arose as
I came up, and met me cordially, but no per-
son seemed to be in sight.

"Enter," said Marie Sauv<5e in a tone of
decision, You are expected. Go where you
will."

I turned to remonstrate with her, but the

126 BEYOND THE GATES.

girl had disappeared. Finding myself thus
thrown on my own resources, and having
learned already the value of obedience to mys-
terious influences in this new life, I gathered
courage, and went into the house. The dog
followed me affectionately, rather than suspi-
ciously.

For a few moments I stood in the hall or
ante-room, alone and perplexed. Doors opened
at right and left, and vistas of exquisitely-
ordered rooms stretched out. I saw much of
the familiar furniture of a modest home, and
much that was unfamiliar mingled therewith.
I desired to ask the names or purposes of cer-
tain useful articles, and the characters and
creators of certain works of art. I was be-
wildered and delighted. I had something of
the feeling of a rustic visitor taken for the
first time to a palace or imposing town-house.

Was Heaven an aggregate of homes like
this ? Did everlasting life move on in the
same dear ordered channel — the dearest that
human experiment had ever found — the chan-
nel of family love? Had one, after death, the

i

BEYOND THE GATES. 127

old blessedness without the old burden ? The
old sweetness without the old mistake? The
familiar rest, and never the familiar fret ?
Was there always in the eternal world " some-
body to come home to " ? And was there al-
ways the knowledge that it could not be the
wrong person ? Was all that eliminated from
celestial domestic life ? Did Heaven solve the
problem on which earth had done no more
than speculate ?

While I stood, gone well astray on thoughts
like these, feeling still too great a delicacy
about my uninvited presence in this house, I
heard the steps of the host, or so I took them
to be ; they had the indefinable ring of the
master's foot. I remained where I was, not
without embarrassment, ready to apologize for
my intrusion as soon as he should come within
sight. He crossed the long room at the left,
leisurely; I counted his quiet footsteps; he
advanced, turned, saw me — I too, turned —
and so, in this way, it came about that I stood
face to face with my own father.

• • . I had found the eternal life full of the

128 BEYOND THE GATES.

unexpected, but this was almost the sweetest
thing that had happened to me yet.

Presently my father took me over the house
and the grounds; with a boyish delight, ex-
plaining to me how many years he had been
building and constructing and waiting with
patience in his heavenly home for the first one
of his own to join him. Now, he too, should
have " somebody to come home to." As we
dwelt upon the past and glanced at the future,
our full hearts overflowed. He explained to
me that my new life had but now, in the
practical sense of the word, begun ; since a
human home was the centre of all growth and
blessedness. When he had shown me to my
own portion of the house, and bidden me wel-
come to it, he pointed out to me a certain
room whose door stood always open, but whose
threshold was never crossed. I hardly feel
that I have the right, in this public way, to de-
scribe, in detail, the construction or adornment
of this room. I need only say that Heaven
itself seemed to have been ransacked to bring
together the daintiest, the most delicate, the

BEYOND THE GATES. 129

purest, thoughts and fancies that celestial skill
or art could create. Years had gone to the
creation of this spot ; it was a growth of time,
the occupation of that loneliness which must
be even in the happy life, when death has
temporarily separated two who had been one.
I was quite prepared for his whispered words,
when he said,—

"Your mother's room, my dear. It will be
all ready for her at any time."

This union had been a marriage — not one
of the imperfect ties which pass under the
name, on earth. Afterwards, when I learned
more of the social economy of the new life, I
perceived more clearly the rarity and peculiar
value of an experience which had in it the ele-
ments of what might be called (if I should be
allowed the phrase) eternal permanency, and
which involved, therefore, none of the disin-
tegration and redistribution of relations con-
sequent upon passing from temporary or mis-
taken choices to a fixed and perfect state of
society.

Later, on that same evening, I was called
9

^

130 BETOND THE GATES.

eagerly from below. I was resting, and alone ;
— I had, so to speak, drawn my first breath
in Heaven ; once again, like a girl in my own
room under my father's roof; my heart at
anchor, and my peace at full tide. I ran as
I used to run, years ago, when he called me,
crying down,—

"I'm coming, Father," while I delayed a
moment to freshen my dress, and to fasten it
with some strange white flowers that climbed
oyer my window, and peered, nodding like
children, into the room.

When I reached the hall, or whatever might
be the celestial name for the entrance room
below, I did not immediately see my father,
but I heard the sound of voices beyond, and
perceived tie presence of many people in <he
house. As I hesitated, wondering what might
be the etiquette of these new conditions, and
whether I should be expected to play the
hostess at a reception of angels or saints, some
one came up from behind me, I think, and
held out his hand in silence.

" St. Johns ! " I cried, " Jamie St. Johns !
The last time I saw you " —

*
*»

BEYOND THE GATES. 181

" The last time you saw me was in a field-
hospital after the battle of Malvern Hills,"
said St. Johns. " I died in your arms, Miss
Mary. Shot flew about you while you got
me that last cup of water. I died hard. You
sang the hymn I ashed for — 4 Ye who tossed
on beds of pain ' — and the shell struck the
tent-pole twenty feet off, but you sang right
on. I was afraid you would stop. I was al-
most gone. But you never faltered. You
sang my soul out — do you remember? I Ve
been watching all this while for you, I've
been a pretty busy man since I got to this
place, but I 've always found time to run in
and ask your father when he expected you.

"I meant to be the first all along; but I hear
there's a girl got ahead of me. She 's here,
too, and some more women. But most of us
are the boys, to-night, Miss Mary, — come to
give you a sort of house-warming — just to
say we 've never forgotten ! . . . and you see
we want to say ' Welcome home at last ' to our
army woman — God bless her — as she blessed
us!

132 BEYOND THE GATES.

" Come in, Miss Mary ! Don't feel bashfuL
It 's nobody but your own boys. Here we are.
There 's a thing I remember — you used to
read it. 4 For when ye fail* — you know I
never could quote straight — 'they shall re-
ceive you into everlasting habitations ' — Was
n't that it ? Now here. See ! Count us ! Not
one missing^ do you see ? You said you 'd
have us all here yet — all that died before you
did. You used to tell us so. You prayed it,
and you lived it, and you did it, and, by His
everlasting mercy, here we are. Look us over.
Count again. I could n't make a speech on
earth and I can't make one in Heaven — but
the fellows put me up to it. Come in, Miss
Mary ! Dear Miss Mary — why, we want to
shake hands with you, all around ! We want
to sit and tell army-stories half the night. We
want to have some of the old songs, and —
What! Crying, Miss Mary? — You? We
never saw you cry in all our lives. Your lip
used to tremble. You got pretty white ; but
you weren't that kind of woman. Oh, see
here ! Crying in Heaven ? " —

From this time, the events which I am try-
ing to relate began to assume in fact a much
more orderly course; yet in form I scarcely
find them more easy to present. Narrative,
as has been said of conversation, " is always
but a selection," and in this case the peculiar
difficulties of choosing from an immense mass
of material that which can be most fitly com-
pressed into the compass allowed me by these
few pages, are so great, that I have again and
again laid down my task in despair ; only to
be urged on by my conviction that it is more
clearly my duty to speak what may carry com-
fort to the hearts of some, than to worry because
my imperfect manner of expression may offend
the heads of others. All I can presume to
hope for this record of an experience is, that
it may have a passing value to certain of my
readers whose anticipations of what they call

134 BEYOND THE GATES.

" the Hereafter" are so vague or so dubious as
to be more of a pain than a pleasure to them-
selves.

From the time of my reception into my fa-
ther's house, I lost the sense of homelessness
which had more or less possessed me since my
entrance upon the new life, and felt myself be-
coming again a member of an organized society,
with definite duties as well as assured pleasures
before me.

