It is on a full tide and
with a steady wind that vessels find the sea, while changeful blasts
will shipwreck them, and then cast their wrecks upon the shore. And so
it is with mortals; we have to keep saying, wait! while we pray to be
guided aright."
"I am always running off the track, Clara, I know; teach me to know
myself and let me help you; you are so different; I shall never be like
you," I said.
"And you do not wish to be, I hope," was her reply.
"I would like more of your quiet spirit, but that belongs to you, and if
I wait and work hard to do it, I shall always be upsetting what I wish
to do, and plaguing others instead of helping--" Mother came in and our
talk was at an end.
CHAPTER VIII.
FEARS AND HOPES.
Many thoughts filled my mind after what Clara had said, and I thought
much of her beautiful faith as to her husband and his waiting for her;
of her trust in his coming, and of the reality with which came into her
existence this wonderful future that waits for us all if (and sometimes
this little conjunction assumed wonderful proportions) immortality
really be ours. My heart told me we were to live, and in my higher
thoughts I could sometimes see the light that flooded those old hills
near our home, reaching far on to where all those of our household were
waiting. I never at these times could think of our beloved friends, my
blessed grandmother, of whom we did not even possess a daguerreotype, as
an angelic and unearthly something with wings, but rather as a real
being, whose face I should recognize, whose hands should touch my own,
while her lips would move, and in her dear old way she would say "Come
in, Emily," just as she used to when I went as a child to her door, and
looked in at her, as she lay on her bed, partly paralyzed.
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