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 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 BY 
 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. 
 
 " Splendor ! Immensity .' Etemi'ty ! Grand words ! Great things ! A little 
 definite happiness would be more 10 the purpose." MADAME DE GASPARIN. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
 
 LATE. TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & Co. 
 1878.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the years 1868 and 1869, by 
 
 FIELDS, OSGOOD, tc CO., 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. '
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 PS 
 3H2, 
 
 To my father, whose life, like a perfume from beyond 
 the Gates, penetrates every life which approaches it, the 
 readers of this little book will owe whatever pleasant thing 
 they may find within its pages. 
 
 E. S. P. 
 
 ANDOVER, October 22, 1868. 
 
 115 
 
 71 f,7 
 
 e JUJf 3
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 I. 
 
 ONE week ; only one week to-day, this twenty- 
 first of February. 
 
 I had been sitting here in the dark and thinking 
 about it, till it seems so horribly long and so hor- 
 ribly short ; it has been such a week to live through, 
 and it is such a small part of the weeks that must 
 be lived through, that I could think no longer, but 
 lighted my lamp and opened my desk to find some- 
 thing to do. 
 
 I was tossing my paper about, only my own : 
 the packages in the yellow envelopes I have not 
 been quite brave enough to open yet, when I 
 came across this poor little book in which I used 
 to keep memoranda of the weather, and my lovers, 
 when I was a school-girl. I turned the leaves, smil- 
 ing to see how many blank pages were left, and took 
 up my pen, and now I am not smiling any more. 
 
 I A
 
 2 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 If it had not come exactly as it did, it seems to 
 me as if I could bear it better. They tell me that 
 it should not have been such a shock. "Your 
 brother had been in the army so long that you 
 should have been prepared for anything. Every- 
 body knows by what a hair a soldier's life is always 
 hanging," and a great deal more that I am afraid I 
 have not listened to. I suppose it is all true ; but 
 that never makes it any easier. 
 
 The house feels like a prison. I walk up and 
 down and wonder that I ever called it home. Some- 
 thing is the matter with the sunsets ; they come 
 and go, and I do not notice them. Something ails 
 the voices of the children, snowballing down the 
 street ; all the music has gone out of them, and 
 they hurt me like knives. The harmless, happy 
 children ! and Roy loved the little children. 
 
 Why, it seems to me as if the world were spin- 
 ning around in the light and wind and laughter, and 
 God just stretched down His hand one morning 
 and put it out. 
 
 It was such a dear, pleasant world to be put out ! 
 
 It was never dearer or more pleasant than it was 
 on that morning. I had been as happy for weeks. 
 I came up from the Post-Office singing to myself.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 3 
 
 His letter was so bright and full of mischief ! I had 
 not had one like it all the winter. I have laid it 
 away by itself, filled with his jokes and pet names, 
 " Mamie " or " Queen Mamie " every other line, 
 and signed 
 
 " Until next time, your happy 
 
 " ROY." 
 
 I wonder if all brothers and sisters keep up the 
 baby-names as we did. I wonder if I shall ever 
 become used to living without them. 
 
 I read the letter over a great many times, and 
 stopped to tell Mrs. Bland the news in it, and 
 wondered what had kept it so long on the way, and 
 wondered if it could be true that he would have a 
 furlough in May. It seemed too good to be true. 
 If I had been fourteen instead of twenty-four, I 
 should have jumped up and down and clapped my 
 hands there in the street. The sky was so bright 
 that I could scarcely turn up my eyes to look at 
 it. The sunshine was shivered into little lances all 
 over the glaring white crust. There was a snow- 
 bird chirping and pecking on the maple-tree as I 
 came in. 
 
 I went up and opened my window ; sat down by
 
 4 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 it and drew a long breath, and began to count the 
 days till May. I must have sat there as much as 
 half an hour. I was so happy counting the days 
 that I did not hear the front gate, and when I 
 looked down a man stood there, a great rough 
 man, who shcmted up that he was in a hurry, and 
 wanted seventy -five cents for a telegram that he had 
 brought over from East Homer. I believe I went 
 down and paid him, sent him away, came up here 
 and locked the door before I read it. 
 
 Phoebe found me here at dinner-time. 
 
 If I could have gone to him, could have busied 
 myself with packing and journeying, could have 
 been forced to think and plan, could have had the 
 shadow of a hope of one more look, one word, I 
 suppose I should have taken it differently. Those 
 two words " Shot dead " shut me up and walled 
 me in, as I think people must feel shut up and 
 walled in, in Hell. I write the words most sol- 
 emnly, for I know that there has been Hell in my 
 heart. 
 
 It is all over now. He came back, and they 
 brought him up the steps, and I listened to their 
 feet, so many feet ; he used to come bounding 
 in. They let me see him for a minute, and there
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 5 
 
 was a funeral, and Mrs. Bland came over, and she 
 and Phoebe attended to everything, I suppose. I 
 did not notice nor think till we had left him out 
 there in the cold and had come back. The windows 
 of his room were opened, and the bitter wind 
 swept in. The house was still and damp. Nobody 
 was there to welcome me. Nobody would ever 
 be * * * * 
 
 Poor old Phcebe ! I had forgotten her. She 
 was waiting at the kitchen window in her black 
 bonnet ; she took off my things and made me a 
 cup of tea, and kept at work near me for a little 
 while, wiping her eyes. She came in just now, 
 when I had left my unfinished sentence to dry, 
 sitting here with my face in my hands. 
 
 " Laws now, Miss Mary, my dear ! This won't 
 never do, a rebellin' agin Providence, and singe- 
 in' your hair on the lamp chimney this way! 
 The dining-room fire 's goin' beautiful, and the sal- 
 mon is toasted to a brown. Put away them papers 
 and come right along ! "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 II. 
 
 February 23. 
 "XT 7 HO originated that most exquisite of inqui- 
 
 * sitions, the condolence system ? 
 
 A solid blow has in itself the elements of its 
 rebound ; it arouses the antagonism of the life on 
 which it falls ; its relief is the relief of a combat. 
 
 But a hundred little needles pricking at us, 
 what is to be done with them ? The hands hang 
 down, the knees are feeble. We cannot so much 
 as gasp, because they are little needles. 
 
 . I know that there are those who like these calls ; 
 but why, in the name of all sweet pity, must we 
 endure them without respect of persons, as we 
 would endure a wedding reception or make a 
 party-call ? 
 
 Perhaps I write excitedly and hardly. I feel 
 excited and hard. 
 
 I am sure I do not mean to be ungrateful for 
 real sorrowful sympathy, however imperfectly it 
 may be shown, or that near friends (if one has 
 them) cannot give, in such a time as this, actual
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 7 
 
 strength, even if they fail of comfort, by look and 
 tone and love. But it is not near friends who are 
 apt to wound, nor real sympathy which sharpens 
 the worst of the needles. It is the fact that all 
 your chance acquaintances feel called upon to 
 bring their curious eyes and jarring words right 
 into the silence of your first astonishment ; taking 
 you in a round of morning calls with kid gloves 
 and parasol, and the liberty to turn your heart 
 about and cut into it at pleasure. You may quiver 
 at every touch, but there is no escape, because it is 
 " the thing." 
 
 For instance : Meta Tripp came in this after- 
 noon, I have refused myself to everybody but 
 Mrs, Bland, before, but Meta caught me in the par- 
 lor, and there was no escape. She had come, it 
 was plain enough, because she must, and she had 
 come early, because, she too having lost a brother 
 in the war, she was expected to be very sorry for 
 me. Very likely she was, and very likely she did 
 the best she knew how, but she was not as un- 
 comfortable as I, but as uncomfortable as she could 
 be, and was evidently glad when it was over. She 
 observed, as she went out, that I should n't feel so 
 sad by and by. She felt very sad at first when
 
 8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Jack died, but everybody got over that after a time. 
 The girls were going to sew for the Fair next week 
 at Mr. Quirk's, and she hoped I would exert my- 
 self and come. 
 Ah, well : 
 
 " First learn to love one living man, 
 Then mayst thou think upon the dead.' 
 
 It is not that the child is to be blamed for not 
 knowing enough to stay away ; but her coming 
 here has made me wonder whether I am different 
 from other women ; why Roy was so much more 
 to me than many brothers are to many sisters. I 
 think it must be that there never was another like 
 Roy. Then we have lived together so long, we 
 two alone, since father died, that he had grown to 
 me, heart of my heart, and life of my life. It did 
 not seem as if he could be taken, and I be left. 
 
 Besides, I suppose most young women of my 
 age have their dreams, and a future probable or 
 possible, which makes the very incompleteness of 
 life sweet, because of the symmetry which is wait- 
 ing somewhere. But that was settled so long ago 
 for me that it makes it very different. Roy was all 
 there was.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 9 
 
 February 26. 
 
 Death and Heaven could not seem very different 
 to a Pagan from what they seem to me. 
 
 I say this deliberately. It has been deliberately 
 forced upon me. That of which I had a faint con- 
 sciousness in the first shock takes shape now. I do 
 not see how one with such thoughts in her heart as 
 I have had can possibly be " regenerate," or stand 
 any chance of ever becoming " one of the redeemed." 
 And here I am, what I have been for six years, a 
 member of an Evangelical church, in good and 
 regular standing ! 
 
 The bare, blank sense of physical repulsion from 
 death, which was all the idea I had of anything 
 when they first brought him home, has not gone yet. 
 It is horrible. It was cruel. Roy, all I had in the 
 wide world, Roy, with the flash in his eyes, with 
 his smile that lighted the house all up ; with his 
 pretty, soft hair that I used to curl and kiss about 
 my finger, his bounding step, his strong arms that 
 folded me in and cared for me, Roy snatched 
 away in an instant by a dreadful God, and laid out 
 there in the wet and snow, in the hideous wet 
 and snow, never to kiss him, never to see him 
 any more ! * * * * 
 i*
 
 IO THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 He was a good boy. Roy was a good boy. He 
 must have gone to Heaven. But I know nothing 
 about Heaven. It is very far off. In my best and 
 happiest days, I never liked to think of it. If I were 
 to go there, it could do me no good, for I should 
 not see Roy. Or if by chance I should see him 
 standing up among the grand, white angels, he 
 would not be the old dear Roy. I should grow so 
 tired of singing ! Should long and fret for one little 
 talk, for I never said good by, and 
 
 I will stop this. 
 
 A scrap from the German of Burger, which I came 
 across to-day, shall be copied here. 
 
 " Be calm, my child, forget thy woe, 
 And think of God and Heaven ; 
 Christ thy Redeemer hath to thee 
 Himself for comfort given. 
 
 " O mother, mother, what is Heaven ? 
 O mother, what is Hell ? 
 To be with Wilhelm, that 's my Heaven ? 
 Without him, that 's my Hell. " 
 
 February 27. 
 
 Miss Meta Trip, in the ignorance of her little silly 
 heart, has done me a great mischie
 
 THE GATES AJAR. II 
 
 Phoebe prepared me for it, by observing, when 
 she came up yesterday to dust my room, that " folks 
 was all sayin' that Mary Cabot " (Homer is not 
 an aristocratic town, and Phoebe doffs and dons my 
 title at her own sweet will) " that Mary Cabot 
 was dreadful low sence Royal died, and had n't 
 ought to stay shut up by herself, day in and day 
 out. It was behaving con-trary to the will of Provi- 
 dence, and very bad for her health, too." Moreover, 
 Mrs. Bland, who called this morning with her three 
 babies, she never is able to stir out of the house 
 without those children, poor thing ! lingered 
 awkwardly on the door-steps as she went away, 
 and hoped that Mary my dear would n't take it 
 unkindly, but she did wish that I would exert my- 
 self more to see my friends and receive comfort in 
 my affliction. She did n't want to interfere, or 
 bother me, or but people would talk, and 
 
 My good little minister's wife broke down all in a 
 blush, at this point in her " porochial duties " (I 
 more than suspect that her husband had a hand in 
 the matter), so I took pity on her embarrassment, 
 and said, smiling, that I would think about it. 
 
 I see just how the leaven has spread. Miss Meta, 
 a little overwhelmed and a good deal mystified by
 
 12 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 her call here, pronounces " poor Mary Cabot so sad ; 
 she would n't talk about Royal ; and you could n't 
 persuade her to come to the Fair ; and she was so 
 sober ! why, it was dreadful ! " 
 
 Therefore, Homer has made up its mind that I 
 shall become resigned in an arithmetical manner, 
 and comforted according to the Rule of Three. 
 
 I wish I could go away ! I wish I could go away 
 and creep into the ground and die ! If nobody need 
 ever speak any more words to me ! If anybody only 
 knew what to say ! 
 
 Little Mrs. Bland has ever been very kind, and I 
 thank her with all my heart. But she does not 
 know. She does not understand. Her happy heart 
 is bound up in her little live children. She never 
 laid anybody away under the snow without a chance 
 to say good by. 
 
 As for the minister, he came, of course, as it was, 
 proper that he should, before the funeral, and once 
 after. He is a very good man, but I am afraid of 
 him, and I am glad that he has not come again. 
 
 Night. 
 
 I can only repeat and re-echo what I wrote this 
 noon. If anybody knew what to say 1
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I 
 
 Just after supper I heard the door-bell, and, look- 
 ing out of the window, I caught a glimpse of Deacon 
 Quirk's old drab felt hat, on the upper step. My 
 heart sank, but there was no help for me. I waited 
 for Phoebe to bring up his name, desperately listen- 
 ing to her heavy steps, and letting her knock three 
 times before I answered. I confess to having taken 
 my hair down twice, washed my hands to a most 
 unnecessary extent, and been a long time brushing 
 my dress ; also to forgetting my handkerchief, and 
 having to go back for it after I was down stairs. 
 Deacon Quirk looked tired of waiting. I hope he 
 was. 
 
 O, what an ill-natured thing to say ! What is 
 coming over me ? What would Roy think ? What 
 could he ? 
 
 " Good evening, Mary," said the Deacon, severely, 
 when I went in. Probably he did not mean to 
 speak severely, but the truth is, I think he was a 
 little vexed that I had kept him waiting. I said 
 good evening, and apologized for my delay, and sat 
 down as far from him as I conveniently could. There 
 was an awful silence. " I came in this evening," 
 said the Deacon, breaking it with a cough, " I came 
 hem ! to confer with you "
 
 14 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 I looked up. " I thought somebody had ought 
 to come," continued the Deacon, " to confer with 
 you as. a Christian brother on your spiritooal con- 
 dition." 
 
 I opened my eyes. 
 
 " To confer with you on your spiritooal condi- 
 tion," repeated my visitor. " I understand that you 
 have had some unfortoonate exercises of mind 
 under your affliction, and I observed that you ab- 
 sented yourself from the Communion Table last 
 Sunday." 
 
 "I did." 
 
 rt Intentionally ? " 
 
 " Intentionally." 
 
 He seemed to expect me to say something more ; . 
 and, seeing that there was no help for it, I an- 
 swered. 
 
 " I did not feel fit to go. I should not have 
 dared to go. God does not seem to me just now 
 what He used to. He has dealt very bitterly with 
 me. But, however wicked I may be, I will not 
 mock Him. I think, Deacon Quirk, that I did 
 right to stay away." 
 
 " Well," said the Deacon, twirling his hat with 
 3 puzzled look, " perhaps you did. But I don't see
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 15 
 
 the excuse for any such feelings as would make it 
 necessary. I think it my duty to tell you, Mary, 
 that I am sorry to see you in such a rebellious 
 state of mind." 
 
 I made no reply. 
 
 " Afflictions come from God," he observed, look- 
 ing at me as impressively as if he supposed that 
 I had never heard the statement before. " Afflic- 
 tions come from God, and, however afflictin' or 
 however crushin' they may be, it is our duty to 
 submit to them. Glory in triboolation, St. Paul 
 says, glory in triboolation." I continued silent. 
 
 " I sympathize with you in this sad dispensa- 
 tion," he proceeded. "Of course you was very 
 fond of Royal ; it 's natural you should be, quite 
 natural " He stopped, perplexed, I suppose, by 
 something in my face. " Yes, it 's very natural ; 
 poor human nature sets a great deal by earthly 
 props and affections. But it 's your duty, as a 
 Christian and a church-member, to be resigned." 
 
 I tapped the floor with my foot. I began to 
 think that I could not bear much more. 
 
 " To be resigned, my dear young friend. To 
 say ' Abba, Father,' and pray that the will of the 
 Lord be done."
 
 16 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Deacon Quirk ! " said I, " I am not resigned. 
 I pray the dear Lord with all my heart to make me 
 so, but I will not say that I am, until I am, if 
 ever that time comes. As for those words about 
 the Lord's will, I would no more take them on my 
 lips than I would blasphemy, unless I could speak 
 them honestly, and that I cannot do. We had 
 better talk of something else now, had we not ? " 
 
 Deacon Quirk looked at me. It struck me that 
 he would look very much so at a Mormon or a 
 Hottentot, and I wondered whether he were going 
 to excommunicate me on the spot. 
 
 As soon as he began to speak, however, I saw 
 that he was only bewildered, honestly bewil- 
 dered, and honestly shocked : I do not doubt that 
 I had said bewildering and shocking things. 
 
 " My friend," he said, solemnly, " I shall pray for 
 you and leave you in the hands of God. Your 
 brother, whom He has removed from this earthly 
 life for His own wise " 
 
 " We will not talk any more about Roy, if you 
 please," I interrupted ; " he is happy and safe." 
 
 " Hem ! I hope so," he replied, moving un- 
 easily in his chair ; " I believe he never made a 
 profession of religion, but there is no limit to the
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I/ 
 
 mercy of God. It is very unsafe for the young to 
 think that they can rely on a death-bed repentance, 
 but our God is a covenant-keeping God, and Roy- 
 al's mother was a pious woman. If you cannot 
 say with certainty that he is numbered among the 
 redeemed, you are justified, perhaps, in hoping so." 
 I turned sharply on him, but words died on my 
 lips. How could I tell the man of that short, dear 
 letter that came to me in December, that Roy's 
 was no death-bed repentance, but the quiet, natural 
 growth of a life that had always been the life of 
 the pure in heart ; of his manly beliefs and unself- 
 ish motives ; of that dawning sense of friendship 
 with Christ of which he used to speak so modestly, 
 dreading lest he should not be honest with himself? 
 " Perhaps I ought not to call myself a Christian," 
 he wrote, I learned the words by heart, " and 
 I shall make no profession to be such, till I am 
 sure of it, but my life has not seemed to me for a 
 long time to be my own. ' Bought with a price ' 
 just expresses it. I can point to no time at which 
 I was conscious by any revolution of feeling of 'ex- 
 periencing a change of heart,' but it seems to me 
 that a man's heart might be changed for all that. 
 I do not know that it is necessary for us to be able
 
 18 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 to watch every footprint of God. The way is all 
 that concerns us, to see that we follow it and 
 Him. This I am sure of; and knocking about in 
 this army life only convinces me of what I felt in a 
 certain way before, that it is the only way, and 
 He the only guide to follow." 
 
 But how could I say anything of this to Deacon 
 Quirk ? this my sealed and sacred treasure, of 
 all that Roy left me the dearest. At any rate I 
 did not. It seemed both obstinate and cruel in 
 him to come there and say what he had been say- 
 ing. He might have known that I would not say 
 that Roy had gone to Heaven, if why, if there 
 had been the breath of a doubt. It is a possibility 
 of which I cannot rationally conceive, but I sup- 
 pose that his name would never have passed my 
 lips. 
 
 So I turned away from Deacon Quirk, and shut 
 my mouth, and waited for him to finish. Whether 
 the idea began to struggle into his mind that he 
 might not have been making a very comforting 
 remark, I cannot say ; but he started very soon to 
 
 g- 
 
 " Supposing you are right, and Royal was saved 
 
 at the eleventh hour," he said at parting, with one
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 19 
 
 of his stolid efforts to be consolatory, that are 
 worse than his rebukes, " if he is singing the song 
 of Moses and the Lamb (he pointed with his big, 
 dingy thumb at the ceiling), he does n't rebel 
 against the doings of Providence. All his affec- 
 tions are subdued to God, merged, as you might 
 say, merged in worshipping before the great 
 White Throne. He does n't think this miser'ble 
 earthly spere of any importance, compared with 
 that eternal and exceeding weight of glory. In 
 the appropriate words of the poet, 
 
 ' O, not to one created thing 
 
 Shall our embrace be given, 
 But all our joy shall be in God, 
 For only God is Heaven.' 
 
 Those are very spiritooal and scripteral lines, and 
 it 's very proper to reflect how true they are." 
 
 I saw him go out, and came up here and locked 
 myself in, and have been walking round and round 
 the room. I must have walked a good while, for I 
 feel as weak as a baby. 
 
 Can the man in any state of existence be made 
 to comprehend that he has been holding me on the 
 rack this whole evening ? 
 
 Yet he came under a strict sense of duty, and in
 
 2O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the kindness of all the heart he has ! I knew, or I 
 ought to know, that he is a good man, far better 
 in the sight of God to-night, I do not doubt, than I 
 am. 
 
 But it hurts, it cuts, that thing which he said 
 as he went out ; because I suppose it must be true ; 
 because it seems to me greater than I can bear to 
 have it true. 
 
 Roy, away in that dreadful Heaven, can have no 
 thought of me, cannot remember how I loved him, 
 how he left me all alone. The singing and the 
 worshipping must take up all his time. God wants 
 it all. He is a " Jealous God." I am nothing any 
 more to Roy. 
 
 March 2. 
 
 And once I was much, very much to him ! 
 
 His Mamie, his poor Queen Mamie, dearer, 
 he used to say, than all the world to him, I don't 
 see how he can like it so well up there as to forget 
 her. Though Roy was a very good boy. But this 
 poor, wicked little Mamie, why, I fall to pitying 
 her as if she were some one else, and wish that some 
 one would cry over her a little. I can't cry. 
 
 Roy used to say a thing, I have not the words, 
 but it was like this, that one must be either very
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 21 
 
 young or very ungenerous, if one could find time to 
 pity one's self. 
 
 I have lain for two nights, with my eyes open all 
 night long. I thought that perhaps I might see 
 him. I have been praying for a touch, a sign, only 
 for something to break the silence into which he has 
 gone. But there is no answer, none. The light 
 burns blue, and I see at last that it is morning, and 
 go down stairs alone, and so the day begins. 
 
 Something of Mrs. Browning's has been keeping 
 a dull, mechanical time in my brain all day. 
 
 " God keeps a niche 
 
 In Heaven to hold our idols : . . . . albeit 
 He brake them to our faces, and denied 
 That our close kisses should impair their white." 
 
 But why must He take them ? And why should 
 He keep them there ? Shall we ever see them 
 framed in their glorious gloom ? Will He let us 
 touch them then ? Or must we stand like a poor 
 worshipper at a Cathedral, looking up at his pictured 
 saint afar off upon the other side ? 
 
 Has everything stopped just here ? Our talks 
 together in the twilight, our planning and hoping 
 and dreaming together ; our walks and rides and 
 laughing ; our reading and singing and loving, 
 these, then, are all gone out forever ?
 
 22 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 God forgive the words ! but Heaven will never be 
 Heaven to me without them. 
 
 March 4. 
 
 Perhaps I had better not write any more here 
 after this. 
 
 On looking over the leaves, I see that the little 
 green book has become an outlet for the shallower 
 part of pain. 
 
 Meta Tripp and Deacon Quirk, gossip and sym- 
 pathy that have buzzed into my trouble and annoyed 
 me like wasps (we are apt to make more fuss over 
 a wasp-sting than a sabre-cut), just that proportion 
 of suffering which alone can ever be put into words, 
 ^- the surface. 
 
 I begin to understand what I never understood 
 till now, what people mean by the luxury of grief. 
 No, I am sure that I never understood it, because 
 my pride suffered as much as any part of me in that 
 other time. I would no more have spent two con- 
 secutive hours drifting at the mercy of my thoughts 
 than I would have put my hand into the furnace 
 fire. The right to mourn makes everything differ- 
 ent. Then, as to mother, I was very young when 
 
 she died, and father, though I loved him, was never 
 
 
 
 to me what Roy has been.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 23 
 
 This luxury of grief, like all luxuries, is pleasure- 
 able. Though, as I was saying, it is only the 
 shallow part of one 's heart I imagine that the 
 deepest hearts have their shallows which can be 
 filled by it, still it brings a shallow relief. 
 
 Let it be confessed to this honest book, that, 
 driven to it by desperation, I found in it a wretched 
 sort of content. 
 
 Being a little stronger now physically, I shall try 
 to be a little braver ; it will do no harm to try. So 
 I seem to see that it was the content of poison, 
 salt-water poured between shipwrecked lips. 
 
 At any rate, I mean to put the book away and 
 lock it up. .Roy used to say that he did not be- 
 lieve in journals. I begin to see why.
 
 24 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 III. 
 
 March 7. 
 
 T HAVE taken out my book, and am going to 
 * write again. But there is an excellent reason. 
 I have something else than myself to write about. 
 
 This morning Phoebe persuaded me to walk 
 down to the office, " To keep up my spirits and get 
 some salt pork." 
 
 She brought my things and put them on me 
 while I was hesitating ; tied my victorine and but- 
 toned my gloves ; warmed my boots, and fussed 
 about me as if I had been a baby. It did me good 
 to be taken care of, and I thanked her softly; a 
 little more softly than I am apt to speak to Phoebe. 
 
 " Bless your soul, my dear ! " she said, winking 
 briskly, " I don't want no thanks. It 's thanks 
 enough jest to see one of your old looks comin' 
 over you for a spell, sence " 
 
 She knocked over a chair with her broom, and 
 left her sentence unfinished. Phoebe has always 
 had a queer, clinging, superior sort of love for us 
 both. She dandled us on her knees, and made all
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2$ 
 
 our rag-dolls, and carried- us through measles and 
 mumps and the rest. Then mother's early death 
 threw all the care upon her. I believe that in her 
 secret heart she considers me more her child than 
 her mistress. It cost a great many battles to be- 
 come established as " Miss Mary." 
 
 " I should like to know," she would say, throw- 
 ing back her great square shoulders and towering 
 up in front of me, "I should like to know if you 
 s'pose I 'm a goin' to ' Miss ' anybody that I Ve 
 trotted to Bamberry Cross as many times as I have 
 you, Mary Cabot ! Catch me ! " 
 
 I remember how she would insist on calling me 
 " her baby " after I was in long dresses, and that it 
 mortified me cruelly once when Meta Tripp was 
 here to tea with some Boston cousins. Poor, good 
 Phcebe ! Her rough love seems worth more to me, 
 now that it is all I have left me in the world. It 
 occurs to me that I may not have taken notice 
 enough of her lately. She has done her honest 
 best to comfort me, and she loved Roy, too. 
 