These duties I did not find astonishingly dif-
ferent in their essence, while they had changed
greatly in form, from those which had occu-
pied me upon earth. I found myself still in-
volved in certain filial and domestic responsi-
bilities, in intellectual acquisition, in the moral
support of others, and in spiritual self -culture.
I found myself a member of an active commu-
nity in which not a drone nor an invalid could be
counted, and I quickly became, like others who
surrounded me, an exceedingly busy person.
At first my occupations did not assume sharp
professional distinctiveness, but had rather the
character of such as would belong to one in

BEYOND THE GATES. 135

training for a more cultivated condition. This
seemed to be true of many of my fellow-citizens ;
that they were still in a state of education for
superior usefulness or happiness. With others,
as I have intimated, it was not so. My father's
business, for instance, remained what it had al-
ways been — that of a religious teacher; and I
met women and men as well, to whom, as in the
case of my old neighbor, Mrs. Mersey, there
had been set apart an especial fellowship with
the spirits of the recently dead or still living,
who had need of great guidance. I soon formed,
by observation, at least, the acquaintance, too,
of a wide variety of natures ; — I met artisans
and artists, poete and scientists, people of agri-
cultural pursuits, mechanical inventors, musi-
cians, physicians, students, tradesmen, aerial
messengers to the earth, or to other planets, and
a long list besides, that would puzzle more than
it would enlighten, should I attempt to describe
it. I mention these points, which I have no
space to amplify, mainly to give reality to any
allusions that I shall make to my relations in
the heavenly city, and to let it be understood

136 BEYOND THE GATES.

that I speak of a community as organized and
as various as Paris or New York ; which pos-
sessed all the advantages and none of the evils
that we are accustomed to associate with massed
population; that such a community existed
without sorrow, without sickness, without death,
without anxiety, and without sin ; that the evi-
dences of almost incredible harmony, growth,
and happiness which I saw before me in that
one locality, I had reason to believe extended
to uncounted others in unknown regions, throng-
ing with joys and activities the mysteries of
space and time.

For reasons which will be made clear as I
approach the end of my narrative, I cannot
speak as fully of many high and marvelous
matters in the eternal life, as I wish that I
might have done. I am giving impressions
which, I am keenly aware, have almost the im-
perfection of a broken dream. I can only crave
from the reader, on trust, a patience which he
may be more ready to grant me at a later time.

I now began, as I say, to assume regular
duties and pleasures ; among the keenest of the

BEYOND THE GATES. 137

latter was the constant meeting of old friends
and acquaintances. Much perplexity, great
delight, and some disappointment awaited me
in these dSnouements of earthly story.

The people whom I had naturally expected
to meet earliest were often longest delayed from
crossing my path; in some cases, they were
altogether missing. Again, I was startled by
coming in contact with individuals that I had
never associated, in my conceptions of the
future, with a spiritual existence at all ; in these
cases I was sometimes humbled by discovering a
type of spiritual character so far above my own,
that my fancies in their behalf proved to be
unwarrantable self-sufficiency. Social life in
the heavenly world, I soon learned, was a series
of subtle or acute surprises. It sometimes re-
minded me of a simile of George Eliot's, where-
in she likened human existence to a game of
chess in which each one of the pieces had intel-
lect and passions, and the player might be
beaten by his own pawns. The element of un-
expectedness, which constitutes the first and yet
the most unreliable charm of earthly society, had

138 BEYOND THE GATE8.

here acquired a permanent dignity. One of the
most memorable things which I observed about
heavenly relations was, that people did not, in
the degree or way to which I was accustomed,
tire of each other. Attractions, to begin with,
were less lightly experienced ; their hold was
deeper; their consequences more lasting. I
had not been under my new conditions long,
before I learned that here genuine feeling was
never suffered to fall a sacrifice to intellectual
curiosity, or emotional caprice ; that here one
had at last the stimulus of social attrition with-
out its perils, its healthy pleasures without its
pains. I learned, of course, much else, which it
is more than difficult, and some things which
it is impossible, to explain. I testify only of
what I am permitted.

Among the intellectual labors^that I earliest
undertook was the command of the Universal
Language, which I soon found necessary to my
convenience. In a community like that I had
entered, many nationalities were represented,
and I observed that while each retained its own
familiar earthly tongue, and one had the pleas-

BEYOND THE GATES. 139

ant opportunity of acquiring as many others as
one chose, yet a common vocabulary became
a desideratum of which, indeed, no one was
compelled to avail himself contrary to his taste,
but in which many, like myself, found the
greatest pleasure and profit. The command of
this language occupied much well-directed time.
I should not omit to say that a portion of my
duty and my privilege consisted in renewed
visits to the dearly-loved whom I had left upon
the earth. These visits were sometimes matters
of will with me. Again, they were strictly occa-
sions of permission, and again, I was denied the
power to make them when I most deeply de-
sired to do so. Herein I learned the difference
between trial and trouble, and that while the
last was stricken out of heavenly life, the first
distinctly regained. It is pleasant to me to
remember that I was allowed to be of more
than a little comfort to those who mourned for
me ; that it was I who guided them from de-
spair to endurance, and so through peace to
cheerfulness, and the hearty renewal of daily
human content. These visits were for a long

140 BEYOND THE GATES.

time — excepting the rare occasions on which
I met Him who had spoken to me upon the
sea-shore — the deepest delight which was of-
fered me*

Upon one point I foresee that I shall be
questioned by those who have had the patience
so far to follow my recital. What, it will be
asked, was the political constitution of the com-
munity you describe? What place in celestial
society has worldly caste ?

When I say, strictly none at all, let me not
be misunderstood. I observed the greatest va-
rieties of rank in the celestial kingdom, which
seemed to me rather a close Theocracy than
a wild commune. There were powers above
me, and powers below; there were natural
and harmonious social selections; there were
laws and their officers; there was obedience
mi «. dig**, ft. ™ Mue.0, .1 i*
authority ; there were gifts and their dis-
tinctions. I may say that I found far more
reverence for differences of rank or influence
than I was used to seeing, at least in my own
corner of the earth. The main point was

BEYOND TEE GATES. 141

that the basis of the whole thing had under-
gone a tremendous change. Inheritance, wealth,
intellect, genius, beauty, all the old passports
to power, were replaced by one so simple yet so
autocratic, that I hardly know how to give any
idea at once of its dignity and its sweetness. I
may call this personal holiness. Position, in
the new life, I found depended upon spiritual
claims. Distinction was the result of charac-
ter. The nature nearest to the Divine Nature
ruled the social forces. Spiritual culture was
the ultimate test of individual importance.

I inquired one day for a certain writer of
world-wide — I mean of earth-wide — celebrity,
who, I had learned, was a temporary visitor in
the city, and whom I wished to meet. I will
not for sufficient reasons mention the name of
this man, who had been called the genius of
his century, below. I had anticipated that a
great ovation would be given him, in which I
desired to join, and I was surprised that his
presence made little or no stir in our community.
Upon investigating** facte, Ileamed that his
public influence was, so far, but a slight one,

142 BEYOND THE GATES.

though it had gradually gained, and was likely
to increase with time. He had been a man
whose splendid powers were dedicated to the
temporary and worldly aspects of Truth, whose
private life was selfish and cruel, who had writ-
ten the most famous poem of his age, but " by
all his searching " had not found out God. '

In the conditions of the eternal life, this gen-
ius had been obliged to set itself to learning
the alphabet of spiritual truth ; he was still a
pupil, rather than a master among us, and I
was told that he himself ardently objected to
receiving a deference which was not as yet his
due ; having set the might of his great nature
as strenuously now to the spiritual, as once to
the intellectual task ; in which, I must say, I
was not without expectation that he would ul-
timately outvie us all.

