Kitabı oku: «All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography», sayfa 20
“Mr. Hall,” interrupted Robert, “I think you ought not to mention such things in Madame’s presence.”
“I beg Madame’s pardon,” he answered, “but I felt sure she had already heard many incomprehensible things. To me they are hardly so, for I know what fiends once made Galveston Island their home. Do you think they have forgotten the place of their sins and cruelties? No, Furies of ancient crimes are here, revengeful souls full of unsatisfied hatreds. Perhaps they have been given a strange enlargement for some reason, and that reason must be within the permission and mercy of God.”
Robert made a motion of dissent. “I do not believe,” he said, “that God would select for the execution of any of his purposes, foul spirits who gloat in cruelties.”
“We know nothing more surely of God, than that he is love and mercy. I am one of those who believe even in the repentance and forgiveness of that great Archangel who fell, and drew after him a third part of heaven.”
“Now, Hall – ”
“Yes, I believe in the full and final triumph of good. Why else should Christ have descended into hell to preach to the spirits in prison there? He had surely some hope or promise to give, or He would not have gone. I hope I may at least have the same divine charity which is expressed in one of the most ancient Persian hymns.”
“Do you know the hymn, Mr. Hall?” I asked.
“I know the lines I refer to.”
“Will you repeat them?”
“In the translation I possess, they read thus:
‘Ormuzd grant me the grace, the joy of seeing
Him who makes the Evil, be brought to comprehend
The purity of the Heart. Grant that I may see the
Great Chief of the Evil Ones, loving nothing but holiness;
And forever speaking the Word, among the
Converted demons.’”
“Thank you,” I answered, and Mr. Hall continued, “Take your Bible. Between cover and cover, there is not any doctrine more constantly taught and exemplified, than the one teaching angelic and demoniacal agency. What says Madame?”
“I believe in it,” I answered, “just as I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the communion of saints. They are articles of the same creed. I cannot doubt one, without doubting the other; and I hope I have a share of that divine charity which inspired the Persian worshipper. David believed that even if he made his bed in hell, God would care for him, and Ezekiel tells us that Pharaoh shall be comforted in hell.” (Ezekiel, 32:31.)
“Do you remember in what chapter?” asked Mr. Hall.
“No,” I answered, “but we will look for it after supper.” Then I changed the conversation for Robert looked as much like a Sadducee as any dweller in ancient Jewry could have done.
That night we were both very sad and quiet, and after Mr. Hall had left, Robert sat down by his two sons and talked softly to them for a long time. I sat at the open door, listening to the great voice of the sea lamenting and creeping up through the darkness. At that hour my faith was weak, and I could not help remembering how, when I first crossed this unhappy threshold, my heart sighed heavily, and my very steps were reluctant and prelusive of sorrow. But in a little while Robert came to comfort me, and he spoke so bravely of God’s omnipotent power, and of his goodness to us in every emergency, that I soon found no difficulty in carrying my fearful heart from this unhappy house, safe to the hidden house of God’s abiding.
That night I had a dream. It is as clear to my inward vision this hour as when I awoke from it. I was by the side of a river, a river black and motionless. Great trees overshadowed it, and all its banks were hidden in a lush growth of rushes and long grasses. It was a horror of marshy earth and dead water. And among the long rushes and dead water, a human figure lay, a man unnaturally thin and tall, with a yellowish, deathlike face, surrounded by long straight black hair. He lay prone as if asleep, but slowly raised himself, and looked at me. Then with a languid air, but a voice of fate, he said, “One shall be taken, and the other left.”
I awoke, and my heart was sick, for I had seen the likeness of yellow fever. And from that hour I knew, that either I must leave my dear ones, or they would have to leave me. For come how it may, dreams do read the future. Then why should we despise their teaching? How can we tell what subtle lines run between spirit and spirit? Fifty years ago we would have thought it a thing incredible, if told that a man in New York could talk with a man in Chicago. Can it not be as easy for the dear ones who have left us, to send a warning dream, as it is for our scientists by means of spectrum analysis, to examine a ray of light from Sirius, Capella or any distant star, and tell us what are the elements of their composition. And from the dream there soon followed reality. I went softly. I hung around my husband and children with a wistful tenderness. I asked God to prepare me for whatever He sent, and all my prayer was, “Let us fall into Thy Hands.”