 But about the letter. I wrapped my face up 
 closely in the crepe, so that, if I met Deacon Quirk, 
 he should not recognize me, and, thinking that the 
 air was pleasant as I walked, came home with the
 
 26 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 pork for Phoebe and a letter for myself. I did not 
 open it ; in fact, I forgot all about it, till I had 
 been at home for half an hour. I cannot bear to 
 open a letter since that morning when the lances 
 of light fell on the snow. They have written to 
 me from everywhere, uncles and cousins and old 
 school-friends ; well-meaning people ; saying each 
 the same thing in the same way, no, not that 
 exactly, and very likely I should feel hurt and 
 lonely if they did not write ; but sometimes I wish 
 it did not all have to be read. 
 
 So I did not notice much about my letter this 
 morning, till presently it occurred to me that what 
 must be done had better be done quickly ; so I 
 drew up my chair to the desk, prepared to read 
 and answer on the spot. Something about the 
 writing and the signature rather pleased me : it 
 was dated from Kansas, and was signed with the 
 name of my mother's youngest sister, Winifred 
 Forceythe. I will lay the letter in between these 
 two leaves, for it seems to suit the pleasant, spring- 
 like day ; besides, I took out the green book again 
 on account of it. 
 
 LAWRENCE, KANSAS, February 21. 
 
 MY DEAR CHILD, I have been thinking how
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2/ 
 
 happy you will be by and by because Roy is 
 happy. 
 
 And yet I know I understand 
 
 You have been in all my thoughts, and they 
 have been such pitiful, tender thoughts, that I can- 
 not help letting you know that somebody is sorry 
 for you. For the rest, the heart knoweth its own, 
 and I am, after all, too much of a stranger to my 
 sister's child to intermeddle. 
 
 So my letter dies upon my pen. You cannot 
 bear words yet. How should I dare to fret you 
 with them ? I can only reach you by my silence, 
 and leave you with the Heart that bled and broke 
 for you and Roy. 
 
 Your Aunt, 
 
 WINIFRED FORCEYTHE. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT, February 23. 
 
 I open my letter to add, that I am thinking of 
 coming to New England with Faith, you know 
 Faith and I have nobody but each other now. In- 
 deed, I may be on my way by the time this reaches 
 you. It is just possible that I may not come back 
 to the West. I shall be for a time at your uncle 
 Calvin's, and then my husband's friends think that
 
 28 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 they must have me. I should like to see you for a 
 day or two, but if you do not care to see me, say 
 so. If you let me come because you think you 
 must, I shall find it out from your face in an hour. 
 I should like to be something to you, or do some- 
 thing for you ; but if I cannot, I would rather not 
 come. 
 
 I like that letter. 
 
 I have written to her to come, and in such a way 
 that I think she will understand me to mean what 
 I say. I have not seen her since I was a child. I 
 know that she was very much younger than my 
 mother ; that she spent her young ladyhood teach- 
 ing at the South ; grandfather had enough with 
 which to support her, but I have heard it said that 
 she preferred to take care of herself ; that she 
 finally married a poor minister, whose sermons 
 people liked, but whose coat was shockingly 
 shabby ; that she left the comforts and elegances 
 and friends of New England to go to the West 
 and bury herself in an unheard-of little place with 
 him (I think she must have loved him) ; that he 
 afterwards settled in Lawrence ; that there, after 
 they had been married some childless years, this
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2Q 
 
 little Faith was born ; and that there Uncle For- 
 ceythe died about three years ago ; that is about all 
 I know of her. I suppose her share of Grandfather 
 Burleigh's little property supports her respectably. 
 I understand that she has been living a sort of 
 missionary life among her husband's people since 
 his death, and that they think they shall never see 
 her like again. It is they who keep her from 
 coming home again, Uncle Calvin's wife told me 
 once ; they and one other thing, her husband's 
 grave. 
 
 I hope she will come to see me. I notice one 
 strange thing about her letter. She does not use the 
 ugly words " death " and " dying." I don't know 
 exactly what she put in their places, but something 
 that had a pleasant sound. 
 
 " To be happy because Roy is happy." I wonder 
 if she really thinks it is possible. 
 
 I wonder what makes the words chase me about
 
 3O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 IV. 
 
 May 5. 
 
 T AM afraid that my brave resolutions are all 
 -* breaking down. 
 
 The stillness of the May days is creeping into 
 everything ; the days in which the furlough was to 
 come ; in which the bitter Peace has come instead, 
 and in which he would have been at home, never to 
 go away from me any more. 
 
 The lazy winds are choking me. Their faint 
 sweetness makes me sick. The moist, rich loam is 
 ploughed in the garden ; the grass, more golden 
 than green, springs in the warm hollow by the front 
 gate ; the great maple, just reaching up to tap at 
 the window, blazes and bows under its weight of 
 scarlet blossoms. I cannot bear their perfume ; it 
 comes up in great breaths, when the window is 
 opened. I wish that little cricket, just waked from 
 his winter's nap, would not sit there on the sill and 
 chirp at me. I hate the bluebirds flashing in and 
 out of the carmine cloud that the maple makes, and 
 singing, singing, everywhere.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 31 
 
 It is easy to understand how Bianca heard " The 
 nightingales sing through her head," how she could 
 call them " Owl-like birds," who sang " for spite," 
 who sang " for hate," who sang " for doom." 
 
 Most of all I hate the maple. I wish winter were 
 back again to fold it away in white, with its bare, 
 black fingers only to come tapping at the window. 
 " Roy's maple " we used to call it. How much fun 
 he had out of that old tree ! 
 
 As far back as I can remember, we never con, 
 sidered spring to be officially introduced till we had 
 had a fight with the red blossoms. Roy used to 
 pelt me well ; but with that pretty chivalry of his, 
 which was rare in such a little fellow, which devel- 
 oped afterwards into that rarer treatment of women, 
 of which every one speaks who speaks of him, he 
 would stop the play the instant it threatened rough- 
 ness. I used to be glad, though, that I had strength 
 and courage enough to make it some fun to him. 
 
 The maple is full of pictures of Roy. Roy, not 
 yet over the dignity of his first boots, aiming for the 
 cross-barred branch, coming to the ground with a 
 terrible wrench on his ankle, straight up again 
 before anybody could stop him, and sitting there on 
 the ugly swaying bough as white as a sheet, to wave
 
 32 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 his cap, "There/ 1 meant to do it, and I have ! n 
 Roy, chopping off the twigs for kindling-wood in his 
 mud oven, and sending his hatchet right through 
 the parlor window. Roy cutting leaves for me, and 
 then pulling all my wreaths down over my nose 
 every time I put them on ! Roy making me jump 
 half-way across the room with a sudden thump on 
 my window, and looking out, I would see him with 
 his hat off and hair blown from his forehead, framed 
 in by the scented blossoms, or the quivering green, 
 or the flame of blood-red leaves. But there is no 
 end to them if I begin. 
 
 I had planned, if he came this week, to strip the 
 richest branches, and fill his room. 
 
 May 6. 
 
 The May-day stillness, the lazy winds, the sweet^ 
 ness in the air, are all gone. A miserable north- 
 easterly storm has set in. The garden loam is a 
 mass of mud ; the golden grass is drenched ; the 
 poor little cricket is drowned in a mud-puddle ; the 
 bluebirds are huddled among the leaves, with their 
 heads under their drabbled wings, and the maple 
 blossoms, dull and shrunken, drip against the glass. 
 
 It begins to be evident that it will never do for 
 me to live alone. Yet who is there in the wide
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 33 
 
 world that I could bear to bring here into Roy's 
 place ? 
 
 A little old-fashioned book, bound in green and 
 gold, attracted my attention this morning while I 
 was dusting the library. It proved to be my 
 mother's copy of " Elia," one that father had 
 given her, I saw by the fly-leaf, in their early en- 
 gagement days. It is some time since I read 
 Charles Lamb ; indeed, since the middle of Feb- 
 ruary I have read nothing of any sort. Phoebe 
 dries the Journal for me every night, and sometimes 
 I glance at the Telegraphic Summary, and some- 
 times I don't. 
 
 " You used to be fond enough of books," Mrs. 
 Bland says, looking puzzled, regular blue-stock- 
 ing, Mr. Bland called you (no personal objection to 
 you, of course, my dear, but he does n't like literary 
 women, which is a great comfort to me). Why don't 
 you read and divert yourself now ? " 
 
 But my brain, like the rest of me, seems to be 
 crushed. I could not follow three pages of history 
 with attention. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Whit- 
 tier, Mrs. Browning, are filled with Roy's marks, 
 and so down the shelf. Besides, poetry strikes as 
 nothing else does, deep into the roots of things.
 
 34 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 One finds everywhere some strain at the fibres of 
 one's heart. A mind must be healthily reconciled 
 to actual life, before a poet at least most poets 
 can help it. We must learn to bear and to work, 
 before we can spare strength to dream. 
 
 To hymns and hymn-like poems, exception should 
 be made. Some of them are like soft hands steal- 
 ing into ours in the dark, and holding us fast with- 
 out a spoken word. I do not know how many 
 times Whittier's " Psalm," and that old cry of Cow- 
 per's, " God moves in a mysterious way," have 
 quieted me, just the sound of the words ; when 
 I was too wild to take in their meaning, and too 
 wicked to believe them if I had. 
 
 As to novels, (by the way, Meta Tripp sent me 
 over four yesterday afternoon, among which notice 
 "Aurora Floyd" and "Uncle Silas,") the author 
 of " Rutledge " expresses my feeling about them 
 precisely. I do not remember her exact words, 
 but they are not unlike these. " She had far out- 
 lived the passion of ordinary novels ; and the few 
 which struck the depths of her experience gave her 
 more pain than pleasure." 
 
 However, I took up poor " Elia " this morning, 
 and stumbled upon "Dream Children," to which,
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 35 
 
 for pathos and symmetry, I have read few things 
 superior in the language. Years ago, I almost 
 knew it by heart, but it has slipped out of memory 
 with many other things of late. Any book, if it be 
 one of those which Lamb calls " books which are 
 books," put before us at different periods of life, will 
 unfold to us new meanings, wheels within wheels, 
 delicate springs of purpose to which, at the last 
 reading, we were stone-blind ; gems which perhaps 
 the author ignorantly cut and polished. 
 
 A sentence in this " Dream Children," which at 
 eighteen I passed by with a compassionate sort of 
 wonder, only thinking that it gave me " the blues " 
 to read it, and that I was glad Roy was alive, I 
 have seized upon and learned all over again now. 
 I write it down to the dull music of the rain. 
 
 " And how when he died, though he had not 
 been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
 great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt 
 life and death ; and how I bore his death, as I 
 thought, pretty well at first, but afterwards it 
 haunted and haunted me ; and though I did not 
 cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think 
 he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him 
 all day long, and knew not till then how much I
 
 36 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 had loved him. I missed his kindness and I missed 
 his crossness, and wished him to be alive again to 
 be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled some- 
 times), rather than not have him again." 
 
 How still the house is ! I can hear the coach 
 rumbling away at the half-mile corner, coming up 
 from the evening train. A little arrow of light has 
 just cut the gray gloom of the West. 
 
 Ten o'clock. 
 
 The coach to which I sat listening rumbled up to 
 the gate and stopped. Puzzled for the moment, 
 and feeling as inhospitable as I knew how, I went 
 down to the door. The driver was already on the 
 steps, with a bundle in his arms that proved to 
 be a rather minute child ; and a lady, veiled, was 
 just stepping from the carriage into the rain. Of 
 course I came to my senses at that, and, calling 
 to Phcebe that Mrs. Forceythe had come, sent 
 her out an umbrella. 
 
 She surprised me by running lightly up the 
 steps. I had imagined a somewhat advanced age 
 and a sedate amount of infirmities, to be necessary 
 concomitants of aunthood. She came in all spark- 
 ling with rain-drops, and, gently pushing aside the
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 37 
 
 hand with which I was trying to pay her driver, 
 said, laughing : 
 
 " Here we are, bag and baggage, you see, ' big 
 trunk, little trunk,' &c., &c. You did not expect 
 me ? Ah, my letter missed then. It is too bad to 
 take you by storm in this way. Come, Faith ! 
 No, don't trouble about the trunks just now. Shall 
 I go right in here ? " 
 
 Her voice had a sparkle in it, like the drops on 
 her veil, but it was low and very sweet. I took 
 her in by the dining-room fire, and was turning to 
 take off the little girl's things, when a soft hand 
 stayed me, and I saw that she had drawn off the 
 wet veil. A face somewhat pale looked down at 
 me, she is taller than I, with large, compas- 
 sionate eyes. 
 
 " I am too wet to kiss you, but I must have a 
 look," she said, smiling. " That will do. You are 
 like your mother, very like." 
 
 I don't know what possessed me, whether it was 
 the sudden, sweet feeling of kinship with some- 
 thing alive, or whether it was her face or her voice, 
 or all together, but I said : 
 
 " I don't think you are too wet to be kissed," and 
 threw my arms about her neck, I am not of the
 
 38 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 kissing kind, either, and I had on my new bom- 
 bazine, and she was very wet. 
 
 I thought she looked pleased. 
 
 Phoebe was sent to open the register in the blue 
 room, and as soon as it was warm I went up with 
 them, leading Faith by the hand. I am unused to 
 children, and she kept stepping on my dress, and 
 spinning around and tipping over, in the most 
 astonishing manner. It strikingly reminded me 
 of a top at the last gasp. Her mother observed 
 that she was tired and sleepy. Phoebe was waiting 
 around awkwardly up stairs, with fresh towels on 
 her arm. Aunt Winifred turned and held out her 
 hand. 
 
 " Well, Phoebe, I am glad to see you. This is 
 Phoebe, I am sure ? You have altered with every- 
 thing else since I was here before. You keep 
 bright and well, I hope, and take good care of Miss 
 Mary ? " 
 
 It was a simple enough thing, to be sure, her 
 taking the trouble to notice the old servant, with 
 whom she had scarcely ever exchanged a half- 
 dozen words ; but I liked it. I liked the way, too, 
 in which it was done. It reminded me of Roy's 
 fine, well-bred manner towards his inferiors, al-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 39 
 
 ways cordial, yet always appropriate ; I have heard 
 that our mother had much the same. 
 
 I tried to make things look as pleasant as I 
 could down stairs, while they were making ready 
 for tea. The grate was raked up a little, a bright 
 supper-cloth laid on the table, and the curtains 
 drawn. Phcebe mixed a hasty cake of some sort, 
 and brought out the heavier pieces of silver, tea- 
 pot, &c., which I do not use when I am alone, 
 because it is so much trouble to take care of them, 
 and because I like the little Wedgwood set that 
 Roy had for his chocolate. 
 
 " How pleasant ! " said Aunt Winifred, as she 
 sat down with Faith in a high chair beside her. 
 Phcebe had a great hunt up garret for that chair ; 
 it has been stowed away there since it and I parted 
 company. " How pleasant everything is here ! I 
 believe in bright dining-rooms. There is an inde- 
 scribable dinginess to most that I have seen, which 
 tends to anything but thankfulness. Homesick, 
 Faith ? No ; that 's right. I don't think we shall 
 be homesick at Cousin Mary's." 
 
 If she had not said that, the probabilities are 
 Jiat they would have been, for I have fallen quite 
 out of the way of active housekeeping, and have
 
 4O THEGATESAJAR. 
 
 
 
 almost forgotten how to entertain a friend. But 
 I do not want her good opinion wasted, and mean 
 they shall have a good time if I can make it for 
 them. 
 
 It was a little hard at first to see her opposite 
 me at the table ; it was Roy's place. 
 
 While she was sitting there in the light, with the 
 dust and weariness of travel brushed away a little, 
 I was able to make up my mind what this aunt of 
 mine looks like. 
 
 She is young, then, to begin with, and I find it 
 necessary to reiterate the fact, in order to get it 
 into my stupid brain. The cape and spectacles, 
 the little old woman's shawl and invalid's walk, for 
 which I had prepared myself, persist in hovering 
 before my bewildered eyes, ready to drop down on 
 her at a moment's notice. Just thirty-five she is 
 by her own showing ; older than I, to be sure ; but 
 as we passed in front of the mirror together, once 
 to-night, I could not see half that difference be- 
 tween us. The peace of her face and the pain of 
 mine contrast sharply, and give me an old, worn 
 look, beside her. After all, though, to one who 
 had seen much of life, hers would be the true ma- 
 turity perhaps, the maturity of repose. A look
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 4! 
 
 in her eyes once or twice gave me the impression 
 that she thinks me rather young, though she is far 
 too wise and delicate to show it. I don't like to be 
 treated like a girl. I mean to find out what she 
 does think. 
 
 My eyes have been on her face the whole even- 
 ing, and I believe it is the sweetest face woman's 
 face that I have ever seen. Yet she is far from 
 being a beautiml woman. It is difficult to say what 
 makes the impression ; scarcely any feature is ac- 
 curate, yet the tout ensemble seems to have no fault 
 Her hair, which must have been bright bronze 
 once, has grown gray quite gray before its 
 time. I really do not know of what color her eyes 
 are ; blue, perhaps, most frequently, but they 
 change with every word that she speaks ; when 
 quiet, they have a curious, far-away look, and a 
 steady, lambent light shines through them. Her 
 mouth is well cut and delicate, yet you do not so 
 much notice that as its expression. It looks as if 
 it held a happy secret, with which, however near 
 one may come to her, one can never intermeddle. 
 Yet there are lines about it and on her forehead, 
 which are proof plain enough that she has not 
 always floated on summer seas. She yet wears
 
 42 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 her widow's black, but relieves it pleasantly by 
 white at the throat and wrists. Take her alto- 
 gether, I like to look at her. 
 
 Faith is a round, rolling, rollicking little piece 
 of mischief, with three years and a half of ex- 
 perience in this very happy world. She has black 
 eyes and a pretty chin, funny little pink hands 
 all covered with dimples, and a dimple in one 
 cheek besides. She has tipped over two tumblers 
 of water, scratched herself all over playing with 
 the cat, and set her apron on fire already since she 
 has been here. I stand in some awe of her; but 
 after I have become initiated, I think we shall be 
 very good friends. " Of all names in the catalogue," 
 I said to her mother, when she came down into the 
 parlor after putting her to bed, " Faith seems to be 
 about the most inappropriate for this solid- bodied, 
 twinkling little bairn of yours, with her pretty red 
 cheeks, and such an appetite for supper ! " 
 
 " Yes," she said, laughing, " there is nothing 
 spirituelle about Faith. But she means just that 
 to me. I could not call her anything else. Her 
 father gave her the name." Her face changed, but 
 did not sadden ; a quietness crept into it and into 
 her voice, but that was all.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 43 
 
 " I will tell you about it some time, perhaps," 
 she added, rising and standing by the fire. " Faith 
 looks like him." Her eyes assumed their distant 
 look, "like the eyes of those who see the dead," 
 and gazed away, so far away, into the fire, that 
 I felt that she would not be listening to anything 
 that I might say, and therefore said nothing. 
 
 We spent the evening chatting cosily. After 
 the fire had died down in the grate (I had Phoebe 
 light a pine-knot there, because I noticed that 
 Aunt Winifred fancied the blaze in the dining- 
 room), we drew up our chairs into the corner by 
 the register, and roasted away to our hearts' con- 
 tent A very bad habit to sit over the register, and 
 Aunt Winifred says she shall undertake to break 
 me of it. We talked about everything under the 
 sun, uncles, aunts, cousins, Kansas and Connec- 
 ticut, the surrenders and the assassination, books, 
 
 
 pictures, music, and Faith, O, and Phoebe and 
 
 the cat. Aunt Winifred talks well, and does not 
 gossip nor exhaust her resources ; one feels always 
 that she has material in reserve on any subject 
 that is worth talking about. 
 
 For one thing I thank her with all my heart : 
 she never spoke of Roy.
 
 44 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Upon reflection, I find that I have really passed 
 a pleasant evening. 
 
 She knocked at my door just now, after I had 
 written the last sentence, and had put away the 
 book for the night. Thinking that it was Phoebe, 
 I called, " Come in," and did not turn. She had 
 come to the bureau, where I stood unbraiding my 
 hair, and touched my arm, before I saw who it 
 was. She had on a crimson dressing-gown of 
 warm flannel, and her hair hung down on her 
 shoulders. Although so gray, her hair is massive 
 yet, and coils finely when she is dressed. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," she said, " but I thought 
 you would not be in bed, and I came in to say, 
 let me sit somewhere else at the breakfast-table, 
 if you like. I saw that I had taken ' the vacant 
 place.' Good night, my dear." 
 
 It was such a little thing ! I wonder how many 
 people would have noticed it or taken the trouble 
 to speak of it. The quick perception, the unusual 
 delicacy, these, too, are like Roy. 
 
 I almost wish that she had stayed a little longer. 
 I almost think that I could bear to have her speak 
 to me about him.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 45 
 
 Faith, in the next room, seems to have wakened 
 from a frightened dream, and I can hear their 
 voices through the wall. Her mother is soothing 
 and singing to her in the broken words of some 
 old lullaby with which Phoebe used to sing Roy 
 and me to sleep, years and years ago. The un- 
 familiar, home-like sound is pleasant in the silent 
 house. Phoebe, on her way to bed, is stopping on 
 the garret-stairs to listen to it. Even the cat 
 comes mewing up to the door, and purring as I 
 have not heard the creature purr since the old 
 Sunday-night singing, hushed so long ago.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 V. 
 
 May 7. 
 
 I WAS awakened and nearly smothered this 
 morning by a pillow thrown directly at my 
 head. 
 
 Somewhat unaccustomed, in the respectable, old 
 maid's life that I lead, to such a pleasant little 
 method of salutation, I jerked myself upright, and 
 stared. There stood Faith in her night-dress, 
 laughing as if she would suffocate, and her mother, 
 in search of her, was just knocking at the open 
 door. 
 
 " She insisted on going to wake Cousin Mary, 
 and would n't be washed till I let her ; but I stipu- 
 lated that she should kiss you softly on both your 
 eyes." 
 
 " I did," said Faith, stoutly ; " I kissed her eyes, 
 both two of 'em, and her nose, and her mouth, and 
 her neck ; then I pulled her hair, and then I 
 spinched her ; but I thought she 'd have to be 
 banged a little. Was rit it a bang, though ! " 
 
 It really did me good to begin the day with a
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 47 
 
 hearty laugh. The days usually look so long and 
 blank at the beginning, that I can hardly make up 
 my mind to step out into them. Faith's pillow was 
 the famous pebble in the pond, to which authors 
 of original imagination invariably resort ; I felt its 
 little circles widening out all through the day. I 
 wonder if Aunt Winifred thought of that. She 
 thinks of many things. 
 
 For instance, afraid apparently that I should 
 think I was afflicted with one of those professional 
 visitors who hold that a chance relationship justi- 
 fies them in imposing on one from the beginning 
 to the end of the chapter, she managed to make 
 me understand, this morning, that she was expect- 
 ing to go back to Uncle Forceythe's brother on 
 Saturday. I was surprised at myself to find that 
 this proposition struck me with dismay. I insisted 
 with all my heart on keeping her for a week at the 
 least, and sent forth a fiat that her trunks should 
 be unpacked. 
 
 We have had a quiet, home-like day. Faith 
 found her way to the orchard, and installed herself 
 there for the day, overhauling the muddy grass 
 with her bare hands to find dandelions. She came 
 in at dinner-time as brown as a little nut, with her
 
 48 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 hat hanging down her neck, her apron torn, and 
 just about as dirty as I should suppose it possible 
 for a clean child to succeed in making herself. 
 Her mother, however, seemed to be quite used to 
 it, and the expedition with which she made her 
 presentable I regard as a stroke of genius.' 
 
 While Faith was disposed of, and the house still, 
 Auntie and I took our knitting and spent a regular 
 old woman's morning at the south window in the 
 dining-room. In the afternoon Mrs. Bland came 
 over, babies and all, and sent up her card to Mrs. 
 Forceythe. 
 
 Supper-time came, and still there had not been 
 a word of Roy. I began to wonder at, while I 
 respected, this unusual silence. 
 
 While her mother was putting Faith to bed, I 
 went into my room alone, for a few moments' quiet. 
 An early dark had fallen, for it had clouded up just 
 before sunset. The dull, gray sky and narrow 
 horizon shut down and crowded in everything. A 
 soldier from the village, who has just come home, 
 was walking down the street with his wife and sis- 
 ter. The crickets were chirping in the meadows. 
 The faint breath of the maple came up. 
 
 I sat down by the window, and hid my face in
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 49 
 
 both ray hands. I must have sat there some time, 
 for I had quite forgotten that I had company to 
 entertain, when the door softly opened and shut, 
 and some one came and sat down on the couch 
 beside me. I did not speak, for I could not, and, 
 the first I knew, a gentle arm crept about me, and 
 she had gathered me into her lap and laid my head 
 on her shoulder, as she might have gathered Faith. 
 
 " There," she said, in her low, lulling voice, " now 
 tell Auntie all about it." 
 
 t don't know what it was, whether the voice, or 
 touch, or words, but it came so suddenly, and 
 nobody had held me for so long, that everything 
 seemed to break up and unlock in a minute, and 
 I threw up my hands and cried. I don't know how 
 long I cried. 
 
 She passed her hand softly to and fro across my 
 hair, brushing it away from my temples, while they 
 throbbed and burned ; but she did not speak. By 
 and by I sobbed out : 
 
 " Auntie, Auntie, Auntie ! " as Faith sobs out in 
 the dark. It seemed to me that I must have help 
 or die. 
 
 " Yes, dear. I understand. I know how hard 
 it is. And you have been bearing it alone so long ! 
 3 D
 
 5O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 I am going to help you, and you must tell me all 
 you can." 
 
 The strong, decided words, " I am going to help 
 you," gave me the first faint hope I have had, that 
 I could be helped, and I could tell her it was not 
 sacrilege the pent-up story of these weeks. All 
 the time her hand went softly to and fro across my 
 hair. 
 
 Presently, when I was weak and faint with the 
 new comfort of my tears, " Aunt Winifred," I said, 
 " I don't know what it means to be resigned*; I 
 don't know what it means !" 
 
 Still her hand passed softly to and fro across my 
 hair. 
 
 " To have everything stop all at once ! without 
 giving me any time to learn to bear it. Why, you 
 do not know, it is just as if a great black gate 
 had swung to and barred out the future, and barred 
 out him, and left me all alone in any world that 
 I can ever live in, forever and forever." 
 
 " My child," she said, with emphasis solemn and 
 low upon the words, " my child, I do know. I 
 think you forget my husband." 
 
 I had forgotten. How could I ? We are most 
 selfishly blinded by our own griefs. No other form
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 51 
 
 than ours ever seems to walk with us in the fur- 
 nace. Her few words made me feel, as I could 
 not have felt if she had said more, that this woman 
 who was going to help me had suffered too ; had 
 suffered perhaps more than I, that, if I sat as 
 a little child at her feet, she could teach me 
 through the kinship of her pain. 
 
 " O my dear," she said, and held me close, " I 
 have trodden every step of it before you, every 
 single step." 
 
 " But you never were so wicked about it ! You 
 never felt why, I have been afraid I should hate 
 God ! You never were so wicked as that." 
 
 Low under her breath she answered " Yes," 
 this sweet, saintly woman who had come to me in 
 the dark, as an angel might. 
 