On the same day when this distinguished
man entered and left our city (having quietly
accomplished his errand), I heard the confusion
of some public excitement at a distance, and
hastening to see what it meant, I discovered
that the object of it was a plain, I thought in

BEYOND THE GATES. 143

her earthly life she must have been a poor wo-
man, obscure, perhaps, and timid. The people
pressed towards her, and received her into the
town by acclamation. They crowned her with
amaranth and flung lilies in her path. The
authorities of the city officially met her ; the
people of influence hastened to beseech her to
do honor to their homes by her modest pres-
ence ; we crowded for a sight of her, we begged
for a word from her, we bewildered her with
our tributes, till she hid her blushing face and
was swept out of our sight.

44 But who is this," I ashed an eager passer,
44 to whom such an extraordinary reception is
tendered? I have seen nothing like it since I
came here."

44 Is it possible you do not know ? "

My informant gave a name which indeed
was not unfamiliar to me; it was that of a
woman who had united to extreme beauty of
private character, and a high type of faith in
invisible truths, life-long devotion to an unpop-
ular philanthropy. She had never been called
a "great" woman on earth. Her influence
had not been large. Her cause had never been

144 BE TON D THE GATES.

the fashion, while she herself was living. So-
ciety had never amused itself by adopting her,
even to the extent of a parlor lecture. Her
name, so far as it was familiar to the public at
all, had been the synonym of a poor zealot, a
plain fanatic, to be tolerated for her conscien-
tiousness and — avoided for her earnestness.
Since her death, the humane consecration which
she represented had marched on like a con-
quering army over her grave. Earth, of which
she was not worthy, had known her too late.
Heaven was proud to do honor to the spiritual
foresight and sustained self-denial, as royal
as it was rare.

I remember, also, being deeply touched by a
sight upon which I chanced, one morning, when
I was strolling about the suburbs of the city,
seeking the refreshment of solitude before the
duties of the day began. For, while I was
thus engaged, I met our Master, suddenly.
He was busily occupied with others, and, be-
yond the deep recognition of His smile, I had
no converse with Him. He was followed at
a little distance, as He was apt to be, by a
group of playing children; but He was in

BEYOND THE GATES. 146

close communion with two whom I saw to be
souls newly-arrived from the lower life. One
of these was a man — I should say he had been
a rough man, and had come out of a rude life
— who conversed with Him eagerly but rever-
ently, as they walked on towards the town.
Upon the other side, our Lord held with His
own hand the hand of a timid, trembling
woman, who scarcely dared raise her eyes from
the ground ; now and then she drew His gar-
ment's edge furtively to her lips, and let it fall
again, with the slow motion of one who is in a
dream of ecstasy. These two people, I judged,
had no connection with each other beyond the
fact that they were simultaneous new-comers to
the new country, and had, perhaps, both borne
with them either special need or merit, I could
hardly decide which. I took occasion to ask a
neighbor, an old resident of the city, and wise
in its mysteries, what he supposed to be the
explanation of the scene before us, and why
Ze two were so distinguished by tixe favor
of Him whose least glance made holiday in the

' soul of any one of us. It was then explained

10

146 BEYOND THE GATES.

to me, that the man about whom I had in-
quired was the hero of a great calamity, with
which the lower world was at present occupied.
One of the most frightful railway accidents of
this generation had been averted, and the lives
of four hundred helpless passengers saved, by
the sublime sacrifice of this locomotive engineer,
who died (it will be remembered) a death of
voluntary and unique torture to save his train.
All that could be said of the tragedy was that
it held the essence of self-sacrifice in a form
seldom attained by man. At the moment I
saw this noble fellow, he had so immediately
come among us that the expression of physical
agony had hardly yet died out of his face, and
his eye still blazed with the fire of his tremen-
dous deed.

44 But who is the woman ? " I asked.

44 She was a delicate creature — sick — died
of the fright and shock; the only passenger
on the train who did not escape."

I inquired why she too was thus preferred ;
what glorious deed had she done, to make her
so dear to the Divine Heart?

BEYOND THE GATES. 147

** She ? Ah, she," said my informant, "was
only one of the household saints. She had
been notable among celestial observers for
many years. You know the type I mean —
shy, silent — never thinks of herself, scarcely
knows she has a self — toils, drudges, endures,
prays ; expects nothing of her friends, and
gives all ; hopes for little, even from her Lord,
but surrenders everything; full of religious
ideals, not all of them theoretically wise, but
practically noble ; a woman ready to be cut to
inch pieces for her faith in an invisible Love
that has never apparently given her anything
in particular. Oh, you know the kind of wo-
man : has never had anything of her own, in
all her life — not even her own room — and
a whole family adore her without knowing it,
and lean upon her like infants without seeing
it. We have been watching for this woman's
coming. We knew there would be an especial
greeting for her. But nobody thought of her
accompanying the engineer. Come ! Shall we
not follow, and see how they will be received ?
If I am not mistaken, it will be a great day in
the city."

XI.

Among the inquiries that must be raised by
my fragmentary recital, I am only too keenly
aware of the difficulty of answering one which
I do not see my way altogether to ignore. I
refer to that affecting the domestic relations of
the eternal world.

It will be readily seen that I might not be
permitted to share much of the results of my
observation in this direction, with earthly curi-
osity, or even earthly anxiety. It is not with-
out thought and prayer for close guidance that
I suffer myself to say, in as few words as pos-
sible, ttat I fo^md the uniox* which go to form
heavenly homes so different from the marriage
relations of earth, in their laws of selection
and government, that I quickly understood the
meaning of our Lord's few revealed words as to
that matter ; while yet I do not find myself at
liberty to explain either the words or the facts.

BEYOND THE GATES. 149

I think I cannot be wrong in adding, that in
a number of cases, so great as to astonish me,
the marriages of earth had no historic effect
upon the ties of Heaven. Laws of affiliation
uniting soul to soul in a relation infinitely
closer than a bond, and more permanent than
any which the average human experience would
lead to if it were socially a free agent, controlled
the attractions of this pure and happy life, in
a manner of which I can only say that it must
remain a mystery to the earthly imagination.
I have intimated that in some cases the choices
of time were so blessed as to become the
choices of Eternity. I may say, that if I found
it lawful to utter the impulse of my soul, I
should cry throughout the breadth of the earth
a warning to the lightness, or the haste, or the
presumption, or the mistake that chose to love
for one world, when it might have loved for
two.

For, let me say most solemnly, that the rela-
tions made between man and woman on earth
I found to be, in importance to the individual,
second to nothing in the range of human ex-

150 BEYOND THE GATES.

perience, save the adjustment of the soul to
the Personality of God Himself.

If I say that I found earthly marriage to
have been a temporary expedient for preserv-
ing the form of the eternal fact ; that freedom
in this as in all other things became in Heaven
the highest law ; that the great sea of human
misery, swelled by the passion of love on earth,
shall evaporate to the last drop in the blaze of
bliss to which no human counterpart can ap-
proach any nearer than a shadow to the sun, —
I may be understood by those for whose sake
alone it is worth while to allude to this mys-
tery at all ; for the rest it matters little.

Perhaps I should say, once for all, that every
form of pure pleasure or happiness which had
existed upon the earth had existed as a type of
a greater. Our divinest hours below had been
scarcely more than suggestions of their coun-
terparts above. I do not expect to be under-
stood. It must only be remembered that, in
all instances, the celestial life develops the soul
of a thing. When I speak of eating and
drinking, for instance, I do not mean that we

BEYOND THE GATES. 161

cooked and prepared our food as we do below.
The elements of nutrition continued to exist
for us as they had in the earth, the air, the
water, though they were available without
drudgery or anxiety. Yet I mean distinctly
that the sense of taste remained, that it was
gratified at need, that it was a finer one and
gave a keener pleasure than its coarser proto-
type below. I mean that the soul of a sense
is a more exquisite thing than what we may
call the body of the sense, as developed to
earthly consciousness.