I can make no apology for being now compelled to refer to a life not this life. It would indeed be a miserable one-sided biography of any human being, that was only a biography of their physical life. We are soul as well as body. It is not that we have a soul, we are a soul; and this higher part is in no one quiescent. The men who think of nothing outside their physical senses, have often souls of a far more pronounced type than their physical man; the type may be evil, but even while they ignore its agency, they are ruled by it.
I had been in touch with myself all my life long; by night and day the other Amelia was familiar to my apprehension, and an incommunicable sense of another world never far away. Hitherto, I had been astonished that while others saw and heard so much from this other world, I had been singularly free from spiritual influences. The dream I have just related, was the first intimation I received of a personal share in the general calamity. I did not speak of it to Robert, but as I have said, I went prayerfully about my house, and all my pleasant work fell from my listless hands.
Sometime after midnight on the twentieth of August I rose from my bed. I could not sleep; I was too restless and unhappy, but all whom I loved appeared to be sleeping well. So I sat down in a rocking-chair facing an open window which looked towards the sea. This open window was however screened by the ordinary green blinds, made of thin slats of wood. All was quiet but the dull roar of the sea, troubling the sad heart of the night with a sound of vague anger and menace; and the stillness of earth and sky was ghostly and melancholy. I heard a faint stir among the leaves of the Japonica hedge that surrounded the place, and I stopped rocking and sat motionless listening.
Then there fell upon the closed blinds – on which my eyes were fixed – a blow so tremendous, that I was sure they must be shattered; but ere I could rise, another blow of less intensity followed, and then a third not quite as crashing as the second. I never for a moment thought the blows were given by any instrument. I was sure they were made by hand. I went to Robert’s side. He was fast asleep. The children also were sleeping. Then I understood. I prayed for God’s mercy, but God seemed far from me. Until the dim gray dawn I sat in troubled thought, but when I heard Robert stir I told him what had happened, and begged him to come to the window with me. I had been afraid to go near it; I had turned my back upon it, but I was sure the blinds were shattered.
There was not a slat broken. But the thin strips of wood were indented and showed plainly the full shape of a hand twice as large as any human hand. Why were the blinds not broken to pieces by three blows from a hand like that? And how could the thin strips of wood be made to bend and to take that impression? This evidence of physical force, made by some spiritual entity remained for every one to see, as long as I lived in the house. As to what came after, I know not. I never again went within sight of the place.
That day I noticed that the leaves of the Japonica hedge had turned black, and were covered with a loathsome sweat or moisture, and Robert told me he had been with Scotch Brown to the camp to do something for a Scotchman ill there, and that they were shown the body of a calf killed one hour previously, and it was as black as a piece of coal. “I would not let the children go outside, Milly,” he said, “the very atmosphere has the fever.”
That night Alexander was taken ill, and before midnight he was delirious. The next day Lilly was sick, and the following day Mary. There was then no institution like the present trained nurses, but the Scotchmen of Galveston had formed themselves into a society for nursing each other, if attacked by fever; and Robert and Scotch Brown had been busily engaged in this work for some weeks. Now Scotch Brown came to our assistance. He went into the kitchen, and could cook a suitable meal if necessary. He kept the negro hired help at their duties, and no woman could have been more tender, more watchful, more ready to help and to comfort. Lilly had not a very bad attack, but Mary came perilously near to the fatal end. But carefully watched and nursed, they passed the crisis, and began to recover. The recovery from yellow fever is very rapid, but if a relapse should take place, the case is hopeless.
On Sunday, the sixth of September, Alexander, Lilly and Mary were apparently getting well as satisfactorily as we could expect. Mary looked white and frail; Alexander lay mostly on the sofa; Lilly, in spite of yellow fever, had her usual bright smile and cheerful voice; but, Oh, how happy we were to be able to gather at the dinner table! Very sparing was the food of the invalids, but they enjoyed it, and we had a pleasant meal. It was a very happy day, I remember every hour of it. It was the last day I was to spend with my husband and sons, but I knew it not. Surely, I thought, God has heard my prayers, and we shall all be spared to thank Him. We did so together, as soon as supper was over, and the children with kisses and loving words went early to rest. Robert and I sat until late; Robert was very quiet, but I leaned my head against his shoulder, and we spoke tenderly and hopefully to each other of things past, and of things likely to come. And as I brushed out my hair, and coiled it for the night, I said cheerfully to him,
“God doth not leave His Own.