 Then, turning suddenly, her voice trembled and 
 broke : 
 
 " Mary, Mary, do you think He could have lived 
 those thirty-three years, and be cruel to you now? 
 Think that over and over ; only that. It may be 
 the only thought you dare to have, it was all I 
 dared to have once, but cling to it; cling with 
 both hands, Mary, and keep it." 
 
 I only put both hands about her neck and clung
 
 52 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 there ; but I hope it seems, as if I clung a little 
 to the thought besides ; it was as new and sweet to 
 me as if I had never heard of it in all my life ; and 
 it has not left me yet. 
 
 "And then, my, dear," she said, when she had 
 let me cry a little longer, "when you have once 
 found out that Roy's God loves you more than Roy 
 does, the rest comes more easily. It will not be as 
 long to wait as it seems now. It is n't as if you 
 never were going to see him again." 
 
 I looked up bewildered. 
 
 " What 's the matter, dear ? " 
 
 " Why, do you think I shall see him, really 
 see him ? " 
 
 " Mary Cabot," she said abruptly, turning to look 
 at me, " who has been talking to you about this 
 thing ? " 
 
 " Deacon Quirk," I answered faintly, " Deacon 
 Quirk and Dr. Bland." 
 
 She put her other arm around me with a quick 
 movement, as if she would shield me from Deacon 
 Quirk and Dr. Bland. 
 
 "Do I think you will see him again? You 
 might as well ask me if I thought God made you 
 and made Roy, and gave you to each other. See
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 53 
 
 him ! Why, of course you will see him as you saw 
 him here." 
 
 " As I saw him here ! Why, here I looked into 
 his eyes, I saw him smile, I touched him. Why, 
 Aunt Winifred, Roy is an angel ! " 
 
 She patted my hand with a little, soft, comfort- 
 ing laugh. 
 
 " But he is not any the less Roy for that, not 
 any the less your own real Roy, who will love you 
 and wait for you and be very glad to see you, as he 
 used to love and wait and be glad when you came 
 home from a journey on a cold winter night." 
 
 "And he met me at the door, and led me in 
 where it was light and warm ! " I sobbed. 
 
 " So he will meet you at the door in this other 
 home, and lead you into the light and the warmth. 
 And cannot that make the cold and dark a little 
 shorter? Think a minute !" 
 
 " But there is God, I thought we went to 
 Heaven to worship Him, and " 
 
 " Shall you worship more heartily or less, for 
 having Roy again ? Did Mary love the Master 
 more or less, after Lazarus came back ? Why, my 
 child, where did you get your ideas of God ? Don't 
 you suppose He knows how you love Roy ? "
 
 54 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 I drank in the blessed words without doubt or 
 argument. I was too thirsty to doubt or argue. 
 Some other time I may ask her how she knows this 
 beautiful thing, but not now. All I can do now is 
 to take it into my heart and hold it there. 
 
 Roy my own again, not only to look at standing 
 up among the singers, but close to me ; somehow 
 or other to be as near as to be nearer than he 
 was here, really mine again ! I shall never let this 
 
 go- 
 After we had talked awhile, and when it came 
 
 time to say good night, I told her a little about my 
 conversation with Deacon Quirk, and what I said 
 to him about the Lord's will. I did not know but 
 that she would blame me. 
 
 " Some time," she said, turning her great com- 
 passionate eyes on me, I could feel them in the 
 dark, and smiling, " you will find out all at once, 
 in a happy moment, that you can say those words 
 with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with 
 all your strength ; it will come, even in this world, 
 if you will only let it. But until it does, you do 
 right, quite right, not to scorch your altar with a 
 false burnt-offering. God is not a God to be 
 mocked. He would rather have only the old cry :
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 55 
 
 'I believe ; help mine unbelief/ and wait till you can 
 say the rest It has often grated on my ears," she 
 added, " to hear people speak those words unworthi- 
 ly. They seem to me the most solemn words that 
 the Bible contains, or that Christian experience can 
 utter. As far as my observation goes, the good 
 people for they are good people who use them 
 when they ought to know better are of two sorts. 
 They are people in actual agony, bewildered, racked 
 with rebellious doubts, unaccustomed to own even to 
 themselves the secret seethings of sin ; really per- 
 suaded that because it is a Christian duty to have 
 no will but the Lord's, they are under obligations to 
 affirm that they have no will but the Lord's. Or 
 else they are people who know no more about this 
 pain of bereavement than a child. An affliction 
 has passed over them, put them into mourning, 
 made them feel uncomfortable till the funeral was 
 over, or even caused them a shallow sort of grief, of 
 which each week evaporates a little, till it is gone. 
 These mourners air their trouble the longest, prate 
 loudest about resignation, and have the most to 
 say to you or me about our ' rebellious state of 
 mind.' Poor things ! One can hardly be vexed at 
 them for pity. Think of being made so ! "
 
 56 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " There is still another class of the cheerfully 
 resigned," I suggested, " who are even more ready 
 than these to tell you of your desperate wicked- 
 ness " 
 
 " People who have never had even the semblance 
 of a trouble in all their lives," she interrupted.' 
 " Yes, I was going to speak of them. Of all mis- 
 erable comforters, they are the most arrogant." 
 
 " As to real instant submission," she said pres- 
 ently, " there is some of it in the world. There are 
 sweet, rare lives capable of great loves and great 
 pains, which yet are kept so attuned to the life of 
 Christ, that the cry in the Garden comes scarcely 
 less honestly from their lips than from his. Such, 
 like the St. John, are but one among the Twelve. 
 Such, it will do you and me good, dear, at least 
 to remember." 
 
 " Such," I thought when I was left alone, " you 
 new dear friend of mine, who have come with such 
 a blessed coming into my lonely days, such you 
 must be now, whatever you were once." 
 
 If I should tell her that, how she would open 
 her soft eyes !
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 57 
 
 VI. 
 
 May 9. 
 
 A S I was looking over the green book last 
 ** night, Aunt Winifred came up behind me 
 and softly laid a bunch of violets down between 
 the leaves. 
 
 By an odd contrast, the contented, passionless 
 things fell against those two verses that were 
 copied from the German, and completely covered 
 them from sight. I lifted the flowers, and held up 
 the page for her to see. 
 
 As she read, her face altered strangely ; her eyes 
 dilated, her lip quivered, a flush shot over her 
 cheeks and dyed her forehead up to" the waves of 
 her hair. I turned away quickly, feeling that I 
 had committed a rudeness in watching her, and 
 detecting in her, however involuntarily, some far, 
 inner sympathy, or shadow of a long-past sym- 
 pathy, with the desperate words. 
 
 " Mary," she said, laying down the book, " I be- 
 lieve Satan wrote that." 
 3*
 
 58 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 She laughed a little then, nervously, and paled 
 back into her quiet, peaceful self. 
 
 " I mean that he inspired it. They are wicked 
 words. You must not read them over. You will 
 outgrow them some time with a beautiful growth 
 of trust and love. Let them alone till that time 
 comes. See, I will blot them out of sight for you 
 with colors as blue as heaven, the real heaven, 
 where God will be loved the most." 
 
 She shook apart the thick, sweet nosegay, and, 
 taking a half-dozen of the little blossoms, pinned 
 them, dripping with fragrant dew, upon the lines. 
 There I shall let them stay, and, since she wishes 
 it, I shall not lift them to see the reckless words 
 till I can do it safely. 
 
 This afternoon Aunt Winifred has been telling 
 me about herself. Somewhat more, or of a differ- 
 ent kind, I should imagine, from what she has told 
 most people. She seems to love me a little, not in 
 a proper kind of way, because I happen to be her 
 niece, but for my own sake. It surprises me to 
 find how pleased I am that she should. 
 
 That Kansas life must have been very hard to 
 her, in contrast as it was with the smooth elegance 
 of her girlhood ; she was very young, too, when
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 59 
 
 she undertook it. I said something of the sort to 
 her. 
 
 "They have been the hardest and the easiest, 
 the saddest and the happiest, years of all my life," 
 she answered. 
 
 I pondered the words in my heart, while I lis- 
 tened to her story. She gave me vivid pictures 
 of the long, bright bridal journey, overshadowed 
 with a very mundane weariness of jolting coaches 
 and railway accidents before its close ; of the little 
 neglected hamlet which waited for them, twenty 
 miles from a post-office and thirty from a school- 
 house ; of the parsonage, a log-hut among log- 
 huts, distinguished and adorned by a little lath and 
 plastering, glass windows, and a door-step ; they 
 drew in sight of it at the close of a tired day, with 
 a red sunset lying low on the flats. 
 
 Uncle Forceythe wanted mission-work, and mis- 
 sion-work he found here with I should say with 
 a vengeance, if the expression were exactly suited 
 to an elegantly constructed and reflective journal. 
 
 " My heart sank for a moment, I confess," she 
 said, " but it never would do, you know, to let him 
 suspect that, so I smiled away as well as I knew 
 how, shook hands with one or two women in red
 
 6O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 calico who had been " slickin' up inside," they said ; 
 went in by the fire, it was really a pleasant fire, 
 and, as soon as they had left us alone, I climbed 
 into John's lap, and, with both arms around his 
 neck, told him that I knew we should be very 
 happy. And I said " 
 
 " Said what ? " 
 
 She blushed a little, like a girl. 
 
 " I believe I said I should be happy in Patago- 
 nia with him. I made him laugh at last, and 
 say that my face and words were like a beautiful 
 prophecy. And, Mary, if they were, it was beauti- 
 fully fulfilled. In the roughest times, times of 
 ragged clothes and empty flour-barrels, of weak- 
 ness and sickness and quack doctors, of cold and 
 discouragement, of prairie fires and guerillas, 
 from trouble to trouble, from year's end to year's 
 end, we were happy together, we two. As long as 
 we could have each other, and as long as we could 
 be about our Master's business, we felt as if we did 
 not dare to ask for anything more, lest it should 
 seem that we were ungrateful for such wealth of 
 mercy." 
 
 It would take too long to write out here the 
 half that she told me, though I wish I could, for it
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 6l 
 
 interested me more than any story that I have ever 
 read. 
 
 After years of Christ-like toiling to help those 
 rough old farmers and wicked bushwhackers to 
 Heaven, the call to Lawrence came, and it seemed 
 to Uncle Forceythe that he had better go. It was 
 a pleasant, influential parish, and there, though not 
 less hard at work, they found fewer rubs and more 
 comforts ; there Faith came, and there were their 
 pleasant days, till the war. I held my breath to 
 hear her tell about Quantrell's raid. There, too, 
 Uncle wasted through that death-in-life, consump- 
 tion ; there he " fell on sleep," she said, and there 
 she buried him. 
 
 She gave me no further description of his death 
 than those words, and she spoke them with her far- 
 away, tearless eyes looking off through the window, 
 and after she had spoken she was still for a time. 
 
 The heart knoweth its own bitterness ; that grew 
 distinct to me, as I sat, shut out by her silence. 
 Yet there was nothing bitter about her face. 
 
 " Faith was six months old when we went," she 
 said presently. "We had never named her : Baby 
 was name enough at first for such a wee thing ; 
 then she was the only one, and had come so late,
 
 62 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 that it seemed to mean more to us than to most to 
 have a baby all to ourselves, and we liked the sound 
 of the word. When it became quite certain that 
 John must go, we used to talk it over, and he said 
 that he would like to name her, but what, he did 
 not tell me. 
 
 " At last, one night, after he had lain for a while 
 thinking with closed eyes, he bade me bring the 
 child to him. The sun was setting, I remember, 
 and the moon was rising. He had had a hard day ; 
 the life was all scorched out of the air. I moved 
 the bed up by the window, that he might have the 
 breath of the rising wind. Baby was wide awake, 
 cooing softly to herself in the cradle, her bits of 
 damp curls clinging to her head, and her pink feet 
 in her hands. I took her up and brought her just 
 as she was, and knelt down by the bed. The street 
 was still. We could hear the frogs chanting a mile 
 away. He lifted her little hands upon his own, and 
 said no matter about the words but he told me 
 that as he left the child, so he left the name, in 
 my sacred charge. that he had chosen it for me, 
 that, when he was out of sight, it might help 
 me to have it often on my lips. 
 
 " So there in the sunset and the moonrise, we
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 63 
 
 two alone together, he baptized her, and we gave 
 our little girl to God." 
 
 When she had said this, she rose and went over 
 to the window, and stood with her face from me. 
 By and by, " It was the fourteenth," she said, as if 
 musing to herself, " the fourteenth of June." 
 
 I remember now that Uncle Forceythe died on 
 the fourteenth of June. It may have been that the 
 words of that baptismal blessing were the last that 
 they heard, either child or mother. 
 
 May 10. 
 
 It has been a pleasant day ; the air shines like 
 transparent gold ; the wind sweeps like somebody's 
 strong arms over the flowers, and gathers up a 
 crowd of perfumes that wander up and down about 
 one. The. church-bells have rung out like silver all 
 day. Those bells especially the Second Advent 
 at the farther end of the village are positively 
 ghastly when it rains. 
 
 Aunt Winifred was dressed bright and early for 
 church. I, in morning dress and slippers, sighed 
 and demurred. 
 
 " Auntie, do you expect to hear anything new ? " 
 
 " Judging from your diagnosis of Dr. Bland, 
 no."
 
 64 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " To be edified, refreshed, strengthened, or in- 
 structed ? " 
 
 " Perhaps not." 
 
 " Bored, then ? " 
 
 " Not exactly." 
 
 " What do you expect ? " 
 
 " There are the prayers and singing. Generally 
 one can, if one tries, wring a little devotion from 
 the worst of them. As to a minister, if he is good 
 and commonplace, young and earnest and ignorant, 
 and I, whom he cannot help one step on the way 
 to Heaven, consequently stay at home, Deacon 
 Quirk, whom he might carry a mile or two, by and 
 by stays at home also. If there is to be a ' building 
 fitly joined together,' each stone must do its part 
 of the upholding. I feel better to go half a day al- 
 ways. I never compel Faith to go, but I never have 
 a chance, for she teases not to be left at home." 
 
 " I think it 's splendid to go to church most the 
 time," put in Faith, who was squatted on the carpet, 
 counting sugared caraway seeds, " all but the 
 sermon. That is n't splendid. I don't like the 
 gre-at big prayers 'n' things. I like caramary seeds, 
 though ; mother always gives 'em to me in meeting 
 'cause I 'm a good girl. Don't you wish/cw were
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 6$ 
 
 a good girl, Cousin Mary, so 's you could have 
 some ? Besides, I 've got on my best hat and my 
 button-boots. Besides, there used to be a real 
 funny little boy up in meeting at home, and he 
 gave me a little tin dorg once over the top the pew. 
 Only mother made me give it back. O, you ought 
 to seen the man that preached down at Uncle Cal- 
 vin's ! I tell you he was a bully old minister, he 
 banged the Bible like everything ! " 
 
 " There 's a devotional spirit for you ! " I said to 
 her mother. 
 
 " Well," she answered, laughing, " it is better 
 than that she should be left to play dolls and eat 
 preserves, and be punished for disobedience. Sun- 
 day would invariably become a guilty sort of 
 holiday at that rate. Now, caraways or ' bully old 
 ministers ' notwithstanding, she carries to bed with 
 her a dim notion that this has been holy time 
 and pleasant time. Besides, the associations of a 
 church-going childhood, if I can manage them 
 genially, will be a help to her when she is older. 
 Come, Faith ! go and pull off Cousin Mary's slip- 
 pers, and bring down her boots, and then she '11 
 have to go to church. No, I didrit say that you 
 might tickle her feet ! "
 
 66 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Feeling the least bit sorry that I had set the 
 example of a stay-at-home Christian before the 
 child, I went directly up stairs to make ready, 
 and we started after all in good season. 
 
 Dr. Bland was in the pulpit. I observed that 
 he looked as indeed did the congregation bodily 
 with some curiosity into our slip, where it has 
 been a rare occurrence of late to find me, and 
 where the light, falling through the little stained 
 glass oriel, touched Aunt Winifred's thoughtful 
 smile. I wonder whether Dr. Bland thought it 
 was wicked for people to smile in church. No, 
 of course he has too much sense. I wonder 
 what it is about Dr. Bland that always suggests 
 such questions. 
 
 It has been very warm all day, that aggra- 
 vating, unseasonable heat, which is apt to come 
 in spasms in the early part of May, and which, 
 in thick spring alpaca and heavy sack, one finds 
 intolerable. The thermometer stood at 75 on 
 the church-porch ; every window was shut, and 
 everybody's fan was fluttering. Now, with this 
 sight before him, what should our observant min- 
 ister do, but give out as his first hymn : " Thine 
 earthly Sabbaths." "Thine earthly Sabbaths"
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 6/ 
 
 would be a beautiful hymn, if it were not for 
 those lines about the weather: 
 
 " No midnight shade, no clouded sun, 
 But sacred, high, eternal noon " / 
 
 There was a great hot sunbeam striking directly 
 on my black bonnet. My fan was broken. I 
 gasped for air. The choir went over and over and 
 over the words, spinning them into one of those 
 indescribable tunes, in which everybody seems to 
 be trying to get through first. I don't know what 
 they called them, they always remind me of a 
 game of "Tag." 
 
 I looked at Aunt Winifred. She took it more 
 coolly than I, but an amused little smile played 
 over her face. She told me, after church, that 
 she had repeatedly heard that hymn given out 
 at noon of an intense July day. Her husband, 
 she said, used to save it for the winter, or for 
 cloudy afternoons. " Using means of grace," he 
 called that. 
 
 However, Dr. Bland did better the second time, 
 Aunt Winifred joined in the singing, and I en- 
 joyed it, so I will not blame the poor man. I 
 suppose he was so far lifted above this earth,
 
 68 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 that he would not have known whether he was 
 preaching in Greenland's icy mountains, or on 
 India's coral strand. 
 
 When he announced his text, " por our con- 
 versation is in Heaven," Aunt Winifred and I 
 exchanged glances of content. We had been 
 talking about heaven on the way to church ; at 
 least, till Faith, not finding herself entertained, 
 interrupted us by some severe speculations as to 
 whether Maltese kitties were mulattoes, and " why 
 the bell-ringer did n't jump off the steeple some 
 night, and see if he could n't fly right up, the 
 way Elijah did." 
 
 I listened to Dr. Bland as I have not listened 
 for a long time. The subject was of all subjects 
 nearest my heart. He is a scholarly man, in his 
 way. He ought to know, I thought, more about 
 it than Aunt Winifred. Perhaps he could help me. 
 
 His sermon, as nearly as I can recall it, was 
 substantially this. 
 
 " The future life presented a vast theme to our 
 speculation. Theories 'too numerous to mention' 
 had been held concerning it. Pagans had be- 
 lieved in a coming state of rewards and punish- 
 ments. What natural theology had dimly fore-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 69 
 
 shadowed, Revelation had brought in, like a full- 
 orbed day, with healing on its wings." I am 
 not positive about the metaphors. 
 
 "As it was fitting that we should at times turn 
 our thoughts upon the threatenings of Scripture, it 
 was eminently suitable also that we should consider 
 its promises. 
 
 " He proposed in this discourse to consider the 
 promise of Heaven, the reward offered by Christ to 
 his good and faithful servants. 
 
 " In the first place : What is heaven ? " 
 
 I am not quite clear in my mind what it was, 
 though .1 tried my best to find out. As nearly as I 
 can recollect, however, 
 
 " Heaven is an eternal state. 
 
 " Heaven is a state of holiness. 
 
 " Heaven is a state of happiness." 
 
 Having heard these observations before, I will 
 not enlarge as he did upon them, but leave that 
 for the " vivid imagination " of the green book. 
 
 " In the second place : What will be the employ- 
 ments of heaven ? 
 
 " We shall study the character of God. 
 
 " An infinite mind must of necessity be eternally 
 an object of study to a finite mind. The finite
 
 7O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 mind must of necessity find in such study supreme 
 delight All lesser joys and interests will pale. 
 He felt at moments, in reflecting on this theme, 
 that that good brother who, on being asked if he 
 expected to see the dead wife of his youth in heaven, 
 replied, ' I expect to be so overwhelmed by the 
 glory of the presence of God, that it may be thou- 
 sands of years before I shall think of my wife,' 
 he felt that perhaps this brother was near the 
 truth." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Bland looked exceedingly uncomfort- 
 able. 
 
 " We shall also glorify God." 
 
 He enlarged upon this division, but I have for- 
 gotten exactly how. There was something about 
 adoration, and the harpers harping with their 
 harps, and the sea of glass, and crying, Worthy 
 the Lamb ! and a great deal more that bewildered 
 and disheartened me so that I could scarcely listen 
 to it. I do not doubt that we shall glorify God 
 primarily and happily, but can we not do it in 
 some other way than by harping and praying ? 
 
 " We shall moreover love each other with a 
 universal and unselfish love." 
 
 " That we shall recognize our friends in heaven,
 
 THE GATES AJAR. Jl 
 
 he was inclined to think, after mature deliberation, 
 was probable. But there would be no special 
 selfish affections there. In this world we have 
 enmities and favoritisms. In the world of bliss our 
 hearts would glow with holy love alike to all other 
 holy hearts." 
 
 I wonder if he really thought that would make 
 " a world of bliss." Aunt Winifred slipped her hand 
 into mine under her cloak. Ah, Dr. Bland, if you 
 had known how that little soft touch was preaching 
 against you ! 
 
 " In the words of an eminent divine, who has 
 long since entered into the joys of which he 
 spoke : ' Thus, whenever the mind roves through 
 the immense region of heaven, it will find, among 
 all its innumerable millions, not an enemy, not a 
 stranger, not an indifferent heart, not a reserved 
 bosom. Disguise here, and even concealment, will 
 be unknown. The soul will have no interests to 
 conceal, no thoughts to disguise. A window will be 
 opened in every breast, and show to every eye the 
 rich and beautiful furniture within ! ' 
 
 " Thirdly : How shall we fit for heaven ?" 
 
 He mentioned several ways, among which, - 
 " We should subdue our earthly affections to God.
 
 72 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " We must not love the creature as the Creator. 
 My son, give me thy heart. When he removes our 
 friends from the scenes of time (with a glance in 
 my direction), we should resign ourselves to his will, 
 remembering that the Lord gave and the Lord hath 
 taken away in mercy ; that He is all in all ; that 
 He will never leave us nor forsake us ; that He can 
 never change or die." 
 
 As if that made any difference with the fact, that 
 his best treasures change or die ! 
 
 " In conclusion, 
 
 " We infer from our text that our hearts should 
 not be set upon earthly happiness. (Enlarged.) 
 
 "That the subject of heaven should be often in 
 our thoughts and on our lips." (Enlarged.) 
 
 Of course I have not done justice to the filling 
 up of the sermon ; to the illustrations, metaphors, 
 proof-texts, learning, and eloquence, for though 
 Dr. Bland cannot seem to think outside of the old 
 grooves, a little eloquence really flashes through the 
 tameness of his style sometimes, and when he was 
 talking about the harpers, etc., some of his words 
 were well chosen. " To be drowned in light," I 
 have somewhere read, " may be very beautiful ; it is 
 still to be drowned." But I have given the skeleton
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 73 
 
 of the discourse, and I have given the sum of the 
 impressions that it left on me, an attentive hearer. 
 It is fortunate that I did not hear it while I was 
 alone ; it would have made me desperate. Going 
 hungry, hopeless, blinded, I came back empty, un- 
 comforted, groping. I wanted something actual, 
 something pleasant, about this place into which 
 Roy has gone. He gave me glittering generalities, 
 cold commonplace, vagueness, unreality, a God and 
 a future at which I sat and shivered. 
 
 Dr. Bland is a good man. He had, I know, 
 written that sermon with prayer. I only wish 
 that he could be made to see how it glides over 
 and sails splendidly away from wants like mine. 
 
 But thanks be to God who has provided a 
 voice to answer me out of the deeps. 
 
 Auntie and I walked home without any re- 
 marks (we overheard Deacon Quirk observe to a 
 neighbor : " That 's what I call a good gospel 
 sermon, now!"), sent Faith away to Phcebe, sat 
 down in the parlor, and looked at each other. 
 
 " Well ? " said I. 
 
 " I know it," said she. 
 
 Upon which we both began to laugh. 
 
 " But did he say the dreadful truth ? * 
 4
 
 74 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 "Not as I find it in my Bible." 
 
 "That it is probable, only probable that we 
 shall recognize " 
 
 " My child, do not be troubled about that. It 
 is not probable, it is sure. If I could find no 
 proof for it, I should none the less believe it, as 
 long as I believe in God. He gave you Roy, 
 and the capacity to love him. He has taught 
 you to sanctify that love through love to Him. 
 Would it be like Him to create such beautiful 
 and unselfish loves, most like the love of heaven 
 of any type we know, just for our threescore 
 years and ten of earth ? Would it be like Him 
 to suffer two souls to grow together here, so that 
 the separation of a day is pain, and then wrench 
 them apart for all eternity? It would be what 
 Madame de Gasparin calls, 'fearful irony on the 
 part of God.' " 
 
 " But there are lost loves. There are lost 
 souls." 
 
 "How often would I have gathered you, and 
 ye would not ! That is not his work. He would 
 have saved both soul and love. They had their 
 own way. We were speaking of His redeemed. 
 The object of having this world at all, you
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 75 
 
 know, is to fit us for another. Of what use will 
 it have been, if on passing out of it we must 
 throw by forever its gifts, its lessons, its mem- 
 ories? God links things together better than 
 that. Be sure, as you are sure of Him, that we 
 shall be ourselves in heaven. Would you be 
 yourself not to recognize Roy ? consequently 
 not to love Roy, for to love and to be separated 
 is misery, and heaven is joy." 
 
 "I understand. But you said you had other 
 proof." 
 
 " So I have ; plenty of it. If l many shall come 
 from the East and from the West, and shall sit 
 down in the kingdom of God with Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob,' will they not be likely to know 
 that they are with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ? 
 or will they think it is Shadrach, Meshach, and 
 Abednego ? 
 
 " What is meant by such expressions as ' risen 
 together! ' sitting together at the right hand of 
 God/ ' sitting together in heavenly places ' ? If 
 they mean anything, they mean recognitions, 
 friendships, enjoyments. 
 
 " Did not Peter and the others know Moses 
 when they saw him ? know Elias when they
 
 76 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 saw him ? Yet these men were dead hundreds 
 of years before the favored fishermen were born. 
 
 " How was it with those ' saints which slept 
 and arose ' when Christ hung dead there in the 
 dark ? Were they not seen of many ? " 
 
 " But that was a miracle." 
 
 "They were risen dead, such as you and I 
 shall be some day. The miracle consisted in 
 their rising then and there. Moreover, did not 
 the beggar recognize Abraham ? and Well, one 
 might go through the Bible finding it full of this 
 promise in hints or assertions, in parables or vis- 
 ions. We are 'heirs of God,' 'joint heirs with 
 Christ ' ; having suffered with Him, we shall be 
 'glorified together'. Christ himself has said many 
 sure things : ' I will come and receive you, that 
 where I am, there ye may be.' ' I will that they 
 be with me where I am.' Using, too, the very 
 type of Godhead to signify the eternal nearness 
 and eternal love of just such as you and Roy, as 
 John and me, he prays : ' Holy Father, keep 
 them whom Thou hast given me, that they may 
 be one as we are? 
 