So far from there being any diminution in
the number or power of the senses in the spir-
itual life, I found not only an acuter intensify
in those which we already possessed, but that
the effect of our new conditions was to create
others of whose character we had never
dreamed. To be sure, wise men had forecast
the possibility of this fact, differing among
themselves even as to the accepted elassifica-
tion of what they had, as Scaliger who called
speech the sixth sense, or our English contem-
porary who included heat and force in his list

162 BEYOND THE GATES.

(also of six) ; or more imaginative men who
had admitted the conceivability of inconceiv-
able powers in an order of being beyond the
human. Knowing a little of these speculations,
I was not so much surprised at the facts as
overwhelmed by their extent and variety. Yet
if I try to explain them, I am met by an al-
most insurmountable obstacle.

It is well known that missionaries are often
thwarted in their religious labors by the ab-
sence in savage tongues of any words corre-
sponding to certain ideas such as that of purify
or unselfishness. Philologists have told us of
one African tribe in whose language exist six
different words descriptive of murder; none
whatever expressive of love. In another no
such word as gratitude can be found. Per-
haps no illustration can better serve to indicate
the impediments which bar the way to my de-
scribing to beings who possess but five senses
and their corresponding imaginative culture,
the habits or enjoyments consequent upon the
development of ten senses or fifteen. I am
allowed to say as much as this : that the growth

Ik-

BEYOND THE GATES. 158

of these celestial powers was variable with in-
dividuals throughout the higher world, or so
much of it as I became acquainted with. It
will be readily seen what an illimitable scope
for anticipation or achievement is given to
daily life by such an evolution of the nature.
It should be carefully remembered that this
serves only as a single instance of the exuber-
ance of what we call everlasting life.

Below, I remember that I used sometimes
to doubt the possibility of one's being happy
forever under any conditions, and had moods
in which I used to question the value of end-
less existence. I wish most earnestly to say,
that before I had been in Heaven days, Eter-
nity did not seem long enough to make room
for the growth of character, the growth of
mind, the variety of enjoyment and employ-
ment, and the increase of usefulness that prac-
tically constituted immortality.

It could not have been long after my arrival
at my father's house that he took me with him
to the great music hall of our city. It was
my first attendance at any one of the public

154 BEYOND THE GATES.

festivals of these happy people, and one long
to be treasured in thought. It was, in fact,
nothing less than the occasion of a visit by
Beethoven, and the performance of a new ora-
torio of his own, which he conducted in per-
son. Long before the opening hour the streets
of the city were thronged. People with holi-
day expressions poured in from the country.
It was a gala-day with all the young folks es-
pecially, much as such matters go below. A
beautiful thing which I noticed was the ab-
sence of all personal insistence in the crowd.
The weakest, or the saddest, or the most timid,
or those who, for any reason, had the more
need of this great pleasure, were selected by
their neighbors and urged on into the more de-
sirable positions. The music hall, so-called,
was situated upon a hill just outside the town,
and consisted of an immense roof supported
by rose-colored marble pillars. There were
no walls to the building, so that there was the
effect of being no limit to the audience, which
extended past the line of luxuriously covered
seats provided for them, upon the grass, and

BEYOND THE GATES. 155

even into the streets leading to the city. So
perfect were what we should call below the
telephonic arrangement of the community, that
those who remained in their own homes or pur-
sued their usual avocations were not deprived
of the music. My impressions are that every
person in the city, who desired to put himself
in communication with it, heard the oratorio ;
but I am not familiar with the system by
which this was effected. It involved a high
advance in the study of acoustics, and was one
of the things which I noted to be studied at a
wiser time.

Many distinguished persons known to you
below, were present, some from our own neigh-
borhood, and others guests of the city. It
was delightful to observe the absence of all
jealousy or narrow criticism among themselves,
and also the reverence with which their supe-
riority was regarded by the less gifted. Every
good or great thing seemed to be so heartily
shared with every being capable of sharing
it, and all personal gifts to become material
for such universal pride, that one experienced

156 BEYOND THE GATES.

a kind of transport at the elevation of the
public character.

I remembered how it used to be below, when
I was present at some musical festival in the
familiar hall where the bronze statue of Bee-
thoven, behind the sea of sound, stood calmly.
How he towered above our poor unfinished
story ! As we grouped there, sitting each iso-
lated with his own thirst, brought to be slaked
or excited by the flood of music; drinking
down into our frivolity or our despair the out-
let of that mighty life, it used to seem to me
that I heard, far above the passion of the or-
chestra, his own high words, — his own music
made articulate, — "I go to meet Death with

j°y"

When there came upon the people in that
heavenly audience-room a stir, like the rustling
of a dead leaf upon crusted snow ; when the
stir grew to a solemn murmur ; when the mur-
mur ran into a lofty cry ; when I saw that the
orchestra, the chorus, and the audience had
risen like one breathless man, and knew that
Beethoven stood before us, the light of day

BEYOND THE 0ATE8. 157

darkened for that instant before me. The
prelude was well under way, I think, before I
dared lift my eyes to his face.

The great tide swept me on. When upon
earth had he created sound like this ? Where
upon earth had we heard its like ? There he
is, one listening nerve from head to foot, he
who used to stand deaf in the middle of his
own orchestra — desolate no more, denied no
more forever, all the heavenly senses possible
to Beethoven awake to the last delicate re-
sponse ; all the solemn faith in the invisible,
in the holy, which he had made his own, tri-
umphant now ; all the powers of his mighty
nature in action like a rising storm — there
stands Beethoven immortally alive.

What knew we of music, I say, who heard
its earthly prototype? It was but the tuning
of the instruments before the eternal orches-
tra shall sound. Soul! swing yourself free
upon this mighty current. Of what will Bee-
thoven tell us whom he dashes on like drops ?

As the p*an rises, I bow my life to under-
stand. What would be with us whom God

158 BEYOND THE GATES.

chose to make Beethoven everlastingly ? What
is the burden of this master's message, given
now in Heaven, as once on earth? Do we
hear aright ? Do we read the score correctly ?

" Holy — holy " —

A chorus of angel voices, trained since the
time when morning stars sang together with
the sons of God, take up the words :

" Holy, holy, holy is the Lord."

When the oratorio has ended, alid we glide
out, each hushed as a hidden thought, to his
own ways, I stay beneath a linden -tree to
gather breath. A fine sound, faint as the
music of a dream, strikes my ringing ears,
and, looking up, I see that the leaf above my
head is singing. Has it, too, been one of the
great chorus yonder? Did he command the
forces of nature, as he did the seraphs of
Heaven, or the powers of earth ?

The strain falls away slowly from the lips of
the leaf :

" Holy, holy, holy," —

It trembles, and is still.

xn.

That which it is permitted me to relate to
you moves on swiftly before the thoughts, like
the compression in the last act of a drama.
The next scene which starts from the various-
ness of heavenly delight I find to be the Sym-
phony of Color.

There was a time in the history of art, below,
when this, and similar phrases, had acquired
almost a slang significance, owing to the affec-
tation of their use by the shallow. I was,
therefore, the more surprised at meeting a fact
so lofty behind the guise of the familiar words ;
and noted it as but one of many instances
in which the earthly had deteriorated from the
ideals of the celestial life.

It seemed that the development of color had
reached a point never conceived of below, and
that the treatment of it constituted an art by
itself. By this I do not mean its treatment

160 BEYOND THE GATES.

under the form of painting, decoration, dress,
or any embodiment whatever. What we were
called to witness was an exhibition of color,
pure and simple.

This occasion, of which I especially speak,
was controlled by great colorists, some of
earthly, some of heavenly renown. Not all
of them were artists in the accepted sense of
designers ; among them were one or two select
creatures in whom the passion of color had
been remarkable, but, so far as the lower world
was concerned, for the great part inactive, for
want of any scientific means of expression.
. We have all known the color natures, and,
if we have had a fine sympathy, have compas-
sionated them as much as any upon earth,
whether they were found among the disap-
pointed disciples of Art itself, or hidden away
in plain homes, where the paucity of existence
held all the delicacy and the dream of life close
prisoners.