The night of weeping for a time may last,
Then tears all past,
His going forth shall as the morning shine.
The sunrise of His favor shall be thine and mine,
God doth not leave His Own.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE NEVER-COMING-BACK CALLED DEATH
“Calamity is a delicate goddess, and her feet are tender. Her feet are soft. She treads not on the ground. She takes her path upon the hearts of men.”
The next day was the worst we had yet seen. It poured incessantly, and when the rain ceased at nightfall, it was followed by a fog so dense that it seemed palpable. Every room in the house was full of it, lights would hardly burn, and breathing was not easy. Robert and the children went early to bed, but I wandered about the different rooms, watching the sleepers. I did not feel very well, and was nervous and full of fears. When the clock struck twelve I was worse, and I concluded it would be well for me to try to sleep. But before putting down the lamp, I opened the Bible, for my father had often told me, to take a verse to bed with me to meditate upon, if I happened to be wakeful. It was a common, almost a nightly custom, and I followed it at that hour more as a habit than a conscious intent. So opening the Bible, as my fingers touched the screw of the lamp, my eyes fell upon these words, “Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let your widows trust in me.” (Jeremiah, 49:11.)
My first emotion was anger. I closed the Book hastily but did not put out the light. I told myself, that I would not go to bed with that strange verse pealing in my ears. And I wondered at my opening on the Book of Jeremiah; it was one book that we never read, either personally or in the family. Its pages indeed were fresh and white, while the Psalms and Gospels were well worn and discolored. All that splendid faith, which is exactly to the inner woman what courage is to the physical woman, had slipped away from me. Why was God so hard to me? I wanted so much a little verse of comfort, and I had been given an evil prediction. I cried very much as a sensitive child would cry, who thought its dearly loved father had been unkind, or indifferent to its distress.
I had said, I would not go to bed with that verse pealing in my ears, but the pain in every limb of my body grew constantly worse. I put my fingers upon my wrist, and found there that peculiar “bound” that says at every throb, yellow fever! I knew at last, that I was smitten with the fever. Then I called Robert, and was quickly in such physical anguish that I forgot all else; also a feeling of sheer despair took possession of me, and during the ensuing week I was only conscious of the agony of a thirst, which could not be satisfied but at the risk of the vomito. Robert put bits of crushed ice between my lips frequently, but they did not assuage the cruel longing for water. I was in an unconscious state wandering in “a desolate land, where the pains of hell get hold on me – a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and of the shadow of death, that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt;” and into which neither husband nor child could follow me; tossing, muttering, slowly parching and burning up, I lived on from day to day.
But He that “turneth man to destruction” says also, “Return ye children of men;” and on Friday, the eleventh, I became conscious of Robert at my side, and of the children passing through the room and coming to me. I could feel their soft kisses on my hands and face, and I finally found strength to ask Mary, “How are Calvin and Alice?”
“Calvin is sick, Mamma,” she answered. “Papa put him in my room; he wanted to be near you.”
“Very sick?” I asked.
“Not as bad as I was.”
“Alice?”
“She has the fever very slightly. She is nearly well. Alexander, also, but you, dear Mamma?”
“All is right.”
The next day I was much worse. I could not move, and was hardly able to whisper a word or two, and towards midnight Alexander had a relapse. Wringing his hands, and full of a strange reluctance, Robert went out into the dreadful night to try to find a doctor. What happened on that fateful walk, I may not write, but he brought back the doctor, who looked at the child, and then turning to Robert said,
“You will be wanted soon, lie down and sleep. Oh, you must! You must! I will stay here until you awake.”
I know not how long Robert slept. He threw himself on a sofa within sight of my bed, and appeared to fall into a deep sleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. Alexander begged to come to me, and the doctor laid him at my feet, and I felt with an indescribable thrill of love and anguish, his little hand clasp my ankle.