 " There is one place, though, where I find 
 what I like better than all the rest ; you remem-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 77 
 
 her that old cry wrung from trie lips of the 
 stricken king, ' I shall go to him ; but he will 
 not return to me.'" 
 
 " I never thought before how simple and direct 
 it is, and that, too, in those old blinded days." 
 
 " The more I study the Bible," she said, " and 
 I study not entirely in ignorance of the com- 
 mentators and the mysteries, the more perplexed 
 I" am to imagine where the current ideas of our 
 future come from. They certainly are not in 
 this book of gracious promises. That heaven 
 which we heard about to-day was Dr. Eland's, 
 not God's. 'It's aye a wonderfu' thing to me,' 
 as poor Lauderdale said, ' the way some preach- 
 ers take it upon themselves to explain matters to 
 the Almighty ! ' " 
 
 " But the harps and choirs, the throne, the 
 white robes, are all in Revelation. Deacon Quirk 
 would put his great brown finger on the verses, 
 and hold you there triumphantly." 
 
 " Can't people tell picture from substance, a 
 metaphor from its meaning? That book of Rev- 
 elation is precisely what it professes to be, 
 a vision, a symbol. A symbol of something, to 
 be sure, and rich with pleasant hopes, but still a
 
 78 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 symbol. Now, I really believe that a large pro- 
 portion of Christian church-members, who have 
 studied their Bible, attended Sabbath schools, lis- 
 tened to sermons all their lives, if you could 
 fairly come at their most definite idea of the 
 place where they expect to spend eternity, would 
 own it to be the golden city, with pearl gates, 
 and jewels in the wall. It never occurs to them, 
 that, if one picture is literal, another must be. 
 If we are to walk golden streets, how can we 
 stand on a sea of glass ? How can we ' sit on 
 thrones ' ? How can untold millions of us ' lie in 
 Abraham's bosom ' ? 
 
 " But why have given us empty symbols ? Why 
 not a little fact ? " 
 
 "They are not empty symbols. And why God 
 did not give us actual descriptions of actual 
 heavenly life, I don't trouble myself to wonder. 
 He certainly had his reasons, and that is enough 
 for me. I find from these symbols, and from his 
 voice in my own heart, many beautiful things, 
 I will tell you some more of them at another 
 time, and, for the rest, I am content to wait. 
 He loves me, and he loves mine. As long as we 
 love Him, He will never separate Himself from
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 79 
 
 us, or us from each other. That, at least, is 
 sure" 
 
 "If that is sure, the rest is of less importance; 
 yes. But Dr. Bland said an awful thing!" 
 
 "The quotation from a dead divine?" 
 
 "Yes. That there will be no separate inter- 
 ests, no thoughts to conceal." 
 
 " Poor good man ! He has found out by this 
 time that he should not have laid down non- 
 sense like that, without qualification or demur, 
 before a Bible-reading hearer. It was simply his 
 opinion, not David's, or Paul's, or John's, or 
 Isaiah's. He had a perfect right to put it in the 
 form of a conjecture. Nobody would forbid his 
 conjecturing that the inhabitants of heaven are 
 all deaf and dumb, or wear green glasses, or shave 
 their heads, if he chose, provided he stated that 
 it was conjecture, not revelation." 
 
 " But where does the Bible say that we shall 
 have power to conceal our thoughts ? and I 
 would rather be annihilated than to spend eter- 
 nity with heart laid bare, the inner temple 
 thrown open to be trampled on by every passing 
 stranger ! " 
 
 " The Bible specifies very little about the minor
 
 8O THE GATES AJAR 
 
 arrangements of eternity in any way. But I doubt 
 if, under any circumstances, it would have occurred 
 to inspired men to inform us that our thoughts 
 shall continue to be our own. The fact is patent 
 on the face of things. The dead minister's sup- 
 position would destroy individuality at one fell 
 swoop. We should be like a man walking down 
 a room lined with mirrors, who sees himself re- 
 flected in all sizes, colors, shades, at all angles 
 and in all proportions, according to the capacity 
 of the mirror, till he seems no longer to belong 
 to himself, but to be cut up into ellipses and 
 octagons and prisms. How soon would he grow 
 frantic in such companionship, and beg for a 
 corner where he^ might hide and hush himself in 
 the dark ? 
 
 "That we shall in a higher life be able to do 
 what we cannot in this, judge fairly of each 
 other's moral worth, is undoubtedly true. What- 
 ever the Judgment Day may mean, that is the 
 substance of it. But this- promiscuous theory of 
 refraction ; never ! 
 
 " Besides, wherever the Bible touches the sub- 
 ject, it premises our individuality as a matter 
 of course. What would be the use of talking,
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 8l 
 
 if everybody knew the thoughts of everybody 
 else ? " 
 
 " You don't suppose that people talk in heaven ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose anything else. Are we to spend 
 ages of joy, a company of mutes together ? Why 
 not talk ? " 
 
 " I supposed we should sing, but " 
 
 " Why not talk as well as sing ? Does not song 
 involve the faculty of speech ? unless you would 
 like to make canaries of us." 
 
 " Ye-es. Why, yes." 
 
 " There are the visitors at the beautiful Mount of 
 Transfiguration again. Did not they talk with each 
 other and with Christ ? Did not John talk with 
 the angel who ' shewed him those things ' ? " 
 
 " And you mean to say " 
 
 " I mean to say that if there is such a thing as 
 common sense, you will talk with Roy as you talked 
 with him here, only not as you talked with him 
 here, because there will be no troubles nor sins, no 
 anxieties nor cares, to talk about ; no ugly shades 
 of cross words or little quarrels to be made up ; 
 no fearful looking-for of separation." 
 
 I laid my head upon her shoulder, and could 
 hardly speak for the comfort that she gave me.
 
 82 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Yes, I believe we shall talk and laugh and joke 
 and play " 
 
 " Laugh and joke in heaven ! " 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " But it seems so so why, so wicked and 
 irreverent and all that, you know." 
 
 Just then Faith, who, mounted out on the kitchen 
 table, was preaching at Phoebe in comical mimicry 
 of Dr. Eland's choicest intonations, laughed out like 
 the splash of a little wave. 
 
 The sound came in at the open door, and we 
 stopped to listen till it had rippled away. 
 
 " There ! " said her mother, " put that child, this 
 very minute, with all her little sins forgiven, into 
 one of our dear Lord's many mansions, and do you 
 suppose that she would be any the less holy or less 
 reverent for a laugh like that ? Is he going to check 
 all the sparkle and blossom of life when he takes us 
 to himself? I don't believe any such thing. 
 
 " There were both sense and Christianity in 
 what somebody wrote on the death of a humor- 
 ous poet : 
 
 ' Does nobody laugh there, where he has gone, 
 This man of the smile and the jest ? ' 
 
 provided there was any hope that the poor
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 83 
 
 fellow had gone to heaven ; if not, it was bad 
 philosophy and worse religion. 
 
 " Did not David dance before the Lord with all 
 his might ? A Bible which is full of happy battle- 
 cries : ' Rejoice in the Lord ! make a joyful noise 
 unto him ! Give thanks unto the Locd, for his 
 mercy endureth ! ' a Bible which exhausts its 
 splendid wealth of rhetoric to make us understand 
 that the coming life is a life of joy, no more 
 threatens to make nuns than mutes of us. I ex- 
 pect that you will hear some of Roy's very old 
 jokes, see the sparkle in his eye, listen to his 
 laughing voice, lighten up the happy days as glee- 
 fully as you may choose; and that " 
 
 Faith appeared upon the scene just then, with 
 the interesting information that she had bitten her 
 tongue ; so we talked no more. 
 
 How pleasant, how pleasant this is ! I never 
 supposed before that God would let any one laugh 
 in heaven. 
 
 I wonder if Roy has seen the President. Aunt 
 Winifred says she does not doubt it. She thinks 
 that all the soldiers must have crowded up to 
 meet him, and " O," she says, " what a sight to 
 see ! "
 
 84 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 VII. 
 
 May 12. 
 
 A UNT WINIFRED has said something about 
 ** going, but I cannot yet bear to hear of 
 such a thing. She is to stay awhile longer. 
 
 i6th. 
 
 We have been over to-night to the grave. 
 
 She proposed to go by herself, thinking, I saw, 
 with the delicacy with which she always thinks, 
 that I would rather not be there with another. 
 Nor should I, nor could I, with any other than 
 this woman. It is strange. I wished to go there 
 with her. I had a vague, unreasoning feeling that 
 she would take away some of the bitterness of 
 it, as she has taken the bitterness of much else. 
 
 It is looking very pleasant there now. The 
 turf has grown fine and smooth. The low arbor- 
 vitae hedge and knots of Norway spruce, that father 
 planted long ago for mother, drop cool, green 
 shadows that stir with the wind. My English ivy 
 has crept about and about the cross. Roy used to 
 say that he should fancy a cross to mark the spot
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 85 
 
 where he might lie ; I think he would like this 
 pure, unveined marble. May-flowers cover the 
 grave now, and steal out among the clover-leaves 
 with a flush like sunrise. By and by there will 
 be roses, and in August, August's own white 
 lilies. 
 
 We went silently over, and sat silently down on 
 the grass, the field-path stretching away to the 
 little church behind us, and beyond, in front, the 
 slope, the flats, the river, the hills cut in purple 
 distance melting far into the east. The air was 
 thick with perfume. Golden bees hung giddily 
 over the blush in the grass. In the low branches 
 that swept the grave a little bird had built her 
 nest. 
 
 Aunt Winifred did not speak to me for a time, 
 nor watch my face. Presently she laid her hand 
 upon my lap, and I put mine into it. 
 
 " It is very pleasant here," she said then, in her 
 very pleasant voice. 
 
 " I meant that it should be," I answered, trying 
 not to let her see my lips quiver. " At least it 
 must not look neglected. I don't suppose it makes 
 any difference to him" 
 
 " I do not feel sure of that."
 
 86 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I do not feel sure that anything he has left 
 makes no ' difference ' to him." 
 
 " But I don't understand. He is in heaven. He 
 would be too happy to care for anything that is 
 going on in this woful world." 
 
 " Perhaps that is so," she said, smiling a sweet 
 contradiction to her words, " but I don't believe it" 
 
 "What do you believe?" 
 
 " Many things that I have to say to you, but you 
 cannot bear them now." 
 
 " I have sometimes wondered, for I cannot help 
 it," I said, " whether he is shut off from all knowl- 
 edge of me for all these years till I can go to him. 
 It will be a great while. It seems hard. Roy 
 would want to know something, if it were only a 
 little, about me." 
 
 " I believe that he wants to know, and that he 
 knows, Mary ; though, since the belief must rest 
 on analogy and conjecture, you need not accept it 
 as demonstrated mathematics," she answered, with 
 another smile. 
 
 " Roy never forgot me here ! " I said, not mean- 
 ing to sob. 
 
 " That is just it. He was not constituted so
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 8/ 
 
 that he, remaining himself, Roy, could forget you. 
 If he goes out into this other life forgetting, he 
 becomes another than himself. That is a far more 
 unnatural way of creeping out of the difficulty 
 than to assume that he loves and remembers. 
 Why not assume that ? In fact, why assume any- 
 thing else ? Neither reason, nor the Bible, nor 
 common sense, forbids it. Instead of starting with 
 it as an hypothesis to be proved if we can, I lay 
 it down as one of those probabilities for which 
 Butler would say, ' the presumption amounts nearly 
 to certainty ' ; and if any one can disprove it, I 
 will hear what he has to say. There ! " she broke 
 off, laughing softly, " that is a sufficient dose of 
 metaphysics for such a simple thing. It seems to 
 me to lie just here: Roy loved you. Our Father, 
 for some tender, hidden reason, took him out of 
 your sight for a while. Though changed much, he 
 can have forgotten nothing. Being only out of 
 sight, you remember, not lost, nor asleep, nor anni- 
 hilated, he goes on loving. To love must mean to 
 think of, to care for, to hope for, to pray for, not 
 less out of a body than in it." 
 
 "But that must mean why, that must mean " 
 " That he is near you. I do not doubt it."
 
 88 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 The sunshine quivered in among the ivy-leaves, 
 and I turned to watch it, thinking. 
 
 " I do not doubt," she went on, speaking low, 
 " I cannot doubt that our absent dead are very 
 present with us. He said, ' I am with you alway,' 
 knowing the need we have of him even to the end 
 of the world. He must understand the need we 
 have of them. I cannot doubt it." 
 
 I watched her as she sat with her absent eyes 
 turned eastward, and her peculiar look I have 
 never seen it on another face as of one who 
 holds a happy secret ; and while I watched I won- 
 dered. 
 
 " There is a reason for it," she said, rousing as if 
 from a pleasant dream, "a good sensible reason, 
 too, it strikes me, independent of Scriptural or 
 other proof." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "That God keeps us briskly at work in this 
 world." 
 
 I did not understand. 
 
 " Altogether too briskly, considering that it is 
 a preparative world, to intend to put us from it 
 into an idle one. What more natural than that 
 we shall spend our best energies as we spent them
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 89 
 
 here, in comforting, teaching, helping, saving 
 people whose very souls we love better than our 
 own ? In fact, it would be very natural if we 
 did not." 
 
 " But I thought that God took care of us, and 
 angels, like Gabriel and the rest, if I ever thought 
 anything about it, which I am inclined to doubt." 
 
 " ' God works by the use of means,' as the 
 preachers say. Why not use Roy as well as Ga- 
 briel ? What archangel could understand and 
 reach the peculiarities of your nature as he could ? 
 or, even if understanding, could so love and bear 
 with you ? What is to be done ? Will they send 
 Roy to the planet Jupiter to take care of some- 
 body's else sister?" I laughed in spite of myself; 
 nor did the laugh seem to jar upon the sacred still- 
 ness of the place. Her words were drawing away 
 the bitterness, as the sun was blotting the dull, dead 
 greens of the ivy into its glow of golden color. 
 
 " But the Bible, Aunt Winifred." 
 
 "The Bible does not say a great deal on this 
 point," she said, "but it does not contradict me. 
 In fact, it helps me ; and, moreover, it would up- 
 hold me in black and white if it were n't for one 
 little obstacle."
 
 90 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 "And that?" 
 
 " That frowning ' original Greek/ which Gail 
 Hamilton denounces with her righteous indigna- 
 tion. No sooner do I find a pretty verse that is 
 exactly what I want, than up hops a commentator, 
 and says, this is n't according to text, and means 
 something entirely different ; and Barnes says this, 
 and Stuart believes that, and Olshausen has demon- 
 strated the other, and very ignorant it is in you, 
 too, not to know it ! Here the other day I fer- 
 reted out a sentence in Revelation that seemed to 
 prove beyond question that angels and redeemed 
 men were the same ; where the angel says to John, 
 you know, ' Am I not of thy brethren the proph- 
 ets ?' I thought that I had discovered a delight- 
 ful thing which all the Fathers of the church had 
 overlooked, and went in great glee to your Uncle 
 Calvin, to be told that something was the matter, 
 a noun left out, or some other unanswerable and 
 unreasonable horror, I don't know what ; and that 
 it did n't mean that he was of thy brethren the 
 prophets at all ! 
 
 " You see, if it could be proved that the Chris- 
 tian dead become angels, we could have all that we 
 need, direct from God, about to use the beau-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 91 
 
 tiful old phrase the communion of saints. From 
 Genesis to Revelation the Bible is filled with an- 
 gels who are at work on earth. They hold sweet 
 converse with Abraham in his tent. They are 
 intrusted to save the soul of Lot. An angel hears 
 the wail of Hagar. The beautiful feet of an angel 
 bring the good tidings to maiden Mary. An an- 
 gel's noiseless step guides Peter through the barred 
 and bolted gate. Angels rolled the stone from the 
 buried Christ, and angels sat there in the solemn 
 morning, O Mary ! if we could have seen them ! 
 
 " Then there is that one question, direct, com- 
 prehensive, we should not need anything else, 
 'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to 
 minister to the heirs of salvation ? ' 
 
 " But you see it never seems to have entered 
 those commentators' heads that all these beautiful 
 things refer to any but a superior race of beings, 
 like those from whose ranks Lucifer fell." 
 
 " How stupid in them ! " 
 
 " I take comfort in thinking so ; but, to be 
 serious, even admitting that these passages refer 
 to a superior race, must there not be some simi- 
 larity in the laws which govern existence in the 
 heavenly world ? Since these gracious deeds are
 
 92 THF GATES AJAR. 
 
 performed by what we are accustomed to call ' spir- 
 itual beings,' why may they not as well be done by 
 people from this world as from anywhere else ? 
 Besides, there is another point, and a reasonable 
 one, to be made. The word angel in the original * 
 means, strictly, a messenger. It applies to any ser- 
 vant of God, animate or inanimate. An east wind 
 is as much an angel as Michael. Again, the gen- 
 eric terms, ' spirits/ ' gods,' ' sons of God,' are used 
 interchangeably for saints and for angels. So, you 
 see, I fancy that I find a way for you and Roy and 
 me and all of us, straight into the shining ministry. 
 Mary, Mary, would n't you like to go this very 
 afternoon ? " 
 
 She lay back in the grass, with her face up- 
 turned to the sky, and drew a long breath, wearily. 
 I do not think she meant me to hear it. I did not 
 answer her, for it came over me with such a hope- 
 less thrill, how good it would be to be taken to 
 Roy, there by his beautiful grave, with the ivy and 
 the May-flowers and the sunlight and the clover- 
 leaves round about ; and that it could not be, and 
 how long it was to wait, it came over me so >-hat 
 I could not speak. 
 
 * ayyeXor.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 93 
 
 " There ! " she said, suddenly rousing, " what a 
 thoughtless, wicked thing it was to say ! And I 
 meant to give you only the good cheer of a cheery 
 friend. No, I do not care to go this afternoon, nor 
 any afternoon, till my Father is ready for me. 
 Wherever he has most for me to do, there I wish, 
 yes, I think I wish to stay. He knows best." 
 
 After a pause, I asked again, " Why did He not 
 tell us more about this thing, about their pres- 
 ence with us ? You see if I could know it ! " 
 
 " The mystery of the Bible lies not so much in 
 what it says, as in what it does not say," she re- 
 plied. " But I suppose that we have been told all 
 that we can comprehend in this world. Knowl- 
 edge on one point might involve knowledge on 
 another, like the links of a chain, till it stretched 
 far beyond our capacity. At any rate, it is not for 
 me to break the silence. That is God's affair. I 
 can only accept the fact. Nevertheless, as Dr. 
 Chalmers says : ' It were well for us all could we 
 carefully draw the line between the secret things 
 which belong to God and the things which are 
 revealed and belong to us and to our children.' 
 Some one else, Whately, I think, I remember 
 to have noticed as speaking about these very sub-
 
 94 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 jects to this effect, that precisely because we 
 know so little of them, it is the more important 
 that we ' should endeavor so to dwell on them as to 
 make the most of what little knowledge we have.' " 
 " Aunt Winifred, you are such a comfort ! " 
 " It needs our best faith," she said, " to bear this 
 reticence of God. I cannot help thinking some- 
 times of a thing Lauderdale said, I am always 
 quoting him, from ' Son of the Soil,' you remem- 
 ber : ' It 's an awfu' marvel, beyond my reach, when 
 a word of communication would make a' the differ- 
 ence, why it 's no permitted, if it were but to keep 
 a heart from breaking now and then.' Think of 
 poor Eugenie de Guerin, trying to continue her 
 little journal 'To Maurice in Heaven,' till the 
 awful, answerless stillness shut up the book and 
 laid aside the pen. 
 
 " But then," she continued, " there is this to re- 
 member, I may have borrowed the idea, or it 
 may be my own, that if we could speak to them, 
 or they to us, there would be no death, for there 
 would be no separation. The last, the surest, in 
 some cases the only test of loyalty to God, would 
 thus be taken away. Roman Catholic nature is 
 human nature, when it comes upon its knees before
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 95 
 
 a saint. Many lives all such lives as yours and 
 mine would become " 
 
 " Would become what ? " 
 
 " One long defiance to the First Commandment." 
 
 I cannot become used to such words from such 
 quiet lips. Yet they give me a curious sense of 
 the trustworthiness of her peace. " Founded upon 
 a rock," it seems to be. She has done what it 
 takes a lifetime for some of us to do ; what some 
 of us go into eternity, leaving undone ; what I am 
 afraid I shall never do, sounded her own nature. 
 She knows the worst of herself, and faces it as 
 fairly, I believe, as anybody can do in this world. 
 As for the best of herself, she trusts that to Christ, 
 and he knows it, and we. I hope she, in her sweet 
 humbleness, will know it some day. 
 
 "I suppose, nevertheless," she said, "that Roy 
 knows what you are doing and feeling as well as, 
 perhaps better than, he knew it three months ago. 
 So he can help you without harming you." 
 
 I asked her, turning suddenly, how that could 
 be, and yet heaven be heaven, how he could see 
 me suffer what I had suffered, could see me some- 
 times when I supposed none but God had seen me, 
 and sing on and be happy.
 
 96 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " You are not the first, Mary, and you will not 
 be the last, to ask that question. I cannot answer 
 it, and I never heard of any who could. I feel 
 sure only of this, that he would suffer far less to 
 see you than to know nothing about you ; and that 
 God's power of inventing happiness is not to be 
 blocked by an obstacle like this. Perhaps Roy 
 sees the end from the beginning, and can bear the 
 sight of pain for the peace that he watches coming 
 to meet you. I do not know, that does not per- 
 plex me now ; it only makes me anxious for one 
 thing." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 " That you and I shall not do anything to make 
 them sorry." 
 
 " To make them sorry ? " 
 
 " Roy would care. Roy would be disappointed 
 to see you make life a hopeless thing for his sake, 
 or to see you doubt his Saviour." 
 
 " Do you think that ? " 
 
 " Some sort of mourning over sin enters that 
 happy life. God himself ' was grieved ' forty years 
 long over his wandering people. Among the an- 
 gels there has been ' silence,' whatever that myste- 
 rious pause may mean, just as there is joy over one
 
 THE GATES.AJAR. 97 
 
 sinner that repenteth ; another of my proof-texts 
 that, to show that they are allowed to keep us in 
 sight." 
 
 "Then you think, you really think, that Roy 
 remembers and loves and takes care of me ; that 
 he has been listening, perhaps, and is why, you 
 don't think he may be here ? " 
 
 " Yes, I do. Here, close beside you all this time, 
 trying to speak to you through the blessed sun- 
 shine and the flowers, trying to help you and sure 
 to love you, right here, dear. I do not believe 
 God means to send him away from you, either." 
 
 My heart was too full to answer her. Seeing 
 how it was, she slipped away, and, strolling out of 
 sight with her face to the eastern hills, left me 
 alone. 
 
 And yet I did not seem alone. The low 
 branches swept with a little soft sigh across the 
 grave ; the May-flowers wrapped me in with fra- 
 grance thick as incense ; the tiny sparrow turned 
 her soft eyes at me over the edge of the nest, 
 and chirped contentedly; the "blessed sunshine" 
 talked with me as it touched the edges of the 
 ivy-leaves to fire. 
 
 I cannot write it even here, how these things 
 5 G
 
 98 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 stole into my heart and hushed me. If I ha<\ 
 seen him standing by the 'stainless cross, it would 
 not have frightened or surprised me. There 
 not dead or gone, but there it helps me and 
 makes me strong ! 
 
 " Mamie ! little Mamie ! " 
 
 O Roy, I will tiy to bear it all if you will only 
 stay !
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 99 
 
 VIII. 
 
 May 20. 
 
 nearer the time has come for Aunt Wini- 
 -*- fred to go, the more it has seemed impossi- 
 ble to part with her. I have run away from the 
 thought like a craven, till she made me face it this 
 morning, by saying decidedly that she should go 
 on the first of the week. 
 
 I dropped my sewing ; the work-basket tipped 
 over, and all my spools rolled away under the 
 chairs. I had a little time to think while I was 
 picking them up. 
 
 "There is the rest of my visit at Norwich to 
 be made, you know," she said, " and while I am 
 there I shall form some definite plans for the 
 summer ; I have hardly decided what, yet. I had 
 better leave here by the seven o'clock train, if 
 such an early start will not incommode you." 
 
 I wound up the last spool, and turned away to 
 the window. There was a confused, dreary sky of 
 scurrying clouds, and a cold wind was bruising the 
 apple-buds. I hate a cold wind in May. It made
 
 IOO THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 me choke a little, thinking how I should sit and 
 listen to it after she was gone, of the old, blank, 
 comfortless days that must come and go, of what 
 she had brought, and what she would take away. 
 I was a bit faint, I think, for a minute. I had not 
 really thought the prospect through, before. 
 
 " Mary," she said, " what 's the matter. Come 
 here." 
 
 I went over, and she drew me into her lap, and 
 I put my arms about her neck. 
 
 " I can not bear it," said I, " and that is the 
 matter." 
 
 She smiled, but her smile faded when she looked 
 at me. 
 
 And then I told her, sobbing, how it was ; that 
 I could not go into my future alone, I could not 
 do it ! that she did not know how weak I was, 
 and reckless, and wicked ; that she did not 
 know what she had been to me. I begged her 
 not to leave me. I begged her to stay and help 
 me bear my life. 
 
 " My dear ! you are as bad as Faith when I 
 put her to bed alone." 
 
 " But," I said, " when Faith cries, you go to 
 her, you know."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IOI 
 
 " Are you quite in earnest, Mary ? " she asked, 
 after a pause. " You don't know very much about 
 me, after all, and there is the child. It is always 
 an experiment, bringing two families into lifelong 
 relations under one roof. If I could think it best, 
 you might repent your bargain." 
 
 " / am not ' a family,' " I said, feebly trying to 
 laugh. "Aunt Winifred, if you and Faith only 
 will make this your home, I can never thank you, 
 never. I shall be entertaining my good angels, 
 and that is the whole of it." 
 
 " I have had some thought of not going back," 
 she said at last, in a low, constrained voice, as if 
 she were touching something that gave her great 
 pain, " for Faith's sake. I should like to educate 
 her in New England, if I had intended if we 
 stayed to rent or buy a little home of our own 
 somewhere, but I had been putting off a decision. 
 We are most weak and most selfish sometimes 
 when we think ourselves strongest and noblest, 
 Mary. I love my husband's people. I think they 
 love me. I was almost happy with them. It 
 seemed as if I were carrying on his work for him. 
 That was so pleasant ! " She put me down out of 
 her arms and walked across the room.
 
 IO2 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " I will think the matter over," she said, by and 
 by, in her natural tones, "and let you know to- 
 night." 
 
 She went away up stairs then, and I did not 
 see her again until to-night. I sent Faith up 
 with her dinner and tea, judging that she would 
 rather see the child than me. I observed, when 
 the dishes came down, that she had touched noth- 
 ing but a cup of coffee. 
 