Among the managers of this Symphony I
should say that I observed, at a distance, the
form of Raphael. I heard it rumored that

BEYOND THE GATES. 161

Leonardo was present, but I did not see him.
There was another celebrated artist engaged
in the work, whose name I am not allowed
to give. It was an unusual occasion, and
had attracted attention at a distance. The
Symphony did not take place in our own city,
but in an adjacent town, to which our citizens,
as well as those of other places, repaired in
great numbers. We sat, I remember, in a lux-
urious coliseum, closely darkened. The build-
ing was circular in form ; it was indeed a per-
fect globe, in whose centre, without touching
anywhere the superficies, we were seated. Air
without light entered freely, I know not how,
and fanned our faces perpetually. Distant
music appealed to the ear, without engaging it.
Pleasures, which we could receive or dismiss
at will, wandered by, and were assimilated by
those extra senses which I have no means of
describing. Whatever could be done to put
soul and Jbody in a state of ease so perfect as
to admit of complete receptivity, and I a mood
so high as to induce the loftiest interpretation

of the purely aesthetic entertainment before us,

11

162 BEYOND THE GATES.

was done in the amazing manner characteris-
tic of this country. I. do not know that I had
ever felt so keenly as on this occasion the de-
light taken by God in providing happiness for
the children of His discipline and love. We
had suffered so much, some of us, below, that
it did not seem natural, at first, to accept sheer
pleasure as an end in and of itself* . But I
learned that this, like many other fables in
Heaven, had no moral. Live! Be! Do!
Be glad! Because He lives, ye live also.
Grow! Grain! Achieve! Hope! That is
to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Hav-
ing fought — rest. Having trusted — know.
Having endured — enjoy. Being safe — ven-
ture. Being pure — fear not to be sensitive.
Being in harmony with the Soul of all delights
— dare to indulge thine own soul to the brim
therein. Having acquired holiness — thou hast
no longer any broken law to fear. Dare to
be happy. This was the spirit of daily life
among us. " Nothing was required of us but
to be natural," as I have said before. And it
" was natural to be right," thank God, at last.

BEYOND THE GATES. 168

•

Being a new-comer, and still so unlearned, I
could not understand the Color Symphony as
many of the spectators did, while yet I enjoyed
it intensely, as an untaught musical organiza-
tion may enjoy the most complicated composi-
tion. I think it was one of the most stimu-
lating sights I ever saw, and my ambition to
master this new art flashed fire at once.

Slowly, as we sat silent, at the centre of that
great white globe — it was built of porphyry,I
think, or some similar substance — there began
to breathe upon the surface pure light. This
trembled and deepened, till we were enclosed
in a sphere of white fire. This I perceived, to
scholars in the science of color, signified dis-
tinct thought, as a grand chord does to the mu-
sician. Thus it was with the hundred effects
which followed. White light quivered into
pale blue. Blue struggled with violot. Gold
and orange parted. Green and gray and crim-
son glided on. Eose — the living rose —
blushed upon us, and faltered under — over
— yonder, till we were shut into a world of
it, palpitating. It was as if we had gone

164 BEYOND THE GATES.

behind the soul of a woman's blush, or the
meaning of a sunrise. Whoever has known
the passion for that color will understand why
some of the spectators were with difficulty re-
strained from flinging themselves down into it,
as into a sea of rapture.

There were others more affected by the pur-
ple, and even by the scarlet ; some, again, by
the delicate tints in which was the color of the
sun, and by colors which were hints rather
than expressions. Marvelous modifications of
rays set in. They had their laws, their chords,
their harmonies, their scales ; they carried their
melodies and " execution;" they had themes
and ornamentation. Each combination had
its meaning. The trained eye received it, as
the trained ear receives orchestra or oratory.
The senses melted, but the intellect was astir.
A perfect composition of color unto color was
before us, exquisite in detail, magnificent in
mass. Now it seemed as if we ourselves, sit-
ting there ensphered in color, flew around the
globe with the quivering rays. Now as "if we
sank into endless sleep with reposing tints;

fiETOND THE GATES. 165

now as if we drank of color; then as if we
dreamed it ; now as if we felt it — clasped it ;
then as if we heard it. We were taken into
the heart of it ; into the mystery of the June
sky, and the grass -blade, the blue -bell, the
child's cheek, the cloud at sunset, the snow-
drift at twilight. The apple-blossom told us
its secret, and the down on the pigeon's neck,
and the plume of the rose -curlew, and the
robin's -egg, and the hair of blonde women,
and the scarlet passion-flower, and the mist
over everglades, and the power of a dark eye.
It may be remembered that I have alluded
once to the rainbow which I saw soon after
reaching the new life, and that I raised a ques-
tion at the time as to the number of rays ex-
hibited in the celestial prism. As I watched
the Symphony, I became convinced that the
variety of colors unquestionably far exceeded
those with which we were familiar on earth.
The Indian occultists indeed had long urged
that they saw fourteen tints in the prism ; this
was the dream of the mystic, who, by a tre-
mendous system of education, claims to have

166 BEYOND THE GATES.

subjected the body to the soul, so that the or-
dinary laws of nature yield to his control
Physicists had also taught us that the laws of
optics involved the necessity of other colors
beyond those whose rays were admissible by
our present vision ; this was the assertion of
that science which is indebted more largely
to the imagination than the worshiper of the
Fact has yet arisen from his prone posture
high enough to see.

Now, indeed, I had the truth before me.
Colors which no artist's palette, no poet's rap-
ture knew, played upon optic nerves exqui-
sitely trained to receive such effects, and were
appropriated by other senses empowed to share
them in a manner which human language sup-
plies me with no verb or adjective to express.

As we journeyed home after the Symphony,
I was surprised to find how calming had been
the effect of its intense excitement. Without
fever of pulse or rebel fancy or wearied nerve,
I looked about upon the peaceful country. I
felt ready for any duty. I was strong for all
deprivation. I longed to live more purely. I

BEYOND THE GATES. 167

prayed to live more unselfishly. I greatly
wished to share the pleasure, with which I had
been blessed, with some denied soul. I thought
of uneducated people, and coarse people, who
had yet to be trained to so many of the high-
est varieties of happiness. I thought of sick
people, all their earthly lives invalids, recently
dead, and now free to live. I wished that I
had sought some of these out, and taken them
with me to the Symphony.

It was a rare evening, even in the blessed
land. I enjoyed the change of scene as I used
to do in traveling, below. It was delightful to
look abroad and see everywhere prosperity and
peace. The children were shouting and tum-
bling in the fields. Young people strolled
laughing by twos or in groups. The vigorous
men and women busied themselves or rested at
the doors of cosy homes. The ineffable land-
scape of hill and water stretched on behind the
human foreground. Nowhere a chill or a blot ;
nowhere a tear or a scowl, a deformity, a disa-
bility, or an evil passion. There was no flaw
in the picture. There was no error in the fact.

168 BEYOND TBE GATES.

I felt that I was among a perfectly happy peo-
ple. I said, " I am in a holy world."

The next day was a Holy Day ; we of the
earth still called it the Sabbath, from long
habit. I remember an especial excitement on
that Holy Day following the Color Symphony,
inasmuch as we assembled to be instructed by
one whom, above all other men that had ever
lived on earth, I should have taken most trouble
to hear. This was no other than St. John the
Apostle.

I remember that we held the service in the
open air, in the fields beyond the city, for
" there was no Temple therein." The Beloved
Disciple stood above us, on the rising ground.
It would be impossible to forget, but it is well-
nigh impossible to describe, the appearance of
the preacher. I think he had the most sensi-
tive face I ever saw in any man; yet his dig-
nity was unapproachable. He had a ringing
voice of remarkable sweetness, and great power
of address. He seemed more divested of him-
self than any orator I had heard. He poured
his personality out upon us, like one of the

BEYOND THE GATES. 169

forces of nature, as largely, and as uncon-
sciously.