The clock had just struck three, when I heard Robert start suddenly to his feet and cry, “Yes, sir!” Then smiting his hands together as if in distress, he cried out still loudly, “Yes, sir! I am coming!” The doctor rose and went to him. “Barr,” he asked, “what is the matter?” for Robert was weeping as men seldom weep – long moaning sobs, that were the very language of heart-breaking despair. “What is the trouble, my friend?” the doctor asked again, and Robert answered,
“My father called me twice, and I – I answered him. He has been dead thirty-two years.”
“Well then, your father would only come for your relief and help.”
“He came for me, Doctor; the summons was inexorable, and sure.”
“Let us go to the child. He is very ill.”
I heard these words, and I felt at the same moment a tighter clasp of the small hand round my ankle, and Robert’s kiss upon my cheek. Then the hours went slowly and cruelly by, and in the afternoon the beginning of the end commenced. But just before it, the child had another attack similar to the one he and his brother had shared on the train coming in to Galveston. He was quite unconscious, even of his physical agony, his eyes firmly fixed their vision far, far beyond any earthly horizon. His father sat like a stone gazing at him, and I could not have moved a finger, or spoken a word, no, not to have saved his life.
The trance lasted only a few minutes, but he came out of it sighing, and then asked in a voice of awe and wonder, “Who is that man waiting for me, Papa?” He was assured there was no one waiting, but he replied, “Yes, there is a man waiting for me. He is in the next room.” Then his father noticed that his eyes had a new, deep look in them, as if some veil had been rent, and he with open face had beheld things wonderful and secret.
About seven o’clock they took him away from me into the next room. He clung to my feet, and begged to stay with me, and I – Oh, I strove as mortals strive with the impossible to speak, to plead, that he might remain! But it could not be. His father lifted him in his arms, and through the next five awful hours he held him there. No! no! It is not writable, unless one could write with blood and tears. At midnight it was over. But as his father laid down the little boy, Mrs. Lee went to him, and said,
“Calvin is very ill. Go and speak to him, while you can.”
He went at once and put his arm under the sweet child, and spoke to him. And the first words the dying boy uttered were, “Papa, what is the matter with my brother?”
“He is very ill, Calvin.”
“Is he dying?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him to wait for me. I am dying, too, Papa! I cannot see you! I am blind! Kiss me, Papa.”
These were his last words. He died two hours after his brother, and I do not doubt they went together; and they had “a Man” with them, who knew his way through the constellations. They would go straight to Him whom their souls loved. I was not permitted to see either of them, and on Tuesday afternoon they were buried. I heard them carry out the coffins; I heard their father’s bitter grief, and I was dumb and tearless.
After they were buried, Robert came straight to me. “They are laid side by side, Milly, darling,” he said. “Now I also must leave you. Forgive Robert all that he has ever done to grieve you.” I tried to tell him I had nothing to forgive, that he was always good to me, but he shook his head sadly, and continued, “O Milly, my love, my wife, farewell! I must go, dearest! I must go! O my dear, dear wife, farewell!” and I could only answer with low sharp cries. I had not a word for this moment. At the open door our eyes met in a long parting gaze, and then I remember nothing more, till it was dark and late, and I heard the sounds of men busy in the next room.
I never saw my husband again. On Wednesday he died. Thank God, he died as Calvin did, of general congestion. Death mounted from his dead feet to his heart, and head, with a swift sure pace, but he was really dying all the last three days that he was nursing his dying sons. He fell on guard, and Death came as a friend to relieve him:
“And so he passed to joy, through bitter woe,
As some great galleon through dark may go,
Where no star glimmers, and the storm wind wails
Until the rose of Morning touch her sails.”
Mrs. Lee stayed at his side until the last moment, and when all was finished, she came to me. “He has gone!” she said.
“I know,” I answered. “He passed me as he went. There was One with him. I thank God! What time did he go?”
“It was just ten minutes past eleven.”
Then I remembered the pendulum of the clock falling at ten minutes past eleven. And the memory gave me a sudden sense of comfort. Some wiser Intelligence than ourselves, had known even then, what was before us; had known when Robert left his home, that he was faring into the shadows in which his grave was hid. His death was not a blind hap-hazard calamity. It was a foreseen event, an end pre-determined by Infinite Wisdom and Love. O mystery of life! From what unexpected sources, spring thy lessons and thy comforts! Whatever life was left in me was quickened by this blow. I felt it to the foundation of being, and though I could not speak to those around me, I could to the Divine Other who was closer to me than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet. Instantly I found myself urging that almighty help.