 I began to understand, as I sat alone in the 
 parlor through the afternoon, how much I had 
 asked of her. In my selfish distress at losing her, 
 I had not thought of that. Faces that her hus- 
 band loved, meadows and hills and sunsets that he 
 has watched, the home where his last step sounded 
 and his last word was spoken, the grave where she 
 has laid him, this last more than all, call after 
 her, and cling to her with yearning closeness. To 
 leave them, is to leave the last faint shadow of her 
 beautiful past. It hurts, but she is too brave to 
 cry out. 
 
 Tea was over, and Faith in bed, but still she did 
 not come down. I was sitting by the window, 
 watching a little crescent moon climb over the 
 hills, and wondering whether I had better go up,
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IO3 
 
 when she came in and stood behind me, and said, 
 attempting to laugh: 
 
 " Very impolite in me to run off so, was n't it ? 
 Cowardly, too, I think. Well, Mary ? " 
 
 " Well, Auntie ? " 
 
 " Have you not repented your proposition yet ? " 
 
 "You would excel as an inquisitor, Mrs. For- 
 ceythe ! " 
 
 " Then it shall be as you say ; as long as you 
 want us you shall have us, Faith and me." 
 
 I turned to thank her, but could not when I saw 
 her face. It was very pale ; there was something 
 inexpressibly sad about her mouth, and her eye- 
 lids drooped heavily, like one weary from a great 
 struggle. 
 
 Feeling for the moment guilty and ashamed 
 before her, as if I had done her wrong, "It is 
 going to be very hard for you," I said. 
 
 " Never mind about that," she answered, quickly. 
 " We will not talk about that. I knew, though I 
 did not wish to know, that it was best for Faith. 
 Your hands about my neck have settled it. Where 
 the work is, there the laborer must be. It is quite 
 plain now. I have been talking it over with them 
 all the afternoon ; it seems to be what they want."
 
 104 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " With them " ? I started at the words ; who 
 had been in her lonely chamber ? Ah, it is simply 
 real to her. Who, indeed, but her Saviour and her 
 husband ? 
 
 She did not seem inclined to talk, and stole 
 away from me presently, and out of doors ; she 
 was wrapped in her blanket shawl, and had thrown 
 a shimmering white hood over her gray hair. I 
 wondered where she could be going, and sat still at 
 the window watching her. She opened and shut 
 the gate softly ; and, turning her face towards the 
 churchyard, walked up the street and out of my 
 sight. She feels nearer to him in the resting-place 
 of the dead. Her heart cries after the grave by 
 which she will never sit and weep again ; on which 
 she will never plant the roses any more. 
 
 As I sat watching and thinking this, the faint 
 light struck her slight figure and little shimmering 
 hood again, and she walked down the street and in 
 with steady step. 
 
 When she came up and stood beside me, smiling, 
 with the light knitted thing thrown back on her 
 shoulders, her face seemed to rise from it as from 
 a snowy cloud ; and for her look, I wish Raphael 
 could have had it for one of his rapt Madonnas.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IO5 
 
 " Now, Mary," she said, with the sparkle back 
 again in her voice, " I am ready to be entertaining, 
 and promise not to play the hermit again very 
 soon. Shall I sit here on the sofa with you ? Yes, 
 my dear, I am happy, quite happy." 
 
 So then we took this new promise of home that 
 has come to make my life, if not joyful, something 
 less than desolate, and analyzed it in its practical 
 bearings. What a pity that all pretty dreams have 
 to be analyzed ! I had some notion about throw- 
 ing our little incomes into a joint family fund, but 
 she put a veto to that ; I suppose because mine is 
 the larger. She prefers to take board for herself 
 and Faith ; but, if I know myself, she shall never 
 be suffered to have the feeling of a boarder, and I 
 will make her so much at home in my house that 
 she shall not remember that it is not her own. 
 
 Her visit to Norwich she has decided to put off 
 until the autumn, so that I shall have her to myself 
 undisturbed all summer. 
 
 I have been looking at Roy's picture a long time, 
 and wondering how he would like the new plan. I 
 said something of the sort to her. 
 
 " Why put any ' would ' in that sentence ? " she 
 said, smiling. " It belongs in the present tense." 
 5*
 
 IO6 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Then I am sure he likes it," I answered, " he 
 likes it," and I said the words over till I was ready 
 to cry for rest in their sweet sound. 
 
 22A 
 
 It is Roy's birthday. But I have not spoken 
 of it. We used to make a great deal of these 
 little festivals, but it is of no use to write about 
 that. 
 
 I am afraid I have been bearing it very badly all 
 day. She noticed my face, but said nothing till 
 to-night. Mrs. Bland was down stairs, and I had 
 come away alone up here in the dark. I heard her 
 asking for me, but would not go down. By and by 
 Aunt Winifred knocked, and I let her in. 
 
 " Mrs. Bland cannot understand why you don't 
 see her, Mary," she said, gently. " You know you 
 have not thanked her for those English violets that 
 she sent the other day. I only thought I would 
 remind you ; she might feel a little pained." 
 
 " I can't to-night, not to-night, Aunt Winifred. 
 You must excuse me to her somehow. I don't 
 want to go down." 
 
 " Is it that you don't ' want to,' or is it that you 
 can't ? " she said, in that gentle, motherly way of 
 hers, at which I can never take offence. " Mary, I
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IO/ 
 
 wonder if Roy would not a little rather that you 
 would go down ? " 
 
 It might have been Roy himself who spoke. 
 
 I went down.
 
 IO8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 IX. 
 
 June I. 
 
 A UNT WINIFRED went to the office this 
 ** morning, and met Dr. Bland, who walked 
 home with her. He always likes to talk with her. 
 
 A woman who knows something about fate, free- 
 will, and foreknowledge absolute, who is not igno- 
 rant of politics, and talks intelligently of Agassiz's 
 latest iossil, who can understand a German quota- 
 tion, and has heard of Strauss and Neander, who 
 can dash her sprightliness ably against his old dry 
 bones of metaphysics and theology, yet never speak 
 an accent above that essentially womanly voice of 
 hers, is, I imagine, a phenomenon in his social 
 experience. 
 
 I was sitting at the window when they came up 
 and stopped at the gate. Dr. Bland lifted his hat 
 to me in his grave way, talking the while ; some- 
 what eagerly, too, I could see. Aunt Winifred 
 answered him with a peculiar smile and a few low 
 words that I could not hear. 
 
 " But, my dear madam," he said, " the glory of
 
 THE GATES AJAR. ICX) 
 
 God, you see, the glory of God is the primary con- 
 sideration." 
 
 "But the glory of God involves these lesser 
 glories, as a sidereal system, though a splendid 
 whole, exists by the multiplied differing of one star 
 from another star. Ah, Dr. Bland, you make a 
 grand abstraction out of it, but it makes me cold," 
 she shivered, half playfully, half involuntarily, 
 " it makes me cold. I am very much alive and 
 human ; and Christ was human God." 
 
 She came in smiling a little sadly, and stood by 
 me, watching the minister walk over the hill. 
 
 " How much does that man love his wife and 
 children ? " she asked abruptly. 
 
 " A good deal. Why ? " 
 
 " I am afraid that he will lose one of them, then, 
 before many more years of his life are past." 
 
 " What ! he has n't been telling you that they 
 are consumptive or anything of the sort ? " 
 
 " O dear me, no," with a merry laugh, which died 
 quickly away : " I was only thinking, there is 
 trouble in store for him ; some intense pain, if 
 he is capable of intense pain, which shall shake 
 his cold, smooth theorizing to the foundation. He 
 speaks a foreign tongue when he talks of bereave-
 
 HO THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ment, of death, of the future life. No argument 
 could convince him of that, though, which is the 
 worst of it." 
 
 " He must think you shockingly heterodox." 
 
 "I don't doubt it. We had a little talk this 
 morning, and he regarded me with an expression of 
 mingled consternation and perplexity that was cu- 
 rious. He is a very good man. He is not a stupid 
 man. I only wish that he would stop preaching 
 and teaching things that he knows nothing about. 
 
 " He is only drifting with the tide, though," she 
 added, " in his views of this matter. In our recoil 
 from the materialism of the Romish Church, we 
 have, it seems to me, nearly stranded ourselves on 
 the opposite shore. Just as, in a rebound from the 
 spirit which would put our Saviour on a level with 
 Buddha or Mahomet, we have been in danger of 
 forgetting ' to begin as the Bible begins,' with his 
 humanity. It is the grandeur of inspiration, that 
 it knows how to balance truth." 
 
 It had been in my mind for several days to ask 
 Aunt Winifred something, and, feeling in the mood, 
 I made her take off her things and devote herself 
 to me. My question concerned what we call the 
 " intermediate state."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. Ill 
 
 " I have been expecting that," she said ; " what 
 about it?" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Life and activity." 
 
 "We do not go to sleep, of course." 
 
 " I believe that notion is about exploded, though 
 clear thinkers like Whately have appeared to advo- 
 cate it. Where it originated, I do not know, unless 
 from the frequent comparisons in the Scriptures of 
 death with sleep, which refer solely, I am con- 
 vinced, to the condition of body, and which are 
 voted down by an overwhelming majority of de- 
 cided statements relative to the consciousness, "hap- 
 piness, and tangibility of the Ijfe into which we 
 immediately pass." 
 
 " It is intermediate, in some sense, I suppose." 
 
 " It waits between two other conditions, yes; 
 I think the drift of what we are taught about it 
 leads to that conclusion. I expect to become at 
 once sinless, but to have a broader Christian char- 
 acter many years hence ; to be happy at once, but 
 to be happier by and by ; to find in myself wonder- 
 ful new tastes and capacities, which are to be im- 
 measurably ennobled and enlarged after the Resur- 
 rection, whatever that may mean."
 
 112 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " What does it mean ? " 
 
 " I know no more than you, but you shall hear 
 what I think, presently. I was going to say that 
 this seems to be plain enough in the Bible. The 
 ansrels took Lazarus at once to Abraham. Dives 
 
 O 
 
 seems to have found no interval between death and 
 consciousness of suffering." 
 
 " They always tell you that that is only a par- 
 able." 
 
 " But it must mean something. No story in the 
 Bible has been pulled to pieces and twisted about 
 as that has been. We are in danger of pulling and 
 twisting all sense out of it. Then Judas, having 
 hanged his wretched self, went to his own place. 
 Besides, there was Christ's promise to the thief." 
 
 I told her that I had heard Dr. Bland say that 
 we could not place much dependence on that pas- 
 sage, because " Paradise " did not necessarily mean 
 heaven. 
 
 " But it meant living, thinking, enjoying ; for 
 ' To-day thou shalt be with me' Paul's beautiful 
 perplexed revery, however, would be enough if it 
 stood alone ; for he did not know whether he would 
 rather stay in this world, or depart and be with 
 Christ, which is far better. With Christ, you see ;
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 113 
 
 His three mysterious days, which typify our 
 intermediate state, were over then, and he had 
 ascended to his Father. Would it be ' far better ' 
 either to leave this actual tangible life throbbing 
 with hopes and passions, to leave its busy, Christ- 
 like working, its quiet joys, its very sorrows which 
 are near and human, for a nap of several ages, or 
 even for a vague, lazy, half-alive, disembodied exist- 
 ence ? " 
 
 " Disembodied ? I supposed, of course, that it 
 was disembodied." 
 
 " I do not think so. And that brings us to the 
 Resurrection. All the tendency of Revelation is to 
 show that an embodied state is superior to a disem- 
 bodied one. Yet certainly we who love God are 
 promised that death will lead us into a condition 
 which shall have the advantage of this : for the 
 good apostle to die ' was gain.' I don't believe, for 
 instance, that Adam and Eve have been wandering 
 about in a misty condition all these thousands of 
 years. I suspect that we have some sort of body 
 immediately after passing out of this, but that there 
 is to come a mysterious change, equivalent, per- 
 haps, to a re-embodiment, when our capacities for 
 action will be greatly improved, and that in some
 
 114 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 manner this new form will be connected with this 
 * garment by the soul laid by.' " 
 
 " Deacon Quirk expects to rise in his own entire, 
 original body, after it has lain in the First Church 
 cemetery a proper number of years, under a black 
 slate headstone, adorned by a willow, and such a 
 ' cherubim ' as that poor boy shot, by the way, if 
 I Ve laughed at that story once, I have fifty times." 
 
 "Perhaps Deacon Quirk would admire a work 
 of art that I found stowed away on the top of your 
 Uncle Calvin's bookcases. It was an old woodcut 
 nobody knows how old of an interesting skel- 
 eton rising from his grave, and, in a sprightly and 
 modest manner, drawing on his skin, while Gabriel, 
 with apoplectic cheeks, feet uppermost in the air, 
 was blowing a good-sized tin trumpet in his ear ! 
 
 " No ; some of the popular notions of resurrec- 
 tion are simple physiological impossibilities, from 
 causes ' too tedious to specify.' Imagine, for in- 
 stance, the resurrection of two Hottentots, one of 
 whom has happened to make a dinner of the other 
 some fine day. A little complication there ! Or 
 picture the touching scene, when that devoted 
 husband, King Mausolas, whose widow had him 
 burned and ate the ashes, should feel moved to
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 115 
 
 institute a search for his body ! It is no wonder 
 that the infidel argument has the best of it, when 
 we attempt to enforce a natural impossibility. It is 
 worth while to remember that Paul expressly stated 
 that we shall not rise in our entire earthly bodies. 
 The simile which he used is the seed sown, dying 
 in, and mingling with, the ground. How many of 
 its original particles are found in the full-grown 
 corn ? " 
 
 "Yet you believe that something belonging to this 
 body is preserved for the completion of another ? " 
 
 " Certainly. I accept God's statement about it, 
 which is as plain as words can make a statement. 
 I do not know, and I do not care to know, how it is 
 to be effected. God will not be at a loss for a way, 
 any more than he is at a loss for a way to make his 
 fields blossom every spring. For aught we know, 
 some invisible compound of an annihilated body 
 may hover, by a divine decree, around the site of 
 death till it is wanted, sufficient to preserve 
 identity as strictly as a body can ever be said to 
 preserve it ; and stranger things have happened. 
 You remember the old Mohammedan belief in the 
 one little bone which is imperishable. Prof. Bush's 
 idea of our triune existence is suggestive, for a
 
 Il6 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 notion. He believed, you know, that it takes a 
 material body, a spiritual body, and a soul, to make 
 a man. The spiritual body is enclosed within the 
 material, the soul within the spiritual. Death is 
 simply the slipping off of the outer body, as a husk 
 slips off from its kernel. The deathless frame 
 stands ready then for the soul's untramntelled occu- 
 pation. But it is a waste of time to speculate over 
 such useless fancies, while so many remain that will 
 vitally affect our happiness." 
 
 It is singular ; but I never gave a serious thought 
 and I have done some thinking about other 
 matters to my heavenly body, till that moment, 
 while I sat listening to her. In fact, till Roy went, 
 the Future was a miserable, mysterious blank, to be 
 drawn on and on in eternal and joyless monotony, 
 and to which, at times, annihilation seemed prefer- 
 able. I remember, when I was a child, asking 
 father once, if I were so good that I had to go to 
 heaven, whether, after a hundred years, God would 
 not let me " die out." More or less of the dis- 
 position of that same desperate little sinner I sus- 
 pect has always clung to me. So I asked Aunt 
 Winifred, in some perplexity, what she supposed 
 our bodies would be like.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. II/ 
 
 " It must be nearly all ' suppose,' " she said, " for 
 we are nowhere definitely told. But this is certain. 
 They will be as real as these." 
 
 " But these you can see, you can touch." 
 
 "What would be the use of having a body that 
 you can't see and touch ? A body is a body, not a 
 spirit. Why should you not, having seen Roy's old 
 smile and heard his own voice, clasp his hand again, 
 and feel his kiss on your happy lips ? 
 
 " It is really amusing," she continued, " to sum 
 up the notions that good people excellent people 
 even thinking people have of the heavenly 
 body. Vague visions of floating about in the 
 clouds, of balancing with a white robe on, per- 
 haps in stiff rows about a throne, like the angels 
 in the old pictures, converging to an apex, or 
 ranged in semi-circles like so many marbles. Mu- 
 rillo has one charming exception. I always take 
 a secret delight in that little cherub of his, kicking 
 the clouds in the right-hand upper corner of the 
 Immaculate Conception ; he seems to be having 
 a good time of it, in genuine baby-fashion. The 
 truth is, that the ordinary idea, if sifted accurately, 
 reduces our eternal personality to gas. 
 
 " Isaac Taylor holds, that, as far as the abstract
 
 Il8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 idea of spirit is concerned, it may just as reason- 
 ably be granite as ether. 
 
 " Mrs. Charles says a pretty thing about this. 
 She thinks these ' super-spiritualized angels ' very 
 ' unsatisfactory ' beings, and that ' the heart returns 
 with loving obstinacy to the young men in long 
 white garments' who sat waiting in the sepulchre. 
 
 " Here again I cling to my conjecture about 
 the word ' angel ' ; for then we should learn em- 
 phatically something about our future selves. 
 
 " ' As the angels in heaven,' or ' equal unto the 
 angels,' we are told in another place, that may 
 mean simply what it says. At least, if we are to 
 resemble them in the particular respect of which 
 the words were spoken, and that one of the 
 most important which could well be selected, it 
 is not unreasonable to infer that we shall resemble 
 them in others. ' In the Resurrection,' by the 
 way, means, in that connection and in many others, 
 simply future state of existence, without any refer- 
 ence to the time at which the great bodily change 
 is to come. 
 
 " ' But this is a digression,' as the novelists say. 
 I was going to say, that it bewilders me to con- 
 jecture where students of the Bible have discov-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ered the usual foggy nonsense about the corpo- 
 reity of heaven. 
 
 " If there is anything laid down in plain state- 
 ment, devoid of metaphor or parable, simple and 
 unequivocal, it is the definite contradiction of all 
 that Paul, in his preface to that sublime apos- 
 trophe to death, repeats and reiterates it, lest we 
 should make a mistake in his meaning. 
 
 " ' There are celestial bodies' ' It is raised a 
 spiritual body' ' There is a spiritual body! ' It 
 is raised in incorruption.' ' It is raised in glory.' 
 ' It is raised in power.' Moses, too, when he came 
 to the transfigured mount in glory, had as real a 
 body as when he went into the lonely mount to 
 die." 
 
 " But they will be different from these ? " 
 
 " The glory of the terrestrial is one, the glory 
 of the celestial another. Take away sin and sick- 
 ness and misery, and that of itself would make 
 difference enough." 
 
 " You do not suppose that we shall look as we 
 look now ? " 
 
 " I certainly do. At least, I think it more than 
 possible that the 'human form divine,' or some- 
 thing like it, is to be retained. Not only from
 
 I2O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the fact that risen Elijah bore it ; and Moses, 
 who, if he had not passed through his resurrec- 
 tion, does not seem to have looked different from 
 the other, I have to use those two poor proph- 
 ets on all occasions, but, as we are told of them 
 neither by parable nor picture, they are important, 
 and that angels never appeared in any other, 
 but because, in sinless Eden, God chose it for 
 Adam and Eve. What came in unmarred beauty 
 direct from His hand cannot be unworthy of His 
 other Paradise ' beyond the stars.' It would chime 
 in pleasantly, too, with the idea of Redemption, 
 that our very bodies, free from all the distortion 
 of guilt, shall return to something akin to the 
 pure ideal in which He moulded them. Then 
 there is another reason, and stronger." 
 
 "What is that?" 
 
 "The human form has been borne and digni- 
 fied forever by Christ. And, further than that, 
 He ascended to His Father in it, and lives there 
 in it as human God to-day." 
 
 I had never thought of that, and said so. 
 
 "Yes, with the very feet which trod the dusty 
 road to Emmaus ; the very wounded hands which 
 Thomas touched, believing ; the very lips which
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 121 
 
 ate of the broiled fish and honeycomb; the very 
 voice which murmured ' Mary ! ' in the garden, 
 and, which told her that he ascended unto His 
 Father and her Father, to His God and her God, 
 He ' was parted from them,' and was received up 
 into heaven.' His death and resurrection stad 
 forever the great prototype of ours. Otherwise, 
 what is the meaning of such statements as these : 
 ' When He shall appear, we shall be like Him ' ; 
 The first man (Adam) is of the earth ; the second 
 man is the Lord. As we have borne the image 
 of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
 heavenly ' ? And what of this, when we are told 
 that our 'vile bodies,' being changed, shall be 
 fashioned ' like unto his glorious body ' ? " 
 
 I asked her if she inferred from that, that we 
 should have just such bodies as the freedom from 
 pain and sin would make of these. 
 
 " Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom," 
 she said. "There is no escaping that, even if I 
 had the smallest desire to escape it, which I have 
 not. Whatever is essentially earthly and tempo- 
 rary in the arrangements of this world will be 
 out of place and unnecessary there. Earthly and 
 temporary flesh and blood certainly are."
 
 122 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Christ said ' A spirit hath not flesh and bones, 
 as ye see me have.' 
 
 " A spirit hath not ; and who ever said that it 
 did ? His body had something that appeared like 
 them, certainly. That passage, by the way, has 
 led some ingenious writer on the Chemistry of 
 Heaven to infer that our bodies there will be like 
 these, minus blood ! I don't propose to spend my 
 time over such investigations. Summing up the 
 meaning of the story of those last days before 
 the Ascension, and granting the shade of mystery 
 which hangs over them, I gather this, that the 
 spiritual body is real, is tangible, is visible, is hu- 
 man, but that 'we shall be changed.' Some in- 
 definable but thorough change had come over 
 Him. He could withdraw Himself from the rec- 
 ognition of Mary, and from the disciples, whose 
 ' eyes were holden,' as it pleased Him. He came 
 and went through barred and bolted doors. He ap- 
 peared suddenly in a certain place, without sound 
 of footstep or flutter of garment to announce His 
 approach. He vanished, and was not, like a cloud. 
 New and wonderful powers had been given to Him, 
 of which, probably, His little bewildered group of 
 friends saw but a few illustrations.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 123 
 
 " And He was yet man ? " 
 
 " He was Jesus of Nazareth until the sorrowful 
 drama of human life that He had taken upon 
 Himself was thoroughly finished, from manger to 
 sepulchre, and from sepulchre to the right hand 
 of His Father." 
 
 " I like to wonder," she said, presently, " what 
 we are going to look like and be like. Ourselves, 
 in the first place. 'It is I Myself/ Christ said. 
 Then to be perfectly well, never a sense of pain 
 or weakness, imagine how much solid comfort, 
 if one had no other, in being forever rid of all 
 the ills that flesh is heir to ! Beautiful, too, I 
 suppose we shall be, every one. Have you never 
 had that come over you, with a thrill of compas- 
 sionate thankfulness, when you have seen a poor 
 girl shrinking, as only girls can shrink, under the 
 life-long affliction of a marred face or form ? 
 The loss or presence of beauty is not as slight a 
 deprivation or blessing as the moralists would make 
 it out. Your grandmother, who was the most 
 beautiful woman I ever saw, the belle of the 
 county all her young days, and the model for 
 artists' fancy sketching even in her old ones, as 
 modest as a violet and as honest as the sunshine,
 
 124 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 used to have the prettiest little way when we girls 
 were in our teens, and she thought that we must 
 be lectured a bit on youthful vanity, of adding, 
 in her quiet voice, smoothing down her black silk 
 apron as she spoke, ' But still it is a thing to 
 be thankful for, my dear, to have a comely coun- 
 tenance! 
 
 "But to return to the track and our future 
 bodies. We shall find them vastly convenient, un- 
 doubtedly with powers of which there is no dream- 
 ing. Perhaps they will be so one with the soul 
 that to will will be to do, hindrance out of the 
 question. I, for instance, sitting here by you, and 
 thinking that I should like to be in Kansas, would 
 be there. There is an interesting bit of a hint in 
 Daniel about Gabriel, who, ' being caused to fly 
 swiftly, touched him about the time of the evening 
 oblation."' 
 
 " But do you not make a very material kind of 
 heaven out of such suppositions ? " 
 
 " It depends upon what you mean by ' material.' 
 The term does not, to my thinking, imply degrada- 
 tion, except so far as it is associated with sin. Dr. 
 Chalmers has the right of it, when he talks about 
 ' spiritual materialism' He says in his sermon
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 125 
 
 on the New Heavens and Earth, which, by the 
 way, you should read, and from which I wish a 
 few more of our preachers would learn something, 
 that we ' forget that on the birth of materialism, 
 when it stood out in the freshness of those glories 
 which the great Architect of Nature had impressed 
 upon it, that then the "morning stars sang to- 
 gether, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." ' 
 I do not believe in a gross heaven, but I believe 
 in a reasonable one." 
 
 4th. 
 
 We have been devoting ourselves to feminine 
 vanities all day out in the orchard. Aunt Wini- 
 fred has been making her summer bonnet, and I 
 some linen collars. I saw, though she said noth- 
 ing, that she thought the crepe a little gloomy, and 
 I am going to wear these in the mornings to please 
 her. 
 
 She has an accumulation of work on hand, and 
 in the afternoon I offered to tuck a little dress 
 for Faith, the prettiest pink barege affair pale 
 is a blush rose, and about as delicate. Faith, 
 who had been making mud-pies in the swamp, 
 and was spattered with black peat from curls to 
 stockings, looked on approvingly, and wanted it
 
 126 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 to wear on a flag-root expedition to-morrow. It 
 seemed to do me good to do something for some- 
 body after all this lonely and I suspect selfish 
 idleness. 
 
 6th. 
 
 I read a little of Dr. Chalmers to-day, and went 
 laughing to Aunt Winifred with the first sentence. 
 
 " There is a limit to the revelations of the Bible 
 about futurity, and it were a mental or spiritual 
 trespass to go beyond it." 
 
 "Ah! but," she said, "look a little farther 
 down." 
 
 And I read, " But while we attempt not to be 
 'wise above that which is written,' we should at- 
 tempt, and that most studiously, to be wise up to 
 that which is written." 
 
 8th. 
 
 It occurred to me to-day, that it was a notice- 
 able fact, that, among all the visits of angels to 
 this world of which we are told, no one seems 
 to have discovered in any the presence of a 
 dead fr'end. If redeemed men are subject to the 
 same laws as they, why did such a thing never 
 happen ? I asked Aunt Winifred, and she said 
 that the question reminded her of St Augustine's
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I2/ 
 
 lonely cry thirty years after the death of Monica : 
 " Ah, the dead do not come back ; for, had it been 
 possible, there has not been a night when I should 
 not have seen my mother ! " There seemed to 
 be two reasons, she said, why there should be no 
 exceptions to the law of silence imposed between 
 us and those who have left us ; one of which was, 
 that we should be overpowered with familiar curi- 
 osity about them, which nobody seems to have 
 dared to express in the presence of angels, and 
 the secrets of their life God has decreed that it is 
 unlawful to utter. 
 
 " But Lazarus, and Jairus's little daughter, and 
 the dead raised at the Crucifixion, what of 
 them ? " I asked. 
 