He taught us much. He reasoned of mys-
teries over which we had pored helplessly all
our lives below. He explained intricate points
in the plan of human life. He touched upon
the perplexities of religious faith. He cast a
great light backward over the long, dim way
by which we had crept to our present blessed-
ness. He spoke to us of our deadliest doubts.
He confirmed for us our patient belief . • He
made us ashamed of our distrust and our rest-
lessness. He left us eager for faith. He gave
vigor to our spiritual ideals. He spoke to us
of the love of God, as the light speaks of the
sun. He revealed to us how we had misun-
derstood Him. Our souls cried out within us,
as we remembered our errors. We gathered
ourselves like soldiers as we knew our possibil-
ities. We swayed in his hands as the bough
sways in the wind. Each man looked at his
neighbor as one whose eyes ask: "Have I
wronged thee ? Let me atone." " Can I serve
thee ? Show me how." All our spiritual life

170 BEYOND THE GATES.

arose like an athlete, to exercise itself; we
sought hard tasks ; we aspired for far prizes ;
we turned to our daily lives like new-created
beings ; so truly we had kept Holy Day. When
the discourse was over, there followed an an-
them sung by a choir of child-angels hover-
ing in mid-air above the preacher, and beau-
tiful exceedingly to the sight and to the ear.
"God," they sang, "is Love — is Love — is
Love." In the refrain we joined with our
own awed voices.

The chant died away. All the air of all the
worlds was still. The beloved Disciple raised
his hand in solemn signal. A majestic Form
glided to his side. To whom should the fish-
erman of Galilee turn with a look like that ?
Oh, grace of God ! what a smile was there !
The Master and Disciple stand together ; they
rise above us. See ! He falls upon his knees
before that Other. So we also, sinking to our
own, hide our very faces from the sight.

Our Lord steps forth, and stands alone. To
us in glory, as to them of old in sorrow, He is
the God made manifest. We do not lift our

BEYOND THE GATES. 171

bowed heads, but we feel that He has raised
His pierced hands above us, and that His own
lips call down the Benediction of His Father
upon our eternal lives

xrn.

My father had been absent from home a
great deal, taking journeys with whose object
he did not acquaint me. I myself had not vis-
ited the earth for some time ; I cannot say how
long. I do not find it possible to divide heav-
enly time by an earthly calendar, and cannot
even decide how much of an interval, by human
estimates, had been indeed covered by my resi-
dence in the Happy Country, as described upon
these pages.

My duties had called me in other directions,
and I had been exceedingly busy. My father
sometimes spoke of our dear hearts at home,
and reported them as all well ; but he was not
communicative about them. I observed that
he took more pains than usual, or I should say
more pleasure than usual, in the little domes-
tic cares of our heavenly home. Never had it
been in more perfect condition. The garden

BEYOND THE GATES. 173

and the grounds were looking exquisitely. All
the trifling comforts or ornaments of the house
were to his mind. We talked of them much,
and wandered about in our leisure moments, al-
tering or approving details. I did my best to
make him happy, but my own heart told me
how lonely he must be despite me. We talked
less of her coming than we used to do. I felt
that he had accepted the separation with the
unquestioning spirit which one gains so deeply
in Heaven ; and that he was content, as one
who trusted, still to wait.

One evening, I came home slowly and alone.
My father had been away for some days. I
had been passing several hours with some
friends, who, with myself, had been greatly in-
terested in an event of public importance. A
messenger was needed to carry certain tidings
to a great astronomer, known to us of old on
earth, who was at that time busied in research
in a distant planet. It was a desirable em-
bassy, and many sought the opportunity for
travel and culture which it gave. After some
delay in the appointment, it was given to a

174 BEYOND THE GATES.

person but just arrived from below : a woman
not two days dead. This surprised me till I
had inquired into the circumstances, when I
learned that the new-comer had been on earth
an extreme sufferer, bed-ridden for forty years.
Much of this time she had been unable even
to look out of doors. The airs of Heaven had
been shut from her darkened chamber. For
years she had not been able to sustain conver-
sation with her own friends, except on rare
occasions. Possessed of a fine mind, she had
been unable to read, or even to bear the hu-
man voice in reading. Acute pain had tor-
tured her days. Sleeplessness had made hor-
ror of her nights. She was poor. She was
dependent. She was of a refined organization.
She was of a high spirit, and of energetic tem-
perament. Medical science, holding out no
cure, assured her that she might live to old
age. She lived. When she was seventy-six
years old, death remembered her. This woman
had sometimes been inquired of, touching her
faith in that Mystery which we call God. I
was told that she gave but one answer; be-

BEYOND THE GATES. 175

yond this, revealing no more of experience than
the grave itself, to which, more than to any
other simile, her life could be likened.

" Though He slay me," she said, " I will
trust."

" But, do you never doubt ? "

44 1 will trust."

To this rare spirit, set free at last and re-
embodied, the commission of which I have
spoken was delegated ; no one in all the city
grudged her its coveted advantages. A mighty
shout rose in the public ways when the selec-
tion was made known. I should have thought
she might become delirious with the sudden
access of her freedom, but it was said that she
received her fortune quietly, and, slipping out
of sight, was away upon her errand before we
saw her face.

The incident struck me as a most impres-
sive one, and I was occupied with it, as I
walked home thoughtfully. Indeed, I was so
absorbed that I went with my eyes cast down,
and scarcely noticed when I had reached our
own home. I did not glance at the house, but

176 BEYOND THE GATES.

continued my way up the winding walk be-
tween the trees, still drowned in my reverie.

It was a most peaceful evening. I felt
about me the fine light at which I did not
look ; that evening glow was one of the new
colors, — one of the heavenly colors that I find
it impossible to depict. The dog came to meet
me as usual; he seemed keenly excited, and
would have hurried me into the house. I
patted him absently as I strolled on.

Entering the house with a little of the sense
of loss which, even in the Happy World, ac-
companies the absence of those we love, and
wondering when my father would be once
more with me, I was startled at hearing his
voice — no, voices ; there were two ; they came
from an upper chamber, and the silent house
echoed gently with their subdued words.

I stood for a moment listening below ; I
felt the color flash out of my face ; my heart
stood still. I took a step or two forward —
hesitated — advanced with something like fear.
The dog pushed before me, and urged me to
follow. After a moment's thought I did so,
resolutely.

BEYOND THE GATES. 177

The doors stood open everywhere, and the
evening air blew in with a strong and whole-
some force. No one had heard me. Guided
by the voices of the unseen speakers I hurried
on, across the hall, through my own room, and
into that sacred spot I have spoken of, wherein
for so many solitary years my dear father had
made ready for her coming who was the joy of
his joy, in Heaven, as she had been on earth.

For that instant, I saw all the familiar de-
tails of the room in a blur of light. It was
as if a sea of glory filled the place. Across it,
out beyond the window, on the balcony which
overlooked the hill-country and the sea, stood
my father and my mother, hand in hand.

She did not hear me, even yet. They were
talking quietly, and were absorbed. Uncer-
tain what to do, I might even have turned and
left them undisturbed, so sacred seemed that
hour of theirs to me; so separate in all the
range of experience in either world, or any
life. But her heart warned her, and she
stirred, and so saw me — my dear mother —

come to us, at last.

12

178 BEYOND THE GATES.

Oh, what arms can gather like a mother's,
whether in earth or Heaven? Whose else
could be those brooding touches, those raining
tears, those half-inarticulate maternal words ?
And for her, too, the bitterness is passed, the
blessedness begun. Oh, my dear mother ! My
dear mother ! I thank God I was the child
appointed to give you welcome — thus. . . .

4 J And how is it with Tom, — poor Tom ! "

" He has grown such a fine fellow ; you can-
not think. I leaned upon him. He was the
comfort of my old age."