“I cannot die now,” I pleaded. “Oh, I cannot die and leave those three little girls alone – in a strange land, without money, without relative or friend to care for them! Oh, help me to live! Help me to live for their sakes! Not for thy sake, for thou can never see death! not for my sake, I am but as a dead woman now; but for my children’s sake, help me to recover my strength! Help me, and I shall live.”
In this manner I silently prayed, with all the fervor of which my soul was capable. And in that central tract of emotion where life and death meet, there are paths of spiritual experience remote and obscure, until some great crisis finds them out – experiences not to be unfolded save to that one Soul, and for which words – however wise – are impotent things. I feel this truth as I write, for I cannot find a way to explain the sure and certain influx of life, that came to me, even as I entreated for it. It came from no drug, no physician, no human help of any kind, but direct from the Thee in Me who works behind the veil, the More of Life in whom we live and move and have our Being.
I do not say that my prayer changed God’s will or purpose concerning me. Oh, no! but God directed my prayer. He put my petition into my heart. The prayer was granted ere I made it. For if we do right, it is God which teaches us both to will and to do, so that every soul that cries out to the Eternal, finds the Eternal; I care not when, or where. God is not far from any one of us, and in every case he seeks us, before we have the desire to seek Him.
I had a full and ready answer to my soul’s petition. I recovered rapidly, and in ten days was able to leave my room, and gather the salvage of my wrecked home around me. No doubt most of my readers have a keen and personal knowledge of that weight of grief, which hangs like lead in the rooms, and on the stairs, where the footsteps of the loved dead have sounded. They know what it is to come back from the grave of their love, and see his hat lying where he threw it down forever, and his slippers at the foot of the bed he died on. And, oh, what a multitude of mothers that no man could number, know what it means to put away the empty clothing that still keeps a heartbreaking look of the little form that moulded it – or the small worn shoes and stockings, the toys and books, that will never more be needed. Alas it is too common an experience to require words! This grief has but to be named, and at any hour thousands of heavy hearts can fill in all its sad details.
After the month of September the fever, for the very want of victims, began to decline, and about the middle of October there was a storm which shook Galveston Island to its foundation. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Bay of Galveston met, and mingled, in the center of the city. There was a hurtling, roaring tempest around it, and a tremendous battle in the firmament above it. It was “a day of desolation, a day of darkness, of clouds and of thick darkness;” and throughout the hours the storm gathered strength. All night the inhabitants sat still in terror, while the sea beat at their doors, and their homes rocked in the terrific wind.
After midnight, when the roaring and crashing and fury of the elements were at their height, it was easy to call to remembrance the magnificent description of just such a storm in Habakkuk, 3:5-12, and as the children drew closer and closer to me, I repeated what I could of it:
“Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet … and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow… I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction… Was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation?.. The overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and the moon stood still in their habitation… Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people.”
At the dawning, the tempest lulled off with mighty, sobbing winds; sullenly but surely it went, and with it departed entirely the dreadful pestilence. There was not another case known. The Lord had indeed arisen for the salvation of the city, and His angels had driven away the powers of darkness that had been permitted there for a season. Oh, then if our eyes had been opened! If we could have seen the battle in the firmament above us! If we could have seen “the Man Gabriel,” or Michael “the great prince which standeth for the children of God’s people against the evil ones,” then, no doubt, we should have said with Elisha, “Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”
After the hurricane the inhabitants arose as one man, to build up and to repair, and to put out of sight and memory all traces of their great calamity. At this time, and for long after, my diary is a record of the most extraordinary kindness shown me, both by acquaintances and friends. Scotch Brown seemed to consider us under his special care, and this self-imposed trust he filled with such delicacy and generosity, that I feel angry at myself today, when I find such meagre acknowledgment of it. I must have been truly selfish, or gratitude would have caused me to write less concerning my own suffering, and more about Scotch Brown’s thoughtfulness in supplying the little comforts of life, that no one else considered. Thus he saw that I had my newspaper and my mail, or if the servant left, he found us another. His help was always practical help. It had few words, and I do not seem to have realized its wonderful faithfulness and unselfishness. Many a time afterwards I longed for a friendship like his, but I have never found it, and in the face of my own words, I say, “It serves me right.” Mrs. Lee visited me once a day, sometimes twice; Mayor Williams looked after any business that came up, and took the children nearly every day for a drive on the beach. He was Alice’s godfather, and he acted the part of a godfather to each of the three girls. A great many people are named in this part of my diary, whom I have quite forgotten, but they were distinctly Robert’s friends – men whom he had nursed through the fever, or had had business relations with, mostly Glasgow men, or at least Scotchmen, but it did me good to talk with them about him.