 " I cannot help conjecturing that they were 
 suffered to forget their glimpse of spiritual life," 
 she said. " Since their resurrection was a miracle, 
 there might be a miracle throughout. At least, 
 their lips must have been sealed, for not a word 
 of their testimony has been saved. When Lazarus 
 dined with Simon, after he had come back to life, 
 and of that feast we have a minute account in 
 every Gospel, nobody seems to have asked, or he 
 to have answered, any questions about it.
 
 128 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " The other reason is a sorrowfully sufficient one 
 It is that every lost darling has not gone to heaven. 
 Of all the mercies that our Father has given, this 
 blessed uncertainty, this long unbroken silence, 
 may be the dearest. Bitterly hard for you and me, 
 but what are thousands like you and me weighed 
 against one who stands beside a hopeless grave ? 
 Think a minute what mourners there have been, 
 and whom they have mourned ! Ponder one such 
 solitary instance as that of Vittoria Colonna, won- 
 dering, through her widowed years, if she could 
 ever be ' good enough ' to join wicked Pescara in 
 another world ! This poor earth holds God only 
 knows how many, God make them very few ! 
 Vittorias. Ah, Mary, what right have we to com- 
 plain ? " 
 
 9th. 
 
 To-night Aunt Winifred had callers, Mrs. 
 Quirk and (O Homer aristocracy !) the butcher's 
 wife, and it fell to my lot to put Faith to bed. 
 
 The little maiden seriously demurred. Cousin 
 Mary was very good, O yes, she was good 
 enough, but her mamma was a great deal good- 
 er ; and why could n't little peoples sit up till nine 
 o'clock as well as big peoples, she should like to
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I2Q 
 
 know! Finally, she came to the gracious conclu- 
 sion that perhaps I 'd do, made me carry her all 
 the way up stairs, and dropped, like a little lump 
 of lead, half asleep on my shoulder, before two 
 buttons were unfastened. 
 
 Feeling under some sort of theological obliga- 
 tion to hear her say her prayers, I pulled her curls 
 a little till she awoke, and went through with 
 " Now I lay me down to sleep, I pway ve Lord," 
 triumphantly. I supposed that was the end, but 
 it seems that she has been also taught the Lord's 
 Prayer, which she gave me promptly to understand. 
 
 " O, see here ! That is n't all. I can say Our 
 Father, and you Ve got to help me a lot ! " 
 
 This very soon became a self-evident proposi- 
 tion ; but by our united efforts we managed, after 
 tribulations manifold, to arrive successfully at " For 
 ever'n' ever'n' ever'n' A-mcn." 
 
 "Dear me," she said, jumping up with a yawn, 
 " I think that 's a dreadful long-tailed prayer, 
 don't you, Cousin Mary ? " 
 
 " Now I must kiss mamma good night," she 
 announced, when she was tucked up at last. 
 
 " But mamma kissed you good night before you 
 came up." 
 
 6
 
 I3O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " O, so she did. Yes, I 'member. Well, it 's 
 papa I Ve got to kiss. I knew there was some- 
 body." 
 
 I looked at her in perplexity. 
 
 " Why, there ! " she said, " in the upper drawer, 
 my pretty little papa in a purple frame. Don't 
 you know ? " 
 
 I went to the bureau-drawer, and found in a 
 case of velvet a small ivory painting of her father. 
 This I brought, wondering, and the child took it 
 reverently and kissed the pictured lips. 
 
 " Faith," I said, as I laid it softly back, " do you 
 always do this ? " 
 
 " Do what ? Kiss papa good night ? O yes, 
 I 've done that ever since I was a little girl, you 
 know. I guess I've always kissed him pretty 
 much. When I 'm a naughty girl he feels real 
 sorry. He 's gone to heaven. I like him. O yes, 
 and then, when I 'm through kissing, mamma 
 kisses him too."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 13! 
 
 X. 
 
 June n. 
 
 T WAS in her room this afternoon while she 
 * was dressing. I like to watch her brush her 
 beautiful gray hair ; it quite alters her face to 
 have it down ; it seems to shrine her in like a 
 cloud, and the outlines of her cheeks round out, 
 and she grows young. 
 
 " I used to be proud of my hair when I was a 
 girl," she said with a slight blush, as she saw me 
 looking at her ; " it was all I had to be vain of, 
 and I made the most of it. Ah well ! I was 
 dark-haired three years ago* 
 
 " O you regular old woman ! " she added, smiling 
 at herself in the mirror, as she twisted the silver 
 coils flashing through her fingers. "Well, when 
 I am in heaven, I shall have my pretty brown hair 
 again." 
 
 It seemed odd enough to hear that ; then the 
 next minute it did not seem odd at all, but the 
 most natural thing in the world.
 
 132 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 June 14. 
 
 She said nothing to me about the anniversary 
 and, though it has been in my thoughts all the 
 time, I said nothing to her. I thought that she 
 would shut herself up for the day, and was rather 
 surprised that she was about as usual busily at 
 work, chatting with me, and playing with Faith. 
 Just after tea, she went away alone for a time, 
 and came back a little quiet, but that was all. I 
 was for some reason impressed with the feeling 
 that she kept the day in memory, not so much as 
 the day of her mourning as of his release. 
 
 Longing to do something for her, yet not know- 
 ing what to do, I went into the garden while she 
 was away, and, finding some carnations, that shone 
 like stars in the dying light, I gathered them all, 
 and took them to hr room, and, filling my tiny 
 porphyry vase, left them on the bracket, under 
 the photograph of Uncle Forceythe that hangs 
 by the window. 
 
 When she found them, she called me, and kissed 
 me. " Thank you, dear," she said, " and thank God 
 too, Mary, for me. TLat he. should have been 
 happy, happy and out of pain, for three long 
 beautiful years ! O, think of that 1 "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 133 
 
 When I was in her room with the flowers, I 
 passed the table on which her little Bible lay 
 open. A mark of rich ribbon a black ribbon 
 fell across the pages ; it bore in silver text 
 these words : 
 
 " Thou shalt have no other gods before me? 
 
 20th. 
 
 " I thank thee, my God, the river of Lethe may 
 indeed flow through the Elysian Fields, it does 
 not water the Christian's Paradise." 
 
 Aunt Winifred was saying that over to herself 
 in a dreamy undertone this morning, and I hap- 
 pened to hear her. 
 
 "Just a quotation, dear," she said, smiling, in 
 answer to my look of inquiry, " I could n't origi- 
 nate so pretty a thing. Is ritit. pretty ? " 
 
 " Very ; but I am not sure that I understand it." 
 
 " You thought that forgetfulness would be ne- 
 cessary to happiness ? " 
 
 " Why, yes ; as far as I had ever thought 
 about it ; that is, after our last ties with this 
 world are broken. It does not seem to me that 
 I could be happy to remember all that I have 
 suffered and all that I have sinned here."
 
 134 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " But the last of all the sins will be as if it had 
 never been. Christ takes care of that No shad- 
 ow of a sense of guilt can dog you, or affect 
 your relations to Him or your other friends. 
 The last pain borne, the last tear, the last sigh, 
 the last lonely hour, the last unsatisfied dream, for- 
 ever gone by ; why should not the dead past bury 
 its dead?" 
 
 " Then why remember it ? " 
 
 " ' Save but to swell the sense of being blest.' 
 Besides, forgetfulness of the disagreeable things 
 of this life implies forgetfulness of the pleasant 
 ones. They are all tangled together." 
 
 "To be sure. I don't know that I should like 
 that." 
 
 " Of course you would n't. Imagine yourself in 
 a state of being where you and Roy had lost your 
 past ; all that you had borne and enjoyed, and 
 hoped and feared, together ; the pretty little mem- 
 ories of your babyhood, and first 'half-days' at 
 school, when he used to trudge along beside you, 
 little fellow ! how many times I have watched 
 him! holding you tight by the apron-sleeve or 
 hat-string, or bits of fat fingers, lest you should 
 run away or fall. Then the old Academy pranks, '
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 135 
 
 out of which you used to help each other ; his 
 little chivalry and elder-brotherly advice ; the mis- 
 chief in his eyes ; some of the ' Sunday-night 
 talks ' ; the first novel that you read and dreamed 
 over together ; the college stories ; the chats over 
 the corn-popper by firelight; the earliest, earnest 
 looking-on into life together, its temptations con- 
 quered, its lessons learned, its disappointments 
 faced together, always you two, would you 
 like to, are you likely to, forget all this ? 
 
 " Roy might as well be not Roy, but a strange 
 angel, if you should. Heaven will be not less 
 heaven, but more, for this pleasant remembering. 
 So many other and greater and happier memories 
 will fill up the time then, that after years these 
 things may probably will seem smaller than 
 it seems to us now they can ever be ; but they 
 will, I think, be always dear ; just as we look 
 back to our baby-selves with a pitying sort of 
 fondness, and, though the little creatures are of 
 small enough use to us now, yet we like to keep 
 good friends with them for old times' sake. 
 
 " I have no doubt that you and I shall sit 
 down some summer afternoon in heaven and talk 
 over what we have been saying to-day, and laugh
 
 136 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 perhaps at all the poor little dreams we have 
 been dreaming of what has not entered into the 
 heart of man. You see it is certain to be so 
 much better than anything that I can think of; 
 which is the comfort of it. And Roy " 
 " Yes, some more about Roy, please." 
 " Supposing he were to come right into the 
 room now, and I slipped out, and you had 
 him all to yourself again Now, dear, don't cry, 
 but wait a minute ! " Her caressing hand fell on 
 my hair. " I did not mean to hurt you, but to 
 say that your first talk with him, after you stand 
 face to face, may be like that. 
 
 " Remembering this life is going to help us 
 amazingly, I fancy, to appreciate the next," she 
 added, by way of period. " Christ seems to have 
 thought so, when he called to the minds of those 
 happy people what, in that unconscious minister- 
 ing of lowly faith which may never reap its sheaf 
 in the field where the seed was sown, they had 
 not had the comfort of finding out before, ' I 
 was sick and in prison, and ye visited me.' And 
 to come again to Abraham in the parable, did he 
 not say, ' Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime 
 hadst good things and Lazarus evil ' ? "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 137 
 
 " I wonder what it is going to look like," I 
 said, as soon as I could put poor Dives out of 
 my mind. 
 
 " Heaven ? Eye hath not seen, but I have my 
 fancies. I think I want some mountains, and very 
 many trees." 
 
 " Mountains and trees ! " 
 
 " Yes ; mountains as we see them at sunset and 
 sunrise, or when the maples are on fire and there 
 are clouds enough to make great purple shadows 
 chase each other into lakes of light, over the tops 
 and down the sides, the ideal of mountains 
 which we catch in rare glimpses, as we catch the 
 ideal of everything. Trees as they look when the 
 wind cooes through them on a June afternoon ; 
 elms or lindens or pines as cool as frost, and yel- 
 low sunshine trickling through on moss. Trees 
 in a forest so thick that it shuts out the world, 
 and you walk like one in a sanctuary. Trees 
 pierced by stars, and trees in a bath of summer 
 moons to which the thrill of ' Love's young dream' 
 shall cling forever But there is no end to one's 
 fancies. Some water, too, I would like." 
 
 " There shall be no more sea." 
 
 "Perhaps not; though, as the sea is the great
 
 138 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 type of separation and of destruction, that may be 
 only figurative. But I 'm not particular about the 
 sea, if I can have rivers and little brooks, and foun- 
 tains of just the right sort ; the fountains of this 
 world don't please me generally. I want a little 
 brook to sit and sing to Faith by. O, I forgot ! 
 she will be a large girl probably, won't she ? " 
 
 "Never too large to like to hear your mother 
 sing, will you, Faith ? " 
 
 " O no," said Faith, who bobbed in and out 
 again like a canary just then, "not unless I 'm 
 dreadful big, with long dresses and a waterfall, you 
 know. I s'pose, maybe, I 'd have to have little 
 girls myself to sing to, then. I hope they'll be- 
 have better'n Mary Ann does. She's lost her 
 other arm, and all her sawdust is just running out. 
 Besides, Kitty thought she was a mouse, and ran 
 down cellar with her, and she 's all shooken up, 
 somehow. She don't look very pretty." 
 
 " Flowers too," her mother went on, after the in- 
 terruption. "Not all amaranth and asphodel, but 
 of variety and color and beauty unimagined ; glo- 
 rified lilies of the valley, heavenly tea-rose buds, 
 and spiritual harebells among them. O, how your 
 poor mother used to say, you know flowers were
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 139 
 
 her poetry, coming in weak and worn from her 
 garden in the early part of her sickness, hands and 
 lap and basket full : ' Winifred, if I only supposed 
 I could have some flowers in heaven I should n't 
 be half so afraid to go ! ' I had not thought as 
 much about these things then as I have now, or 
 I should have known better how to answer her. 
 I should like, if I had my choice, to have day-lilies 
 and carnations fresh under my windows all the 
 time." 
 
 " Under your windows ? " 
 
 " Yes. I hope to have a home of my own." 
 
 " Not a house ? " 
 
 " Something not unlike it. In the Father's 
 house are many mansions. Sometimes I fancy that 
 those words have a literal meaning which the 
 simple men who heard them may have understood 
 better than we, and that Christ is truly 'preparing' 
 my home for me. He must be there, too, you see, 
 I mean John." 
 
 I believe that gave me some thoughts that I 
 ought not to have, and so I made no reply. 
 
 " If we have trees and mountains and flowers 
 and books," she went on, smiling, " I don't see why 
 not have houses as well. Indeed, they seem to
 
 I4O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 me as supposable as anything can be which is 
 guess-work at the best ; for what a homeless, deso- 
 late sort of sensation it gives one to think of people 
 wandering over the 'sweet fields beyond the flood' 
 without a local habitation and a name. What 
 could be done with the millions who, from the time 
 of Adam, have been gathering there, unless they 
 lived under the conditions of organized society ? 
 Organized society involves homes, not unlike the 
 homes of this world. 
 
 " What other arrangement could be as pleasant, 
 or could be pleasant at all ? Robertson's definition 
 of a church exactly fits. * More united in each 
 other, because more united in God.' A happy 
 home is the happiest thing in the world. I do 
 not see why it should not be in any world. I do 
 not believe that all the little tendernesses of family 
 ties are thrown by and lost with this life. In fact, 
 Mary, I cannot think that anything which has in 
 it the elements of permanency is to be lost, but 
 sin. Eternity cannot be it cannot be the great 
 blank ocean which most of us have somehow or 
 other been brought up to feel that it is, which shall 
 swallow up, in a pitiless, glorified way, all the little 
 brooks of our delight. So I expect to have my
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 14! 
 
 beautiful home, and my husband, and Faith, as I 
 had them here ; with many differences and great 
 ones, but mine just the same. Unless Faith goes 
 into a home of her own, the little creature ! I 
 suppose she can't always be a baby. 
 
 " Do you remember what a pretty little wistful 
 way Charles Lamb has of wondering about all this ? 
 
 " ' Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the 
 smiling indications which point me to them here, 
 " the sweet assurance of a look " ? Sun, and 
 sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 
 holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the deli- 
 cious juices of meats and fish, and society, .... 
 and candle-light and fireside conversations, and in- 
 nocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself, do 
 these things go out with life ? ' ' 
 
 " Now, Aunt Winifred ! " I said, sitting up 
 straight, " what am I to do with these beautiful 
 heresies ? If Deacon Quirk should hear ! " 
 
 " I do not see where the heresy lies. As I hold 
 fast by the Bible, I cannot be in much danger." 
 
 " But you don't glean your conjectures from the 
 Bible." 
 
 " I conjecture nothing that the Bible contradicts. 
 I do not believe as truth indisputable anything that
 
 142 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the Bible does not give me. But I reason from 
 analogy about this, as we all do about other mat- 
 ters. Why should we not have pretty things in 
 heaven? If this 'bright and beautiful economy' 
 of skies and rivers, of grass and sunshine, of hills 
 and valleys, is not too good for such a place as this 
 world, will there be any less variety of the bright 
 and beautiful in the next? There is no reason 
 for supposing that the voice of God will speak to 
 us in thunder-claps, or that it will not take to it- 
 self the thousand gentle, suggestive tongues of a 
 nature built on the ruins of this, an unmarred 
 system of beneficence. 
 
 "There is a pretty argument in the fact that 
 just such sunrises, such opening of buds, such 
 fragrant dropping of fruit, such bells in the brooks, 
 such dreams at twilight, and such hush of stars, 
 were fit for Adam and Eve, made holy man and 
 woman. How do we know that the abstract idea 
 of a heaven needs imply anything very much un- 
 like Eden ? There is some reason as well as po- 
 etry in the conception of a ' Paradise Regained.' 
 A ' new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.' " 
 
 " But how far is it safe to trust to this kind of 
 argument ? "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 143 
 
 " Bishop Butler will answer you better than I. 
 
 
 
 Let me see, Isaac Taylor says something about 
 that." 
 
 She went to the bookcase for his " Physical 
 Theory of Another Life," and, finding her place, 
 showed me this passage : 
 
 " If this often repeated argument from analogy 
 is to be termed, as to the conclusions it involves, 
 a conjecture merely, we ought then to abandon 
 altogether every kind of abstract reasoning ; nor 
 will it be easy afterwards to make good any prin- 
 ciple of natural theology. In truth, the very basis 
 of reasoning is shaken by a scepticism so sweep- 
 ing as this." 
 
 And in another place : 
 
 " None need fear the consequences of such en- 
 deavors who have well learned the prime principle 
 of sound philosophy, namely, not to allow the most 
 plausible and pleasing conjectures to unsettle our 
 convictions of truth .... resting upon positive evi' 
 dence. If there be any who frown upon all such 
 attempts, ..... they would do well to consider, that 
 although individually, and from the constitution 
 of their minds, they may find it very easy to ab- 
 stain from every path of excursive meditation, it
 
 144 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 is not so with others who almost irresistibly are 
 borne forward to the vast field of universal con- 
 templation, a field from which the human mind 
 is not to be barred, and which is better taken 
 possession of by those who reverently bow to the 
 authority of Christianity, than left open to im- 
 piety." 
 
 "Very good," I said, laying down the book. 
 "But about those trees and houses, and the rest 
 of your ' pretty things ' ? Are they to be like 
 these ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose .that the houses will be made 
 of oak and pine and nailed together, for instance. 
 But I hope for heavenly types of nature and of 
 art. Something that will be to us then what these 
 are now. That is the amount of it. They may 
 be as ' spiritual ' as you please ; they will answer 
 all the purpose to us. As we are not spiritual 
 beings yet, however, I am under the necessity of 
 calling them by their earthly names. You re- 
 member Plato's old theory, that the ideal of 
 everything exists eternally in the mind of God. 
 If that is so, and I do not see how it can be 
 otherwise, then whatever of God is expressed to 
 us in this world by flower, or blade of grass, or
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 145 
 
 human face, why should not that be expressed 
 forever in heaven by something corresponding to 
 flower, or grass, or human face ? I do not mean 
 that the heavenly creation will be less real than 
 these, but more so. Their ' spirituality ' is of 
 such a sort that our gardens and forests and 
 homes are but shadows of them. 
 
 " You don't know how I amuse myself at night 
 thinking this all over before I go to sleep ; won- 
 dering what one thing will be like, and another 
 thing ; planning what I should like ; thinking that 
 John has seen it all, and wondering if he is laugh- 
 ing at me because I know so little about it. I 
 tell you, Mary, there 's a ' deal o' comfort in 't,' as 
 Phrebe says about her cup of tea." 
 
 5- 
 
 Aunt Winifred has been hunting up a Sunday- 
 school class for herself and one for me ; which 
 is a venture that I never was persuaded into 
 undertaking before. She herself is fast becoming 
 acquainted with the poorer people of the town. 
 
 I find that she is a thoroughly busy Christian, 
 with a certain "week-day holiness" that is strong 
 and refreshing, like a west wind. Church-going, 
 7 J
 
 146 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 and conversations on heaven, by no means exhaust 
 her vitality. 
 
 She told me a pretty thing about her class ; it 
 happened the first Sabbath that she took it. Her 
 scholars are young girls of from fourteen to eigh- 
 teen years of age, children of church-members, 
 most of them. She seemed to have taken their 
 hearts by storm. She says, " They treated me very 
 prettily, and made me love them at once." 
 
 Clo Bentley is in the class ; Clo is a pretty, 
 soft-eyed little creature, with a shrinking mouth, 
 and an absorbing passion for music, which she 
 has always been too poor to gratify. I suspect 
 that her teacher will make a pet of her. She 
 says that in the course of her lesson, or, in her 
 words, 
 
 " While we were all talking together, somebody 
 pulled my sleeve, and there was Clo in the corner, 
 with her great brown eyes fixed on me. ' See 
 here ! ' she said in a whisper, ' I can't be good ! 
 I would be good if I could only just have a 
 piano ! ' 
 
 "'Well, Clo,' I said, 'if you will be a good girl, 
 and go to heaven, I think you will have a piano 
 there, and play just as much as you care to.'
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 147 
 
 " You ought to have seen the look the child 
 gave me ! Delight and fear and incredulous be- 
 wilderment tumbled over each other, as if I had 
 proposed taking her into a forbidden fairy-land. 
 
 " ' Why, Mrs. Forceythe ! Why, they won't let 
 anybody have a piano up there ! not in heaven ? ' 
 
 " I laid down the question-book, and asked what 
 kind of place she supposed that heaven was going 
 to be. 
 
 " ' O,' she said, with a dreary sigh, ' I never 
 think about it when I can help it. I suppose we 
 shall all just stand there ! ' 
 
 " And you ? " I asked of the next, a bright girl 
 with snapping eyes. 
 
 " ' Do you want me to talk good, or tell the 
 truth ? ' she answered me. Having been given to 
 understand that she was not expected to ' talk 
 good' in my class, she said, with an approving, 
 decided nod : 'Well, then ! I don't think it's going 
 to be anything nice anyway. No, I don't ! I told 
 my last teacher so, and she looked just as shocked, 
 and said I never should go there as long as I 
 felt so. That made me mad, and I told her I 
 did n't see but I should be as well off in one 
 place as another, except for the fire.'
 
 148 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " A silent girl in the corner began at this 
 point to look interested. ' I always supposed,' 
 said she, 'that you just floated round in heaven 
 you know all together something like ju- 
 jube paste !' 
 
 " Whereupon I shut the question-book entirely, 
 and took the talking to myself for a while. 
 
 " ' But I never thought it was anything like 
 that,' interrupted little Clo, presently, her cheeks 
 flushed with excitement. 'Why, I should like to 
 go, if it is like that ! I never supposed people 
 talked, unless it was about converting people, and 
 saying your prayers, and all that.' 
 
 " Now, were n't those ideas * alluring and com- 
 forting for young girls in the blossom of warm 
 human life ? They were trying with all their little 
 hearts to 'be good,' too, some of them, and had 
 all of them been to church and Sunday school 
 all their lives. Never, never, if Jesus Christ had 
 been Teacher and Preacher to them, would He 
 have pictured their blessed endless years with 
 Him in such bleak colors. They are not the 
 hues of his Bible." 
 
 * Facts.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 149 
 
 XL 
 
 July 1 6. 
 
 WE took a trip to-day to East Homer for 
 butter. Neither angels nor principalities 
 could convince Phoebe that any butter but " Ste- 
 phen David's " might, could, would, or should be 
 used in this family. So to Mr. Stephen David's, 
 a journey of four miles, I meekly betake myself at 
 stated periods in the domestic year, burdened with 
 directions about firkins and half-firkins, pounds and 
 half-pounds, salt and no salt, churning and " work- 
 ing over " ; some of which I remember and some 
 of which I forget, and to all of which Phoebe con- 
 siders me sublimely incapable of attending. 
 
 The afternoon was perfect, and we took things 
 leisurely, letting the reins swing from the hook, 
 an arrangement to which Mr. Tripp's old gray 
 was entirely agreeable, and, leaning back against 
 the buggy-cushions, wound along among the strong, 
 sweet pine-smells, lazily talking, or lazily silent, as 
 the spirit moved, and as only two people who 
 thoroughly understand and like each other can 
 talk or be silent.
 
 I5O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 We rode home by Deacon Quirk's, and, as we 
 jogged by, there broke upon our view a blooming 
 vision of the Deacon himself, at work in his po- 
 tato-field with his son and heir, who, by the way, 
 has the reputation of being the most awkward 
 fellow in the township. 
 
 The amiable church-officer, having caught sight 
 of us, left his work, and coming up to the fence 
 "in rustic modesty unscared," guiltless of coat or 
 vest, his calico shirt-sleeves rolled up to his huge 
 brown elbows, and his dusty straw hat flapping in 
 the wind, rapped on the rails with his hoe-handle 
 as a sign for us to stop. 
 
 "Are we in a hurry ? " I asked, under my breath. 
 
 " O no," said Aunt Winifred. " He has some- 
 what to say unto me, I see by his eyes. I have 
 been expecting it. Let us hear him out. Good 
 afternoon, Deacon Quirk." 
 
 " Good afternoon, ma'am. Pleasant day ? " 
 
 She assented to the statement, novel as it was. 
 
 " A very pleasant day," repeated the Deacon, 
 looking for the first time in his life, to my knowl- 
 edge, a little undecided as to what he should say 
 next. " Remarkable fine day for riding. In, a 
 hurry ? "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 1$! 
 
 "Well, not especially. Did you want anything 
 of me ? " 
 
 "You 're a church-member, aren't you, ma'am ?" 
 asked the Deacon, abruptly. 
 
 "I am." 
 
 " Orthodox ? " 
 
 " O yes," with a smile. " You .had a reason for 
 asking ? " 
 
 "Yes, ma'am ; I had, as you might say, a reason 
 for asking." 
 
 The Deacon laid his hoe on the top of the 
 fence, and his arms across it, and pushed his hat 
 on the back of his head in a becoming and argu- 
 mentative manner. 
 
 " I hope you don't consider that I 'm taking 
 liberties if I have a little religious conversation 
 with you, Mrs. Forceythe." 
 
 " It is no offence to me if you are," replied 
 Mrs. Forceythe, with a twinkle in her eye ; but 
 both twinkle and words glanced off from the 
 Deacon. 
 
 " My wife was telling me last night," he began, 
 with an ominous cough, " that her niece, Clotildy 
 Bentley, Moses Bentley's daughter, you know, 
 and one of your sentimental girls that reads poetry.
 
 152 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 and is easy enough led away by vain delusions and 
 false doctrine, was under your charge at Sunday 
 school. Now Clotildy is intimate with my wife, 
 who is her aunt on her mother's side, and always 
 tries to do her duty by her, and she told Mrs. 
 Quirk what you 'd been a saying to those young 
 minds on the Sabbath." 
 
 He stopped, and observed her impressively, as 
 if he expected to see the guilty blushes of ar- 
 raigned heresy covering her amused, attentive face. 
 
 " I hope you will pardon me, ma'am, for repeat- 
 ing it, but Clotildy said that you told her she 
 should have a pianna in heaven. A pianna, 
 ma'am !" 
 
 " I certainly did," she said, quietly. 
 