" Poor Tom ! "

" And promises to make such a man, dear !
A good boy. No bad habits, yet. Your father
is so pleased that he makes a scholar."

" Dear Tom ! And Alice ? "

" It was hard to leave Alice. But she is
young. Life is before her. God is good."

" And you, my dearest, was it hard for you
at the last? Was it a long sickness ? Who
took care of you? Mother! did you suffer
much t "

BEYOND THE GATES. 179

44 Dear, I never suffered any. I had a sud-
den stroke I think. I was sitting by the fire
with the children. It was vacation and Tom
was at home. They were all at home. I
started to cross the room, and it grew dark.
I did not know that I was dead till I found
I was standing there upon the balcony, in your
father's arms."

"I had to tell her what had happened*
She would n't believe me at the first."
44 Were you with her all the time below ? "
44 All the time ; for days before the end. "
44 And you brought her here yourself, eas-
ily?"

44 All the way, myself. She slept like a
baby, and wakened — as she says."

XIV.

But was it possible to feel desolate in Heav-
en ? Life now filled to the horizon. Our bus-
iness, our studies, and our pleasures occupied
every moment. Every day new expedients of
delight unfurled before us. Our conceptions
of happiness increased faster than their reali-
zation. The imagination itself grew, as much
as the aspiration. We saw height beyond
height of joy, as we saw outline above out-
line of duty. How paltry looked our wildest
earthly dream ! How small our largest worldly
deed ! One would not have thought it possi-
ble that one could even want so much as one
demanded here; or hope so far as one ex-
pected now.

What possibilities stretched on ; each leading
to a larger, like newly-discovered stars, one be-
yond another ; as the pleasure or the achieve-
ment took its place, the capacity for the next

BEYOND THE GATES. 181

increased. Satiety or its synonyms passed out
of our language, except as a reminiscence of
the past. See, what were the conditions of this
eternal problem. Given : a pure heart, perfect
health, unlimited opportunity for usefulness,
infinite chance of culture, home, friendship,
love ; the elimination from practical life of
anxiety and separation ; and the intense spirit-
ual stimulus of the presence of our dear Mas-
ter, through whom we approached the mystery
of God — how incredible to anything short of
experience the sum of happiness !

I soon learned how large a part of our de-
light consisted in anticipation ; since now we
knew anticipation without alloy of fear. I
thought much of the joys in store for me,
which yet I was not perfected enough to attain.
I looked onward to the perpetual meeting of
old friends and acquaintances, both of the liv-
ing and the dead ; to the command of unknown
languages, arts, and sciences, and knowledges
manifold; to the grandeur of helping the
weak, and revering the strong ; to the privilege
of guarding the erring or the tried, whether of

182 BEYOND THE GATES.

earth or heaven, and of sharing all attainable
wisdom with the less wise, and of even instruct-
ing those too ignorant to know that they were
not wise, and of ministering to the dying, and
of assisting in bringing together the separated.
I looked forward to meeting select natures, the
distinguished of earth or Heaven ; to reading
history backward by contact with its actors,
and settling its knotty points by their eviden-
tial testimony. Was I not in a world where
Loyola, and Jeanne d'Arc, or Luther, or Ar-
thur, could be asked questions?

I would follow the experiments of great
discoverers, since their advent to this place.
What did Newton, and Columbus, and Darwin
in the eternal life ?

I would keep pace with the development of
art. To what standard had Michael Angelo
been raising the public taste all these years?

I would join the fragments of those private
histories which had long been matter of public
interest. Where, and whose now, was Vittoria
Colonna?

I would have the finales of the old Sacred

BEYOND THE GATES. 183

stories. What use had been made of the im-
petuosity of Peter? What was the private
life of Saint John ? With what was the fine
intellect of Paul now occupied? What was
the charm in the Magdalene ? In what sacred
fields did the sweet nature of Ruth go glean*
ing? Did David write the new anthems for
the celestial chorals ? What was the attitude
of Moses towards the Persistence of Force ?
Where was Judas? And did the Betrayed
plead for the betrayer ?

I would study the sociology of this explan-
atory life. Where, if anywhere, were the
Cave-men? In what world, and under what
educators, were the immortal souls of Laps and
Bushmen trained ? What social position had
the early Christian martyrs ? What became of
Caligula, whose nurse, we were told* smeared
her breasts with blood, and so developed the
world-hated tyrant from the outraged infant?
Where was Buddha, " the Man who knew " ?
What affectionate relation subsisted between
him and the Man who Loved ?

I would bide my time patiently, but I, too,

184 BEYOND THE GATES.

would become an experienced traveler through
the spheres. Our Sun I would visit, and scar-
let Mars, said by our astronomers below to be
the planet most likely to contain inhabitants.
The colored suns I would observe, and the
nebulae, and the mysteries of space, powerless
now to chill one by its reputed temperature,
said to be forever at zero. Where were the
Alps of Heaven? The Niagara of celestial
scenery? The tropics of the spiritual world?
Ah, how I should pursue Eternity with ques-
tions!

What was the relation of mechanical power
to celestial conditions ? What use was made
of Watts and Stevenson ?

What occupied the ex - hod - carriers and
cooks?

Where were all the songs of all the poets ?
In the eternal accumulation of knowledge, what
proportion sifted through the strainers of spir-
itual criticism ? What were the standards of
spiritual criticism? What became of those
creations of the human intellect which had ac-
quired immortality? Were there instances

BEYOND THE GATES. 185

where these figments of fancy had achieved an
eternal existence lost by their own creators?
Might not one of the possible mysteries of our
new state of -existence be the fact of a world
peopled by the great creatures of our imagina-
tion known to us below ? And might not one of
our pleasures consist in visiting such a world ?
Was it incredible that Helen, and Lancelot,
and Sigf ried, and Juliet, and Faust, and Dinah
Morris, and the Lady of Shalott, and Don
Quixote, and Colonel Newcome, and Sam
Weller, and Uncle Tom, and Hester Prynne
and Jean Valjean existed? could be ap-
proached by way of holiday, as one used to take
up the drama or the fiction, on a leisure hour,
down below ?

Already, though so short a time had I been
in the upper life, my imagination was over-
whelmed with the sense of its possibilities.
They seemed to overlap one another like the
molecules of gold in a ring, without visible
juncture or practical end. I was ready for
the inconceivable itself. In how many worlds
should I experience myself ? How many lives

186 BEYOND THE GATES.

should I live? Did eternal existence mean
eternal variety of growth, suspension, renewal ?
Might youth and maturity succeed each other
exquisitely ? Might individual life reproduce
itself from seed, to flower, to fruit, like a plant,
through the cycles ? Would childhood or age
be a matter of personal choice ? Would the
affectional or the intellectual temperaments at
will succeed each other? Might one try the
domestic or the public career in different ex-
istences ? Try the bliss of love in one age, the
culture of solitude in another ? Be oneself yet
be all selves ? Experience all glories, all dis-
cipline, all knowledge, all hope? Know the
ecstasy of assured union with the one creature
chosen out of time and Eternity to comple-
ment the soul? And yet forever pursue the
unattainable with the rapture and the reverence
of newly-awakened and still ungratified feel-
ing?

Ah me ! was it possible to feel desolate even
in Heaven?

I think it may be, because I had been much
occupied with thoughts like these ; or it may

BEYOND THE GATES. 187

be that, since my dear mother's coming, I had
been, naturally, thrown more by myself in my
desire to leave those two uninterrupted in their
first reunion — but I must admit that I had
lonely moments, when I realized that Heaven
had yet failed to provide me with a home of
my own, and that the most loving filial posi-
tion could not satisfy the nature of a mature
man or woman in any world. I must admit
that I began to be again subject to retrospects
and sadnesses which had been well brushed
away from my heart since my advent to this
place. I must admit that in experiencing the
immortality of being, I found that I experi-
enced no less the immortality of love.