On the fifth of December my son Andrew was born at four o’clock A.M. I was so happy that the child was a boy, that I cried with thankfulness and delight. He appeared to be a fine strong infant, but he soon showed signs of yellow fever, contracted before his birth, and died when he was five days old at ten minutes to eleven P.M. The next morning he was laid beside his father and two elder brothers. The cycle of the birthplace and the grave fulfilled his doom of earth.
So far I had endured the will of God, but I was not resigned. It was so hard to make my heart believe in its great loss. Often as I sat sewing I would say, “Oh, I must be dreaming! I must wake up! I must go to the gate! He may be coming now!” and I would rise to go to the gate, and look and listen, and sometimes I heard the quick strong steps for which I waited and listened. For the ear has its own memory, and listens for an accustomed sound, and the imagination does not always suffer it to be disappointed.
This delusion lasted for many months, and I have no doubt the majority of widows have experienced it. Some one of them, I wish I knew her name, has expressed it for all, in the following lines:
“Half-unbelieving doth my heart remain of its great woe,
I waken, and a dull, dead sense of pain, is all I know;
Then dimly in the darkness, my mind I feel about,
To know what ’tis that troubles me, and find my sorrow out.
And hardly with long pains, my heart I bring its loss to own,
It seemeth yet impossible, that thou art gone.
That whatsoever else of good, for me in store remain.
This lieth out of hope, my Love, to see thy face again.”
As the year drew to a close, I had fully recovered my strength, indeed I had not been in such fine general health for many years, and with this feeling of physical well-being, there came an urgent sense of the necessity of work. My money, though used with great economy, was decreasing fast, and I had no source for supplying this loss, except by an application to Robert’s mother, which I did not wish to make. So I was troubled and anxious and very unhappy. One Sabbath morning about a week before Christmas I was alone in the house, the children had gone to church, the girl in the kitchen to High Mass. I sat thinking of my position, and wondering what I must do. Naturally, I thought also of the One, who had hitherto taken from my shoulders all the burden and the care of life.
Then a great illumination came to me. I saw events as I had never seen them before. I had always considered myself as one of the most loving and careful of wives and mothers. If any one had told me that I was not, I should have been indignant. But the dead open the eyes of the living. I saw myself that hour, as a character that amazed me and almost broke my heart. Every unreasonable mood, every ungracious and unkind look, every cross word came back to my memory to torture me! Oh, how I had wounded and disappointed those whom I loved best! What a selfish woman I had been!
I was so shocked at the accusations my conscience made against me, that I was silent even from prayer. I had been unkind to the souls of those nearest and dearest to me, and I had no way of redressing the wrong. Why then think about it? Because we cannot say to the heart, “Thou shalt not remember.” And if we could forget, it would be a great moral forfeiture, a treason against our own souls. So I let conscience accuse me until I had remembered, and speechlessly acknowledged all my failures. Then I laid my sorrowful heart, with all its love and contrition at His feet. All my slighted duties, cold retirements, and small returns for love unselfish even unto death, I cast into the abyss of His mercy. There were some moments of terrible lucidity, but when my grief subsided, it was followed by a wonderful peace. The feeling of the Infinite around me grew solemnly sweet and distinct, and my soul turned to it. “My God! My God!” I whispered; and though there were only four words given me, I had a joy past utterance. Trouble was lighter than a grasshopper and, oh, what words can describe that felicity of repose which the ebbing of the spiritual tide left behind it!