 " You did ? Well, now, I did n't believe it, nor 
 I would n't believe it, till I 'd asked you ! I thought 
 it warn't more than fair that I should ask you, 
 before repeating it, you know. It 's none of my 
 business, Mrs. Forceythe, any more than that 1 
 take a general interest in the spiritooal welfare of 
 the youth of our Sabbath school ; but I am very 
 much surprised ! I am very much surprised ! " 
 
 " I am surprised that you should be, Deacon 
 Quirk. Do you believe that God would take a
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 153 
 
 poor little disappointed girl like Clo, who has been 
 all her life here forbidden the enjoyment of a per- 
 fectly innocent taste, and keep her in His happy 
 heaven eternal years, without finding means to 
 gratify it ? I don't." 
 
 " I tell Clotildy I don't see what she wants of a 
 pianna-forte," observed " Clotildy 's " uncle, senten- 
 tiously. " She can go to singin' school, and she 's 
 been in the choir ever since I have, which is six 
 years come Christmas. Besides, I don't think it 's 
 our place to speckylate on the mysteries of the 
 heavenly spere. My wife told her that she must 
 n't believe any such things as that, which were 
 very irreverent, and contrary to the Scriptures, and 
 Clo went home crying. She said, ' It was so 
 pretty to think about.' It is very easy to impress 
 these delusions of fancy on the young." 
 
 " Pray, Deacon Quirk," said Aunt Winifred, lean- 
 ing earnestly forward in the carriage, " will you 
 tell me what there is ' irreverent ' or ' unscriptural ' 
 in the idea that there will be instrumental music 
 in heaven ? " 
 
 " Well," replied the Deacon, after some consid- 
 eration, " come to think of it, there will be harps, 
 I suppose. Harpers harping with their harps on
 
 154 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the sea of glass. But I don't believe there will 
 be any piannas. It 's a dreadfully material way to 
 talk about that glorious world, to my thinking." 
 
 " If you could show me wherein a harp is less 
 ' material ' than a piano, perhaps I should agree 
 with you." 
 
 Deacon Quirk looked rather nonplussed for a 
 minute. 
 
 " What do you suppose people will do in heav- 
 en?" she asked again. 
 
 " Glorify God," said the Deacon, promptly recov- 
 ering himself, " glorify God, and sing Worthy the 
 Lamb ! We shall be clothed in white robes with 
 palms in our hands, and bow before the Great 
 White Throne. We shall be engaged in such 
 employments as befit sinless creatures in a spir- 
 itooal state of existence." 
 
 "Now, Deacon Quirk," replied Aunt Winifred, 
 looking him over from head to foot, old straw 
 hat, calico shirt, blue overalls, and cowhide boots, 
 coarse, work-worn hands, and "narrow forehead 
 braided tight," "just imagine yourself, will you? 
 taken out of this life this minute, as you stand 
 here in your potato-field (the Deacon changed his 
 position with evident uneasiness), and put into
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I$5 
 
 another life, not anybody else, but yourself, just 
 as you left this spot, and do you honestly think 
 that you should be happy to go and put on a 
 white dress and stand' still in a choir with a green 
 branch in one hand and a singing-book in the 
 other, and sing, and pray and never do anything 
 but sing and pray, this year, next year, and every 
 year forever ? " 
 
 " We-ell," he replied, surprised into a momentary 
 flash of carnal candor, " I can't say that I should 
 n't wonder for a minute, maybe, how Abinadab 
 would ever get those potatoes hoed without me. 
 Abinadab ! go back to your work ! " 
 
 The graceful Abinadab had sauntered up during 
 the conversation, and was listening, hoe in hand 
 and mouth open. He slunk away when his father 
 spoke, but came up again presently on tiptoe when 
 Aunt Winifred was talking. There was an inter- 
 ested, intelligent look about his square and pitifully 
 embarrassed face, which attracted my notice. 
 
 "But then," proceeded the Deacon, re-enforced 
 by the sudden recollection of his duties as a father 
 and a church-member, " that could n't be a perma- 
 nent state of feeling, you know. I expect to be 
 transformed by the renewing of my mind to appre-
 
 156 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ciate the glories of the New Jerusalem, descending 
 out of heaven from God. That's what I expect, 
 marm. Now I heerd that you told Mrs. Bland, or 
 that Mary told her, or that she heerd it someway, 
 that you said you supposed there were trees and 
 flowers and houses and such in heaven. I told my 
 wife I thought your deceased husband was a Con- 
 gregational minister, and I did n't believe you ever 
 said it ; but that 's the rumor." 
 
 Without deeming it necessary to refer to her 
 "deceased husband," Aunt Winifred replied that 
 " rumor " was quite right. 
 
 " Well ! " said the Deacon, with severe signifi- 
 cance, "7 believe in a spiritooal heaven." 
 
 I looked him over again, hat, hoe, shirt, and 
 all ; scanned his obstinate old face with its stupid, 
 good eyes and animal mouth. Then I glanced at 
 Aunt Winifred as she leaned forward in the after- 
 noon light ; the white, finely cut woman, with her 
 serene smile and rapt, saintly eyes, every inch 
 of her, body and soul, refined not only by birth and 
 training, but by the long nearness of her heart to 
 Christ. 
 
 " Of the earth, earthy. Of the heavens, heav- 
 enly." The two faces sharpened themselves into
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 157 
 
 two types. Which, indeed, was the better able to 
 comprehend a " spiritooal heaven " ? 
 
 " It is distinctly stated in the Bible, by which 
 I suppose we shall both agree," said Aunt Wini- 
 fred, gently, " that there shall be a new earth, as 
 well as new heavens. It is noticeable, also, that 
 the descriptions of heaven, although a series of 
 metaphors, are yet singularly earthlike and tangible 
 ones. Are flowers and skies and trees less ' spir- 
 itual ' than white dresses and little palm-branches ? 
 In fact, where are you going to get your little 
 branches without trees ? What could well be more 
 suggestive of material modes of living, and mate- 
 rial industry, than a city marked into streets and 
 alleys, paved solidly with gold, walled in and barred 
 with gates whose jewels are named and counted, 
 and whose very length and breadth are measured 
 with a celestial surveyor's chain ? " 
 
 " But I think we 'd ought to stick to what the 
 Bible says," answered the Deacon, stolidly. " If it 
 says golden cities and does n't say flowers, it means 
 cities and does n't mean flowers. I dare say you 're 
 a good woman, Mrs. Forceythe, if you do hold 
 such oncommon doctrine, and I don't doubt you 
 mean well enough, but I don't think that we ought
 
 }$8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 to trouble ourselves about these mysteries of a 
 future state, /'m willing to trust them to God !" 
 
 The evasion of a fair argument by this self- 
 sufficient spasm of piety was more than I could 
 calmly stand, and I indulged in a subdued explo- 
 sion, Auntie says it sounded like Fourth of July 
 crackers touched off under a wet barrel. 
 
 " Deacon Quirk ! do you mean to imply that 
 Mrs. Forceythe does not trust it to God ? The 
 truth is, that the existence of such a world as 
 heaven is a fact from which you shrink. You 
 know you do ! She has twenty thoughts about it 
 where you have one ; yet you set up a claim to 
 superior spirituality ! " 
 
 "Mary, Mary, you are a little excited, I fear. 
 God is a spirit, and they that worship him must 
 worship him in spirit and in truth ! " 
 
 The relevancy of this last, I confess myself in- 
 capable of perceiving, but the good man seemed 
 to be convinced that he had made a point, and 
 we rode off leaving him under that blissful delu- 
 sion. 
 
 " If he were rit a good man ! " I sighed. " But 
 he is, and I must respect him for it." 
 
 " Of course you must ; nor is he to blame that
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 159 
 
 he is narrow and rough. I should scarcely have 
 argued as seriously as I did with him, but that, as 
 I fancy him to be a representative of a class, I 
 wanted to try an experiment. Is n't he amusing, 
 though ? He is" precisely one of Mr. Stopford 
 Brooke's men ' who can understand nothing which 
 is original.' " 
 
 " Are there, or are there not, more of such men 
 in our church than in others ? " 
 
 " Not more proportionately to numbers. But I 
 would not have them thinned out. The better we 
 do Christ's work, the more of uneducated, neg- 
 lected, or debased mind will be drawn to try and 
 serve Him with us. He sought out the lame, the 
 halt, the blind, the stupid, the crotchety, the rough, 
 as well as the equable, the intelligent, the refined. 
 Untrained Christians in any sect will always have 
 their eccentricities and their littlenesses, at which 
 the silken judgment of high places, where the Car- 
 penter's Son would be a strange guest, will sneer. 
 That never troubles me. It only raises the ques' 
 tion in my mind whether cultivated Christians gen- 
 erally are sufficiently cultivators, scattering their 
 golden gifts on wayside ground." 
 
 " Now take Degcon Quirk," I suggested, when
 
 IC5O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 we had ridden along a little way under the low, 
 green arches of the elms, "and put him into heaven 
 as you proposed, just as he is, and what is he going 
 to do with himself? He can dig potatoes and sell 
 them without cheating, and give generously of their 
 proceeds to foreign missions ; but take away his 
 potatoes, and what would become of him ? I don't 
 know a human being more incapacitated to live 
 in such a heaven as he believes in." 
 
 " Very true, and a good, common-sense argu- 
 ment against such a heaven. I don't profess to 
 surmise what will be found for him to do, beyond 
 this, that it will be some very palpable work that 
 he can understand. How do we know that he 
 would not be appointed guardian of his poor son 
 here, to whom I suspect he has not been all that 
 father might be in this life, and that he would not 
 have his body as well as his soul to look after, his 
 farm as well as his prayers ? to him might be com- 
 mitted the charge of the dews and the rains and 
 the hundred unseen influences that are at work 
 on this very potato-field." 
 
 " But when his son has gone in his turn, and we 
 have all gone, and there are no more potato-fields ? 
 An Eternity remains."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. l6l 
 
 " You don't know that there would n't be any 
 potato-fields ; there may be some kind of agricul- 
 tural employments even then. To whomsoever a 
 talent is given, it will be given him wherewith to 
 use it. Besides, by that time the good Deacon 
 will be immensely changed. I suppose that the 
 simple transition of death, which rids him of sin 
 and of grossness, will not only wonderfully refine 
 him, but will have its effect upon his intellect." 
 
 " If a talent is given, use will be found for it ? 
 Tell me some more about that." 
 
 " I fancy many things about it ; but of course 
 can feel sure of only the foundation principle. This 
 life is a great school-house. The wise Teacher 
 trains in us such gifts as, if we graduate honor- 
 ably, will be of most service in the perfect man- 
 hood and womanhood that come after. He sees, as 
 we' do not, that a power is sometimes best trained 
 by repression. ' We do not always lose an advan- 
 tage when we dispense with it,' Goethe says. But 
 the suffocated lives, like little Clo's there, make my 
 heart ache sometimes. I take comfort in thinking 
 how they will bud and blossom up in the air, by 
 and by. There are a great many of them. We 
 tread them underfoot in our careless stepping now
 
 l62 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 and then, and do not see that they have not the 
 elasticity to rise from our touch. ' Heaven may be 
 a place for those who failed on earth/ the Country 
 Parson says." 
 
 " Then there will be air enough for all ? " 
 " For all ; for those who have had a little bloom 
 in this world, as well. I suppose the artist will 
 paint his pictures, the poet sing his happy songs ; 
 the orator and author will not find their talents 
 hidden in the eternal darkness of a grave ; the 
 sculptor will use his beautiful gift in the moulding 
 of some heavenly Carrara ; * as well the singer as 
 the player on instruments shall be there.' Christ 
 said a thing that has grown on me with new mean- 
 ings lately, ' He that loseth his life for my sake 
 shall find it.' It, you see, not another man's 
 life, not a strange compound of powers and pleas- 
 ures, but his own familiar aspirations. So we shall 
 best 'glorify God,' not less there than here, by doing 
 it in the peculiar way that He himself marked out 
 for us. But ah, Mary, you see it is only the life 
 'lost' for His sake that shall be so beautifully found. 
 A great man never goes to heaven because he is 
 great. He must go, as the meanest of his fellow- 
 sinners go, with face towards Calvary, and every
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 163 
 
 golden treasure used for love of Him who showed 
 him how." 
 
 " What would the old Pagans and modern 
 ones, too, for that matter say to that ? Was n't it 
 Tacitus who announced it as his belief, that im- 
 mortality was granted as a special gift to a few 
 superior minds ? For the people who persisted in 
 making up the rest of the world, poor things ! as it 
 could be of little consequence what became of them, 
 they might die as the brute dieth." 
 
 " It seems an unbearable thing to me sometimes," 
 she went on, " the wreck of a gifted soul. A man 
 who can be, if he chooses, as much better and hap- 
 pier than the rest of us as the ocean reflects more 
 sky than a mill-pond, must also be, if he chooses, 
 more wicked and more miserable. It takes longer 
 to reach sea-shells than river-pebbles. I am com- 
 pelled to think, also, that intellectual rank must in 
 heaven bear some proportion to goodness. There 
 are last and there are first that shall have changed 
 places. As the tree falleth, there shall it lie, and 
 with that amount of holiness of which a man leaves 
 this life the possessor, he must start in another. I 
 have seen great thinkers, ' foremost men ' in science, 
 in theology, in the arts, who, I solemnly believe,
 
 164 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 will turn aside in heaven, and will turn humbly 
 and heartily, to let certain day-laborers and pau- 
 pers whom I have known go up before them as kings 
 and priests unto God. " 
 
 " I believe that. But I was going to ask, for 
 poor creatures like your respected niece, who has n't 
 a talent, nor even a single absorbing taste, for one 
 thing above another thing, what shall she do ? " 
 
 " Whatever she liketh best ; something very use- 
 ful, my dear, don't be afraid, and very pleasant. 
 Something, too, for which this life has fitted you ; 
 though you may not understand how that can be, 
 better than did poor Heine on his ' matrazzen- 
 gruft,' reading all the books that treated of his dis- 
 ease. ' But what good this reading is to do me I 
 don't know/ he said, ' except that it will qualify me 
 to give lectures in heaven on the ignorance of doc- 
 tors on earth about diseases of the spinal marrow." 
 
 " I don't know how many times I have thought 
 of I believe it was the poet Gray, who said that 
 his idea of heaven was to lie on the sofa and read 
 novels. That touches the lazy part of us, though." 
 
 " Yes, they will be the active, outgoing, generous 
 elements of our nature that will be brought into 
 use then, rather than the self-centred and dreamy
 
 THE GATES AJAR. l6$ 
 
 ones. Though I suppose that we shall read in 
 heaven, being influenced to be better and nobler 
 by good and noble teachers of the pen, not less 
 there than here." 
 
 " O think of it ? To have books, and music, 
 and pictures ? " 
 
 "All that Art, 'the handmaid of the Lord,' can 
 do for us, I have no doubt will be done. Eternity 
 will never become monotonous. Variety without 
 end, charms unnumbered within charms, will be de- 
 vised by Infinite ingenuity to minister to our delight. 
 Perhaps, this is just my fancying, perhaps there 
 will be whole planets turned into galleries of art, 
 over which we may wander at will ; or into orches- 
 tral halls where the highest possibilities of music 
 will be realized to singer and to hearer. Do you 
 know, I have sometimes had a flitting notion that 
 music would be the language of heaven ? It cer- 
 tainly differs in some indescribable manner from the 
 other arts. We have most of us felt it in our different 
 ways. It always seems to me like the cry of a great, 
 sad life dragged to use in this world against its will. 
 Pictures and statues and poems fit themselves to 
 their work more contentedly. Symphony and song 
 struggle in fetters. That sense of conflict is not
 
 l66 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 good for me. It is quite as likely to harm as to 
 help. Then perhaps the mysteries of sidereal sys- 
 tems will be spread out like a child's map before us. 
 Perhaps we shall take journeys to Jupiter and to 
 Saturn and to the glittering haze of nebulae, and to 
 the site of ruined worlds whose ' extinct light is yet 
 travelling through space.' Occupation for explorers 
 there, you see ! " 
 
 " You make me say with little Clo, ' O, why, I 
 want to go ! ' every time I hear you talk. But there 
 is one thing, you spoke of families living together." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And you spoke of your husband. But the 
 Bible" 
 
 " Says there shall be no marrying nor giving in 
 marriage. I know that. Nor will there be such 
 marrying or giving in marriage as there is in a 
 world like this. Christ expressly goes on to 
 state, that we shall be as the angels in heaven. 
 How do we know what heavenly unions of heart 
 with heart exist among the angels ? It leaves me 
 margin enough to live and be happy with John 
 forever, and it holds many possibilities for the 
 settlement of all perplexing questions brought 
 about by the relations of this world. It is of
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 167 
 
 no use to talk much about them. But it is on 
 that very verse that I found my unshaken belief 
 that they will be smoothed out in some natural and 
 happy way, with which each one shall be content." 
 
 " But O, there is a great gulf fixed ; and on one 
 side one, and on the other another, and they loved 
 each other." 
 
 Her face paled, it always pales, I notice, at the 
 mention of this mystery, but her eyes never lost 
 by a shade their steadfast trust. 
 
 " Mary, don't question me about that. That be- 
 longs to the unutterable things. God will take care 
 of it. I think I could leave it to Him even if he 
 brought it for me myself to face. I feel sure that 
 He will make it all come out right. Perhaps He 
 will be so dear to us, that we could not love any one 
 who hated Him. In some way the void must be 
 filled, for He shall wipe away tears. But it seems to 
 me that the only thought in which there can be any 
 rest, and in that there can, is this : that Christ, who 
 loves us even as His Father loves Him, can be happy 
 in spite of the existence of a hell. If it is possible 
 to Him, surely He can make it possible to us." 
 
 " Two things that He has taught us," she said 
 after a silence, " give me beautiful assurance that
 
 168 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 none of these dreams with which I help myself can 
 be beyond His intention to fulfil. One is, that eye 
 hath not seen it, nor ear heard it, nor the heart con- 
 ceived it, this lavishness of reward which He is 
 keeping for us. Another is, that ' I shall be satis- 
 fied when I awake.' " 
 
 " With his likeness." 
 
 " With his likeness. And about that I have other 
 things to say." 
 
 But Old Gray stopped at the gate and Phoebe 
 was watching for her butter, and it was no time to 
 say them then.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 169 
 
 XII. 
 
 July 22. 
 
 AUNT WINIFRED has connected herself with 
 our church. I think it was rather hard for 
 her, breaking the last tie that bound her to her 
 husband's people ; but she had a feeling, that, if her 
 work is to be done and her days ended here, she had 
 better take up all such little threads of influence to 
 make herself one with us. 
 
 25th. 
 
 To-day what should Deacon Quirk do but make 
 a solemn call on Mrs. Forceythe, for the purpose of 
 asking and this with a hint that he wished he had 
 asked before she became a member of the Homer 
 First Congregational Church whether there were 
 truth in the rumors, now rife about town, that she 
 was a Swedenborgian ! 
 
 Aunt Winifred broke out laughing, and laughed 
 merrily. The Deacon frowned. 
 
 " I used to fancy that I believed in Swedenborg," 
 she said, as soon as she could sober down a little. 
 
 The Deacon pricked up his ears, with visions of 
 8
 
 I/O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 excommunications and councils reflected on every 
 feature. 
 
 " Until I read his books," she finished. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Deacon. He waited for more, 
 but she seemed to consider the conversation at an 
 end. 
 
 "So then you if I understand are not a 
 Swedenborgian, ma'am ?" 
 
 " If I were, I certainly should have had no in- 
 ducement to join myself to your church," she re- 
 plied, with gentle dignity. " I believe, with all my 
 heart, in the same Bible and the same creed that 
 you believe in, Deacon Quirk." 
 
 " And you live your creed, which all such genial 
 Christians do not find it necessary to do," I thought, 
 as the Deacon in some perplexity took his depart- 
 ure, and she returned with a smile to her sewing. 
 
 I suppose the call came about in this way. We 
 had the sewing-circle here last week, and just be- 
 fore the lamps were lighted, and when people had 
 dropped their work to group and talk in the cor- 
 ners, Meta Tripp came up with one or two other 
 girls to Aunt Winifred, and begged " to hear some 
 of those queer things people said she believed about 
 heaven." Auntie is never obtrusive with her views
 
 THE GATES AJAR. I/I 
 
 on this or any other matter, but being thus urged, 
 she answered a few questions that they put to her, 
 to the extreme scandal of one or two old ladies, 
 and the secret delight of the rest. 
 
 "Well," said little Mrs. Bland, squeezing and 
 kissing her youngest, who was at that moment 
 vigorously employed in sticking very long darning- 
 needles into his mother's waterfall, " I hope there '11 
 be a great many babies there. I should be per- 
 fectly happy if I always could have babies to play 
 with!" 
 
 The look that Aunt Winifred shot over at me 
 was worth seeing. 
 
 She merely replied, however, that she supposed 
 all our " highest aspirations," with an indescriba- 
 ble accent to which Mrs. Bland was safely deaf, 
 if good ones, would be realized ; and added, laugh- 
 ing, that Swedenborg said that the babies in heaven 
 who outnumber the grown people will be given 
 into the charge of those women especially fond of 
 them. 
 
 " Swedenborg is suggestive, even if you can't ac- 
 cept what seem to the uninitiated to be his natural 
 impossibilities," she said, after we had discussed 
 Deacon Quirk awhile. " He says a pretty thing,
 
 1/2 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 too, occasionally. Did I ever read you about the 
 houses ?" She had not, and I wished to hear, so she 
 found the book on Heaven and Hell, and read : 
 
 "As often as I have spoken with the angels 
 mouth to mouth, so often I have been with them 
 in their habitations : their habitations are altogether 
 like the habitations on earth which are called 
 houses, but more beautiful ; in them are parlors, 
 rooms, and chambers in great numbers ; there are 
 also courts, and round about are gardens, shrub- 
 beries, and fields. Palaces of heaven have been 
 seen which were so magnificent that they could 
 not be described ; above, they glittered as if they 
 were of pure gold, and below, as if they were of 
 precious stones ; one palace was more splendid than 
 another ; within, it was the same ; the rooms were 
 ornamented with such decorations as neither words 
 nor sciences are sufficient to describe. On the side 
 which looked to the south there were paradises, 
 where all things in like manner glittered, and in 
 some places the leaves were as of silver, and the 
 fruits as of gold ; and the flowers on their beds 
 presented by colors as it were rainbows ; at the 
 boundaries again were palaces, in which the view 
 terminated."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 1/3 
 
 Aunt Winifred says that our hymns, taken all 
 together, contain the worst and the best pictures 
 of heaven that we have in any branch of literature. 
 
 " It seems to me incredible," she says, " that the 
 Christian Church should have allowed that beau- 
 tiful 'Jerusalem' in its hymnology so long, with the 
 ghastly couplet, 
 
 ' Where congregations ne'er break up, 
 And Sabbaths have no end.' 
 
 The dullest preachers are sure to give it out, and 
 that when there are the greatest number of rest- 
 less children wondering when it will be time to go 
 home. It is only within ten years that modern 
 hymn-books have altered it, returning in part to 
 the original. 
 
 " I do not think we have chosen the best parts 
 of that hymn for our 'service of song.' You never 
 read the whole of it ? You don't know how pretty 
 it is ! It is a relief from the customary palms and 
 choirs. One's whole heart is glad of the outlet of 
 its sweet refrain, 
 
 1 Would God that I were there ! ' 
 
 before one has half read it. You are quite ready 
 to believe that
 
 174 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ' There is no hunger, heat, nor cold, 
 But pleasure every way, 1 
 
 Listen to this : 
 
 ' Thy houses are of ivory, 
 
 Thy windows crystal clear, 
 Thy tiles are made of beaten gold ; 
 O God, that I were there ! 
 
 * We that are here in banishment 
 Continually do moan. 
 
 ' Our sweet is mixed with bitter gall, 
 
 Our pleasure is but pain, 
 Our joys scarce last the looking on. 
 Our sorrows still remain. 
 
 ' But there they live in such delight, 
 
 Such pleasure and such play, 
 As that to them a thousand years 
 Doth seem as yesterday.' 
 
 And this : 
 
 ' Thy gardens and thy gallant walks 
 
 Continually are green ; 
 There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers 
 As nowhere else are seen. 
 
 ' There cinnamon, there sugar grows, 
 
 There nard and balm abound, 
 What tongue can tell, or heart conceive 
 The joys that there are found ?
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 1/5 
 
 'Quite through the streets, with silver sound, 
 
 The flood of life doth flow, 
 Upon whose banks, on every side, 
 The wood of life doth grow.' 
 
 I tell you we may learn something from that 
 grand old Catholic singer. He is far nearer to 
 the Bible than the innovators on his MSS. Do 
 you not notice how like his images are to the 
 inspired ones, and yet how pleasant and natural 
 is the effect of the entire poem ? 
 
 "There is nobody like Bonar, though, to sing 
 about heaven. There is one of his, ' We shall 
 meet and rest/ do you know it? 
 
 I shook my head, and knelt down beside her 
 and watched her face, it was quite unconscious 
 of me, the musing face, while she repeated 
 dreamily : 
 
 " Where the faded flower shall freshen, 
 
 Freshen nevermore to fade ; 
 Where the shaded sky shall brighten, 
 
 Brighten nevermore to shade ; 
 Where the sun-blaze never scorches ; 
 
 Where the star-beams cease to chill ; 
 Where no tempest stirs the echoes 
 
 Of the wood or wave or hill ; . . . . 
 Where no shadow shall bewilder ; 
 
 Where life's vain parade is o'er ;
 
 176 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Where the sleep of sin is broken, 
 
 And the dreamer dreams no more ; 
 Where the bond is never severed, 
 
 Partings, claspings, sob and moan, 
 Midnight waking, twilight weeping, 
 
 Heavy noontide, all are done ; 
 Where the child has found its mother; 
 
 Where the mother finds the child ; 
 Where dear families are gathered, 
 
 That were scattered on the wild ; . . . 
 Where the hidden wound is healed ; 
 
 Where the blighted life reblooms ; 
 Where the smitten heart the freshness 
 
 Of its buoyant youth resumes ; . . . . 
 Where we find the joy of loving, 
 
 As we never loved before, 
 Loving on, unchilled, unhindered, 
 
 Loving once, forevermore." .... 
 
 30th. 
 
 Aunt Winifred was weeding her day-lilies this 
 morning, when the gate creaked timidly, and then 
 swung noisily, and in walked Abinadab Quirk, 
 with a bouquet of China pinks in the button-hole 
 of his green-gray linen coat. He had taken evi- 
 dent pains to smarten himself up a little, for his 
 hair was combed into two horizontal dabs over 
 his ears, and the green-gray coat and blue-checked 
 shirt-sleeves were quite clean ; but he certainly is
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the most uncouth specimen of six feet five that 
 it has ever been my privilege to behold. I feel 
 sorry for him, though. I heard Meta Tripp 
 laughing at him in Sunday school the other day, 
 " Quadrangular Quirk," she called him, a little 
 too loud, and the poor fellow heard her. He half 
 turned, blushing fiercely ; then slunk down in his 
 corner with as pitiable a look as is often seen 
 upon a man's face. 
 