Had I to meet that old conflict here f I
never asked for everlasting life. Will He im-
pose it, and not free me from that ? God for-
give me! Have I evil in my heart still? Can
one sin in Heaven? Nay, be merciful, be mer-
ciful! I will be patient. I will have trust.
But the old nerves are not dead. The old
ache has survived the grave.

Why was this permitted, if without a cure?

188 BEYOND THE GATES.

Why had death no power to call decay upon
that for which eternal life seemed to have pro-
vided no health? It had seemed to me, so
far as I could observe the heavenly society,
that only the fortunate affections of preexist-
ence survived. The unhappy, as well as the
imperfect, were outlived and replaced. Mys-
teries had presented themselves here, which I
was not yet wise enough to clear up. I saw,
however, that a great ideal was one thing which
never died. The attempt to realize it often in-
volved effects which seemed hardly less than
miraculous.

But for myself, events had brought no solu-
tion of the problems of my past ; and with the
tenacity of a constant nature I was unable to
see any for the future.

I mused one evening, alone with these long
thoughts. I was strolling upon a wide, bright
field. Behind me lay the city, glittering and
glad. Beyond, I saw the little sea which I had
crossed. The familiar outline of the hills up-
rose behind. All Heaven seemed heavenly. I
heard distant merry voices and music. Listen-

BEYOND THE GATES. 189

ing closely, I found that the Wedding March
that had stirred so many human heart-beats
was perfectly performed somewhere across the
water, and that the wind bore the sounds to-
wards me. I then remembered to have heard
it said that Mendelssohn was himself a guest of
some distinguished person in an adjacent town,
and that certain music of his was to be given
for the entertainment of a group of people who
had been deaf-mutes in the lower life.

As the immortal power of the old music
filled the air, I stayed my steps to listen. The
better to do this, I covered my eyes with my
hands, and so stood blindfold and alone in the
midst of the wide field.

The passion of earth and the purity of
Heaven — the passion of Heaven and the de-
ferred hope of earth — what loss and what pos-
session were in the throbbing strains !

As never on earth, they called the glad to
rapture. As never on earth, they stirred the
sad to silence. Where, before, had soul or
sense been called by such a clarion? What
music was, we used to dream. What it is, we
dare, at last, to know.

190 BEYOND THE GATES.

And yet — I would have been spared this
if I could, I think, just now. Give me a mo-
ment's grace. I would draw breath, and so
move on again, and turn me to my next duty
quietly, since even Heaven denies me, after
all.

I would — what would I? Where am I?
Who spoke, or stirred ? Who called me by
a name unheard by me of any living lip for
almost twenty years ?

In a transport of something not unlike ter-
ror, I could not remove my hands from my
eyes, but still stood, blinded and dumb, in
the middle of the shining field. Beneath my
clasped fingers, I caught the radiance of the
edges of the blades of grass that the low breeze
swept against my garment's hem ; and strangely
in that strange moment, there came to me, for
the only articulate thought I could command,
these two lines of an old hymn :

" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green."

"Take down your hands," a voice said
quietly. " Do not start or fear. It is the

BEYOND THE GATES. 191

most natural thing in the world that I should
find you. Be calm. Take courage. Look at
me."

Obeying, as the tide obeys the moon, I gath-
ered heart, and so, lifting my eyes, I saw him
whom I remembered standing close beside me.
We two were alone in the wide, bright field.
All Heaven seemed to have withdrawn to leave
us to ourselves for this one moment.

I had known that I might have loved him,
all my life. I had never loved any other man.
I had not seen him for almost twenty years.
As our eyes met, our souls challenged one an-
other'in silence, and in strength. I was the
first to speak :

" Where is she ? "

" Not with me."

"When did you die?"

" Years ago."

" I had lost all trace of you."

"It was better so, for all concerned."

" Is she — is she " —

" She is on earth, and of it ; she has found
comfort long since ; another fills my place. I
do not grieve to yield it. Come ! "

192 BEYOND THE GATES.

" But I have thought — for all these years —
it was not right — I put the thought away —
I do not understand " —

" Oh, come ! I, too, have waited twenty
years."

" But is there no reason — no barrier — are

you sure ? God help me ! You have turned

Heaven into Hell for me, if this is not right."

" Did I ever ask you to give me one pitying

thought that was not right ? "

4fc Never, God knows. Never. You helped
me to be right, to be noble. You were the
noblest man I ever knew. I was a better
woman for having known you, though we
parted — as we did."

44 Then do you trust me ? Come ! "
44 1 trust you as I do the angels of God."
44 And I love you as His angels may. Come!"
44 For how long — am I to come ? "
44 Are we not in Eternity ? I claim you as
I have loved you, without limit and without
end. Soul of my immortal soul! Life of my
eternal life ! — Ah, come."

\d

XV.

And yet so subtle is the connection in the
eternal life between the soul's best moments
and the Source of them, that I felt unready
for my joy until it had His blessing whose Love
was the sun of all love, and whose approval
was sweeter than all happiness.

Now, it was a part of that beautiful order of
Heaven, which we ceased to call accident, that
while I had this wish upon my lips, we saw
Him coming to us, where we still stood alone
together in the open field.

We did not hasten to meet Him, but re-
mained as we were until He reached our side ;
and then we sank upon our knees before Him,
silently. God knows what gain we had for
the life that we had lost below. The pure eyes
of the Master sought us with a benignity from
which we thanked the Infinite Mercy that our
own had not need to droop ashamed. What

13

i

194 BEYOND THE GATES.

weak, earthly comfort could have been worth
the loss of a moment such as this? He blesses
us. With His sacred hands He blesses us, and
by His blessing lifts our human love into so di-
vine a thing that this seems the only life in
which it could have breathed.

By-and-by, when our Lord has left us, we
join hands like children, and walk quietly
through the dazzling air, across the field, and
up the hill, and up the road, and home. I
seek my mother, trembling, and clasp her,
sinking on my knees, until I hide my face
upon her lap. Her hands stray across my hair
and cheek.

" What is the matter, Mary? — dear Mary ! "
" Oh, Mother, I have Heaven in my heart

at last ! "

" Tell me all about it, my poor child. Hush!
There, there ! my dear ! "

" Your poor child f . . . Mother! What
can you mean?"—

What can she mean, indeed ? I turn and

i

i

BEYOND TEE GATES. 195

gaze into her eyes. My face was hidden in
her lap. Her hands stray across my hair and
cheek.

" What is the matter, Mary ? — dear
Mary ! "

"OA, Mother, I have Heaven in my heart
at last I "

44 Tell me all about it, my poor child. Hush I
There, there I my dear I "

" Four poor child ? Mother t What CAN
this mean t "

She broods and blesses me, she calms and
gathers me. With a mighty cry, I fling my-
self against her heart, and sob my soul out,
there.

"You are better, child," she says. "Be
quiet. You will live."

Upon the edge of the sick-bed, sitting strained
and weary, she leans to comfort me. The
night-lamp burns dimly on the floor behind the
door. The great red chair stands with my
white woollen wrapper thrown across the arm.
In the window tne magenta geranium droops

196 BEYOND THE GATES.

freezing. Mignonette is on the table, and its
breath pervades the air. Upon the wall, the
cross, the Christ, and the picture of my father
look down.

The doctor is in the room ; I hear him say
that he shall change the medicine, and some
one, I do not notice who, whispers that it is
thirty hours since the stupor, from which I
have aroused, began. Alice comes in, and
Tom, I see, has taken Mother's place, and holds
"ie — dear Tom I — and asks me if I suffer,
nd why I look so disappointed.

Without, in the frosty morning, the factory-
ells are calling the poor girls to their work.
lie shutter is ajar, and through the crack I
je the winter day dawn on the world.

'N

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SELECTED FROM THE CATALOGUE OF

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ohn Adams and Abigail Adams.

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