 He came up to Auntie awkwardly, a part of 
 the scene I saw from the window, and the rest 
 she told me, head hanging, and the tiny bou- 
 quet held out. 
 
 " Clo sent these to you," he stammered out, 
 " my cousin Clo. I was coming 'long, and she 
 thought, you know, she 'd get me, you see, to 
 to that is, to bring them. She sent her 
 that is let me see. She sent her respect ful 
 respectful no, her love ; that was it. She 
 sent her love 'long with "em." 
 
 Mrs. Forceythe dropped her weeds, and held 
 out her white, shapely hands, wet with the heavy 
 clew, to take the flowers. 
 
 " O, thank you ! Clo knows my fancy for pinks. 
 How kind in you to bring them ! Won't you sit 
 
 8* L
 
 1/8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 down a few moments ? I was just going to rest 
 a little. Do you like flowers ? " 
 
 Abinadab eyed the white hands, as his huge 
 fingers just touched them, with a sort of awe ; and, 
 sighing, sat down on the very edge of the garden 
 bench beside her. After a singular variety of 
 efforts to take the most uncomfortable position 
 of which he was capable, he succeeded to his sat- 
 isfaction, and, growing then somewhat more at his 
 ease, answered her question. 
 
 "Flowers are such gassy things. They just 
 blow out and that 's the end of 'em. 7 like ma- 
 chine-shops best." 
 
 " Ah ! well, that is a very useful liking. Do 
 you ever invent machinery yourself?" 
 
 "Sometimes," said Abinadab, with a bashful 
 smile. " There 's a little improvement of mine for 
 carpet-sweepers up before the patent-office now. 
 Don't know whether they '11 run it through. 
 Some of the chaps I saw in Boston told me 
 they thought they would do 't in time ; it takes 
 an awful sight of time. I 'm alwers fussing over 
 something of the kind ; alwers did, sence I was a 
 baby ; had my little wind-mills and carts and 
 things ; used to sell 'em to the other young uns.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Father don't like it. He wants me to stick to 
 the farm. I don't like farming. I feel like a fish 
 out of water. Mrs. Forceythe, marm ! " 
 
 He turned on her with an abrupt change of 
 tone, so funny that she could with difficulty re- 
 tain her gravity. 
 
 " I heard you saying a sight of queer -things the 
 other day about heaven. Clo, she 's been telling me 
 a sight more. Now, / never believed in heaven ! " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I don't believe," said the poor fellow, 
 with sullen decision, " that a benevolent God ever 
 would ha' made sech a derned awkward chap as 
 I am!" 
 
 Aunt Winifred replied by stepping into the house, 
 and bringing out a fine photograph of one of the 
 best of the St. Georges, a rapt, yet very manly 
 face, in which the saint and the hero are wonder- 
 fully blended. "I suppose," she said, putting it 
 into his hands, " that if you should go to heaven, 
 you would be as much fairer than that picture as 
 that picture is fairer than you are now." 
 
 " No ! Why, would I, though ? Jim-miny ! Why, 
 it would be worth going for, would n't it ? " 
 
 The words were no less reverently spoken than
 
 ISO THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the vague rhapsodies of his father ; for the sullen- 
 ness left his face, and his eyes which are pleasant, 
 and not unmanly, when one fairly sees them 
 sparkled softly, like a child's. 
 
 " Make it all up there, maybe ? " musing, " the 
 girls laughing at you all your life, and all ? That 
 would be the bigger heft of the two then, would n't 
 it? for they say there ain't any end to things up 
 there. Why, so it might be fair in Him after all ; 
 more 'n fair, perhaps. See here, Mrs. Forceythe, 
 I 'm not a church-member, you know, and father, 
 he 's dreadful troubled about me ; prays over me 
 like a span of ministers, the old gentleman does, 
 every Sunday night. Now, I don't want to go to 
 the other place any more than the next man, and 
 I 've had my times, too, of thinking I 'd keep steady 
 and say my prayers reg'lar, it makes a chap feel 
 on a sight better terms with himself, but I don't 
 see how 7'm going to wear white frocks and stand 
 up in a choir, never could sing no more 'n a frog 
 with a cold in his head, it tires me more now, 
 honest, to think of it, than it does to do a week's 
 mowing. Look at me ! Do you s'pose I 'm fit for 
 it ? Father, he 's always talking about the thrones, 
 and the wings, and the praises, and the palms, and
 
 THE GATES AJAR. l8l 
 
 having new names in your foreheads (should n't 
 object to that, though, by any means), till he drives 
 me into the tool-house, or off on a spree. I tell 
 him if God ain't got a place where chaps like me 
 can do something He 's fitted 'em to do in this 
 world, there 's no use thinking about it anyhow." 
 
 So Auntie took the honest fellow into her most 
 earnest thought for half an hour, and argued, and 
 suggested, and reproved, and helped him, as only 
 she could do ; and at the end of it seemed to have 
 worked into his mind some distinct and not un- 
 welcome ideas of what a Christ-like life must mean 
 to him, and of the coming heaven which is so much 
 more real to her than any life outside of it. 
 
 " And then," she told him, " I imagine that your 
 fancy for machinery will be employed in some way. 
 Perhaps you will do a great deal more successful 
 inventing there than you ever will here." 
 
 " You don't say so ! " said radiant Abinadab. 
 
 " God will give you something to do, certainly, 
 and something that you will like." 
 
 " I might turn it to some religious purpose, you 
 know ! " said Abinadab, looking bright. " Perhaps 
 I could help 'em build a church, or hist some of 
 their pearl gates, or something like ! "
 
 182 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Upon that he said that it was time to be at home 
 and see to the oxen, and shambled awkwardly away. 
 
 Clo told us this afternoon that he begged the 
 errand and the flowers from her. She says : " 'Bin 
 thinks there never was anybody like you, Mrs. 
 Forceythe, and 'Bin is n't the t>nly one, either." 
 At which Mrs. Forceythe smiles absently, think- 
 ing I wonder of what 
 
 Monday night 
 
 I saw as funny and as pretty a bit of a drama 
 this afternoon as I have seen for a long time. 
 
 Faith had been rolling out in the hot hay ever 
 since three o'clock, with one of the little Elands, 
 and when the shadows grew long they came in with 
 flushed cheeks and tumbled hair, to rest and cool 
 upon the door-steps. I was sitting in the parlor, 
 sewing energetically on some sun-bonnets for some 
 of Aunt Winifred's people down town, I found 
 the heat to be more bearable if I kept busy, and 
 could see, unseen, all the little tableaux into which 
 the two children grouped themselves ; a new one 
 every instant ; in the shadow now, now in a 
 quiver of golden glow ; the wind tossing their hair 
 about, and their chatter chiming down the hall like 
 bells.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 183 
 
 " O, what a funny little sunset there 's going to 
 be behind the maple-tree," said the blond-haired 
 Bland, in a pause. 
 
 "Funny enough," observed Faith, with her su- 
 perior smile, "but it's going to be a great deal 
 funnier up in heaven, I tell you, Molly Bland." 
 
 " Funny in heaven ? Why, Faith ! " Molly 
 drew 'herself up with a religious air, and looked 
 the image of her father. 
 
 " Yes, to be sure. I 'm going to have some little 
 pink blocks made out of it when I go ; pink and 
 yellow and green and purple and O, so many 
 blocks ! I 'm going to have a little red cloud to 
 sail round in, like that one up over the house, too, 
 I should n't wonder." 
 
 Molly opened her eyes. " O, I don't believe it." 
 
 " You don't know much ! " said Miss Faith, su- 
 perbly. " I should n't s'pose you would believe it. 
 PVaps I '11 have some strawberries too, and some 
 ginger-snaps, I 'm not going to have any old 
 bread and butter up there, O, and some little 
 gold apples, and a lot of playthings ; nicer play- 
 things why, nicer than they have in the shops in 
 Boston, Molly Bland ! God 's keeping "em up there 
 a purpose."
 
 184 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Dear me ! " said incredulous Molly, " I should 
 just like to know who told you that much. My 
 mother never told it at me. Did your mother 
 tell it at you ? " 
 
 " O, she told me some of it, and the rest I 
 thinked out myself." 
 
 " Let 's go and play One Old Cat," said Molly, 
 with an uncomfortable jump ; " I wish I had n't 
 got to go to heaven ! " 
 
 " Why, Molly Bland ! why, I think heaven 's 
 splendid ! I 've got my papa up there, you know. 
 ' Here 's my little girl ! ' That 's what he 's going 
 to say. Mamma, she '11 be there, too, and we 're all 
 going to live in the prettiest house. I have dread- 
 ful hurries to go this afternoon sometimes when 
 Phoebe 's cross and won't give me sugar. They 
 don't let you in, though, 'nless you 're a good girl." 
 
 " Who gets it all up ? " asked puzzled Molly. 
 
 "Jesus Christ will give me all these beautiful 
 rings," said Faith, evidently repeating her mother's 
 words, the only catechism that she has been 
 taught. 
 
 " And what will He do when He sees you ? " asked 
 her mother, coming down the stairs and stepping 
 up behind her.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 185 
 
 " Take me up in His arms and kiss me." 
 
 " And what will Faith say ? " 
 
 " Fank you ! " said the child, softly. 
 
 In another minute she was absorbed, body and 
 soul, in the mysteries of One Old Cat. 
 
 " But I don't think she will feel much like being 
 naughty for half an hour to come," her mother 
 said ; " hear how pleasantly her words drop ! Such 
 a talk quiets her, like a hand laid on her head. 
 Mary, sometimes I think it is His very hand, as 
 much as when He touched those other little chil- 
 dren. I wish Faith to feel at home with Him and 
 His home. Little thing ! I really do not think 
 that she is conscious of any fear of dying ; I do 
 not think it means anything to her but Christ, and 
 her father, and pink blocks, and a nice time, and 
 never disobeying me or being cross. Many a time 
 she wakes me up in the morning talking away to 
 herself, and when I turn and look at her, she says : 
 ' O mamma, won't we go to heaven to-day, you 
 fink ? When will we go, mamma ? ' ' 
 
 " If there had been any pink blocks and ginger- 
 snaps for me when I was at her age, I should not 
 have prayed every night to ' die out.' I think the 
 horrors of death that children live through, un-
 
 186 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 guessed and unrelieved, are awful. Faith may 
 thank you all her life that she has escaped them." 
 
 " I should feel answerable to God for the child's 
 soul, if I had not prevented that. I always wanted 
 to know what sort of mother that poor little thing 
 had, who asked, if she were very good up in heaven, 
 whether they would n't let her go down to hell Sat- 
 urday afternoons, and play a little while ! " 
 
 " I know. But think of it, blocks and ginger- 
 snaps ! " 
 
 " I treat Faith just as the Bible treats us, by 
 dealing in pictures of truth that she can under- 
 stand. I can make Clo and Abinadab Quirk com- 
 prehend that their pianos and machinery may not 
 be made of literal rosewood and steel, but will be 
 some synonyme of the thing, which will answer 
 just such wants of their changed natures as rose- 
 wood and steel must answer now. There will be 
 machinery and pianos in the same sense in which 
 there will be pearl* gates and harps. Whatever 
 enjoyment any or all of them represent now, some- 
 thing will represent then. 
 
 "But Faith, if I told her that her heavenly 
 ginger-snaps would not be made of molasses and 
 flour, would have a cry, for fear that she was not
 
 THE GATES AJAR. l8/ 
 
 going to have any ginger-snaps at all ; so, until she 
 is older, I give her unqualified ginger-snaps. The 
 principal joy of a child's life consists in eating. 
 Faith begins, as soon as the light wanes, to dream 
 of that gum-drop which she is to have at bedtime. 
 I don't suppose she can outgrow that at once by 
 passing out of her little round body. She must 
 begin where she left off, nothing but a baby, 
 though it will be as holy and happy a baby as 
 Christ can make it. When she says : ' Mamma, I 
 shall be hungery and want my dinner, up there,' I 
 never hesitate to tell her that she shall have her 
 dinner. She would never, in her secret heart, 
 though she might not have the honesty to say so, 
 expect to be otherwise than miserable in a dinner- 
 less eternity." 
 
 " You are not afraid of misleading the child's 
 fancy?" 
 
 " Not so long as I can keep the two ideas that 
 Christ is her best friend, and that heaven is not 
 meant for naughty girls pre-eminent in her mind. 
 And I sincerely believe that He would give her the 
 very pink blocks which she anticipates, no less than 
 He would give back a poet his lost dreams, or you 
 your brother. He has been a child ; perhaps, inci-
 
 188 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 dentally to the unsolved mysteries of atonement, 
 for this very reason, that He may know how to 
 ' prepare their places ' for them, whose angels do 
 always behold His Father. Ah, you may be sure 
 that, if of such is the happy Kingdom, He will not 
 scorn to stoop and fit it to their little needs. 
 
 " There was that poor little fellow whose guinea- 
 pig died, do you remember ? " 
 
 " Only half; what was it ? " 
 
 " ' O mamma,' he sobbed out, behind his hand- 
 kerchief, ' don't great big elephants have souls ? ' 
 
 " ' No, my son.' 
 
 " ' Nor camels, mamma ? ' 
 
 " ' No.' 
 
 " ' Nor bears, nor alligators, nor chickens ? ' 
 
 " ' O no, dear.' 
 
 "'O mamma, mamma! Don't little CLEAN 
 white guinea-pigs have souls ? ' 
 
 " I never should have had the heart to say no to 
 that ; especially as we have no positive proof to 
 the contrary. 
 
 " Then that scrap of a boy who lost his little red 
 balloon the morning he bought it, and, broken- 
 hearted, wanted to know whether it had gone to 
 heaven. Don't I suppose if he had been taken
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 189 
 
 there himself that very minute, that he would have 
 found a little balloon in waiting for him ? How 
 can I help it ? " 
 
 " It has a pretty sound. If people would not 
 think it so material and shocking " 
 
 " Let people read Martin Luther's letter to his 
 little boy. There is the testimony of a pillar in 
 good and regular standing ! I don't think you 
 need be afraid of my balloon after that." 
 
 I remembered that there was a letter of his on 
 heaven, but, not recalling it distinctly, I hunted for 
 it to-night, and read it over. I shall copy it, the 
 better to retain it in mind. 
 
 " Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little son. 
 I see with pleasure that thou learnest well, and 
 prayed diligently. Do so, my son, and continue. 
 When I come home I will bring thee a pretty 
 fairing. 
 
 "I know a pretty, merry garden wherein are 
 many children. They have little golden coats, and 
 they gather beautiful apples under the trees, and 
 pears, cherries, plums, and wheat-plums ; they 
 sing, and jump, and are merry. They have beauti- 
 ful little horses, too, with gold bits and silver sad- 
 dles. And I asked the man to whom the garden
 
 I9O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 belongs, whose children they were. And he said : 
 ' They are the children that love to pray and to 
 learn, and are good.' Then said I : ' Dear man, I 
 have a son, too ; his name is Johnny Luther. May 
 he not also come into this garden and eat these 
 beautiful apples and pears, and ride these fine 
 horses ? ' Then the man said : ' If he loves to pray 
 and to learn, and is good, he shall come into this 
 garden, and Lippus and Jost too ; and when they 
 all come together, they shall have fifes and trum- 
 pets, lutes and all sorts of music, and they shall 
 dance, and shoot with little cross-bows.' 
 
 " And he showed me a fine meadow there in the 
 garden, made for dancing. There hung nothing 
 but golden fifes, trumpets, and fine silver cross- 
 bows. But it was early, and the children had 
 not yet eaten ; therefore I could not wait the 
 dance, and I said to the man : ' Ah, dear sir ! I 
 will immediately go and write all this to my little 
 son Johnny, and tell him to pray diligently, and to 
 learn well, and to be good, so that he also may come 
 to this garden. But he has an Aunt Lehne, he 
 must bring her with him.' Then the man said : ' It 
 shall be so ; go, and write him so.' 
 
 " Therefore, my dear little son Johnny, learn and
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IQI 
 
 pray away ! and tell Lippus and Jost, too, that they 
 must learn and pray. And then you shall come to 
 the garden together. Herewith I commend thee to 
 Almighty God. And greet Aunt Lehne, and give 
 her a kiss for my sake. 
 
 " Thy dear Father, 
 
 . " MARTINUS LUTHER. 
 
 "ANNO I53<X"
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 August 3. 
 
 r I "HE summer is sliding quietly away, my 
 
 *~ desolate summer which I dreaded ; with the 
 
 dreams gone from its wild-flowers, the crown from 
 
 its sunsets, the thrill from its winds and its singing. 
 
 But I have found out a thing. One can live 
 without dreams and crowns and thrills. 
 
 I have not lost them. They lie under the ivied 
 cross with Roy for a little while. They will come 
 back to me with him. " Nothing is lost," she 
 teaches me. And until they come back, I see 
 for she shows me fields groaning under their 
 white harvest, with laborers very few. Ruth fol- 
 lowed the sturdy reapers, gleaning a little. I, per- 
 haps, can do as much. The ways in which I must 
 work seem so small and insignificant, so pitifully 
 trivial sometimes, that I do not even like to write 
 them down here. In fact, they are so small that, 
 six months ago, I did not see them at all. Only to 
 be pleasant to old Phoebe, and charitable to Meta
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Tripp, and faithful to my not very interesting little 
 scholars, and a bit watchful of worn-out Mrs. Bland, 
 and But dear me, I won't ! They are so little ! 
 
 But one's self becomes of less importance, which 
 seems to be the point. 
 
 It seems very strange to me sometimes, looking 
 back to those desperate winter days, what a change 
 has come over my thoughts of Roy. Not that he 
 is any less O, never any less to me. But it is 
 almost as if she had raised him from the grave. 
 Why seek ye the living among the dead ? Her 
 soft, compassionate eyes shine with the question 
 every hour. And every hour he is helping me, 
 ah, Roy, we understand one another now. 
 
 How he must love Aunt Winifred ! How pleas- 
 ant the days will be when we can talk her over, and 
 thank her together ! 
 
 " To be happy because Roy is happy." I re- 
 member how those first words of hers struck me. 
 It does not seem to me impossible, now. 
 
 Aunt Winifred and I laugh at each other for 
 
 talking so much about heaven. I see that the 
 
 green book is filled with my questions and her 
 
 answers. The fact is, not that we do not talk as 
 
 9 M
 
 194 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 much about mundane affairs as other people, but 
 that this one thing interests us more. 
 
 If, instead, it had been flounces, or babies, or 
 German philosophy, the green book would have 
 filled itself just as unconsciously with flounces, or 
 babies, or German philosophy. This interest in 
 heaven is of course no sign of especial piety in 
 me, nor could people with young, warm, uncrushed 
 hopes throbbing through their days be expected 
 to feel the same. It is only the old principle of 
 where the treasure is the heart. 
 
 " How spiritual-minded Mary has grown ! " Mrs. 
 Bland observes, regarding me respectfully. I try 
 in vain to laugh her out of the conviction. If Roy 
 had not gone before, I should think no more, prob- 
 ably, about the coming life, than does the minister's 
 wife herself. 
 
 But now I cannot help it that is the reality, 
 this the dream ; that the substance, this the shadow. 
 
 The other day Aunt Winifred and I had a talk 
 which has been of more value to me than all the 
 rest. Faith was in bed ; it was a cold, rainy even- 
 ing ; we were secure from callers ; we lighted a 
 few kindlers in the parlor grate ; she rolled up the 
 easy-chair, and I took my cricket at her feet.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. IQ5 
 
 " Paul at the feet of Gamaliel ! This is what 
 I call comfort. Now, Auntie, let us go to heaven 
 awhile." 
 
 " Very well. What do you want there now ? " 
 
 I paused a moment, sobered by a thought that 
 has been growing steadily upon me of late. 
 
 " Something more, Aunt Winifred. All these 
 other things are beautiful and dear ; but I believe 
 I want God. 
 
 " You have not said much about Him. The 
 Bible says a great deal about Him. You have 
 given me the filling-up of heaven in all its pleas- 
 ant promise, but I don't know there seems 
 to be an outline wanting." 
 
 She drew my hand up into hers, smiling. 
 
 " I have not done my painting by artistic meth' 
 ods, I know ; but it was not exactly accidental. 
 
 " Tell me, honestly, is God more to you or less, 
 a more distinct Being or a more vague one, than 
 He was six months ago ? Is He, or is He not, 
 dearer to you now than then ? " 
 
 I thought about it a minute, and then turned my 
 face up to her. 
 
 " Mary, what a light in your eyes ! How is it ? " 
 
 It came over me slowly, but it came with such
 
 196 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 a passion of gratitude and unworthiness, that I 
 scarcely knew how to tell her that He never has 
 been to me, in. all my life, what He is now at the 
 end of these six months. He was once an abstract 
 Grandeur which I struggled more in fear than love 
 to please. He has become a living Presence, dear 
 and real. 
 
 " No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 
 Of the oblivious years ; 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 A present help." .... 
 
 He was an inexorable Mystery who took Roy 
 from me to lose him in the glare of a more inex- 
 orable heaven. He is a Father who knew better 
 than we that we should be parted for a while ; but 
 He only means it to be a little while. He is keep- 
 ing him for me to find in the flush of some summer 
 morning, on which I shall open my eyes no less 
 naturally than I open them on June sunrises now. 
 I always have that fancy of going in the morning. 
 
 She understood what I could not tell her, and 
 said, " I thought it would be so." 
 
 " You, His interpreter, have done it," I answered 
 her. " His heaven shows what he is, don't you 
 see ? like a friend's letter. I could no more go
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 back to my old groping relations to Him, than I 
 could make of you the dim and somewhat apoc- 
 ryphal Western Auntie that you were before I saw 
 you." 
 
 " Which was precisely why I have dealt with this 
 subject as I have," she said. "You had all your 
 life been directed to an indefinite heaven, where the 
 glory of God was to crowd out all individuality and 
 all human joy from His most individual and human 
 creatures, till the ' Glory of God ' had become 
 nothing but a name and a dread to you. So I let 
 those three words slide by, and tried to bring you 
 to them, as Christ brought the Twelve to believe in 
 him, ' for the works' sake.' 
 
 " Yes, my child ; clinging human loves, stifled 
 longings, cries for rest, forgotten hopes, shall have 
 their answer. Whatever the bewilderment of beau- 
 ties folded away for us in heavenly nature and art, 
 they shall strive with each other to make us glad. 
 These things have their pleasant place. But, 
 through eternity, there will be always something 
 beyond and dearer than the dearest of them. God 
 himself will be first, naturally and of necessity, 
 without strain or struggle, first? 
 
 When I sat here last winter with my dead in my
 
 I9 8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 house, those words would have roused in me an 
 agony of wild questionings. I should have beaten 
 about them and beaten against them, and cried in 
 my honest heart that they were false. I knew that 
 I loved Roy more than I loved such a Being as 
 God seemed to me then to be. Now, they strike 
 me as simply and pleasantly true. The more I love 
 Roy, the more I love Him. He loves us both. 
 
 " You see it could not be otherwise," she went 
 on, speaking low. " Where would you be, or I, or 
 they who seem to us so much dearer and better 
 than ourselves, if it were not for Jesus Christ ? 
 What can heaven be to us, but a song of the love 
 that is the same to us yesterday, to-day, and for- 
 ever, that, in the mystery of an intensity which 
 we shall perhaps never understand, could choose 
 death and be glad in the choosing, and, what is 
 more than that, could live life for us for three-and- 
 thirty years ? 
 
 "I cannot strain my faith or rather my com- 
 mon sense to the rhapsodies with which many 
 people fill heaven. But it seems to me like this : 
 A frienu goes away from us, and it may be seas or 
 worlds that lie between us, and we love him. He 
 leaves behind him his little keepsakes ; a lock of
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 hair to curl about our fingers ; a picture that has 
 caught the trick of his eyes or smile ; a book, a 
 flower, a letter. What we do with the curling hair, 
 what we say to the picture, what we dream over 
 the flower and the letter, nobody knows but our- 
 selves. People have risked life for such mementos. 
 Yet who loves the senseless gift more than the 
 giver, the curl more than the young forehead on 
 which it fell, the letter more than the hand 
 which traced it ? 
 
 " So it seems to me that we shall learn to see in 
 God the centre of all possibilities of joy. The 
 greatest of these lesser delights is but the greater 
 measure of His friendship. They will not mean 
 less of pleasure, but more of Him. They will not 
 ' pale,' as Dr. Bland would say. Human dearness 
 will wax, not wane, in heaven ; but human friends 
 will be loved for love of him." 
 
 "I see; that helps me; like a^torch in a dark 
 room. But there will be shadows in the corners. 
 Do you suppose that we shall ever fully feel it in 
 the body ? " 
 
 " In the body, probably not. We see through a 
 glass so darkly that the temptation to idolatry is 
 always our greatest. Golden images did not die
 
 200 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 with Paganism. At times I fancy that, somewhere 
 between this world and another, a revelation will 
 come upon us like a flash, of what sin really is, 
 such a revelation, lighting up the lurid background 
 of our past in such colors, that the consciousness 
 of what Christ has done for us will be for a time as 
 much as heart can bear. After that, the mystery 
 will be, not how to love Him most, but that we ever 
 could have loved any creature or thing as much." 
 
 "We serve God quite as much by active work as 
 by special prayer, here," I said after some thought ; 
 " how will it be there ? " 
 
 " We must be busily at work certainly ; but I 
 think there must naturally be more communion 
 with Him then. Now, this phrase ' communion 
 with God ' has been worn, and not always well 
 worn. 
 
 " Prayer means to us, in this life, more often pen- 
 itent confession than happy interchange of thought 
 with Him. It is associated, too, with aching limbs 
 and sleepy eyes, and nights when the lamp goes 
 out. Obstacles, moral and physical, stand in the 
 way of our knowing exactly what it may mean in 
 the ideal of it. 
 
 " My best conception of it lies in the friendship
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2OI 
 
 of the man Christ Jesus. I suppose he will bear 
 with him, eternally, the humanity which he took 
 up with him from the Judean hills. I imagine that 
 we shall see him in visible form like ourselves, 
 among us, yet not of us ; that he, himself, is " Gott 
 mit ihnen " ; that we shall talk with him as a man 
 talketh with his friend. Perhaps, bowed and hushed 
 at his dear feet, we shall hear from his own lips the 
 story of Nazareth, of Bethany, of Golgotha, of the 
 chilly mountains where he used to pray all night 
 long for us ; of the desert places where he hun- 
 gered ; of his cry for help think, Mary His ! 
 when there was not one in all the world to hear 
 it, and there was silence in heaven, while angels 
 strengthened him and man forsook him. Perhaps 
 his voice the very voice which has sounded whis- 
 pering through our troubled life " Could ye not 
 watch one hour ? " shall unfold its perplexed 
 meanings ; shall make its rough places plain ; shall 
 show us step by step the merciful way by which he 
 led us to that hour ; shall point out to us, joy by 
 joy, the surprises that he has been planning for us, 
 just as the old father in the story planned to sur- 
 prise his wayward boy come home. 
 
 " And such a ' communion,' which is not too 
 9*
 
 202 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 much, nor yet enough, to dare to expect of a God 
 who was the ' friend ' of Abraham, who ' walked ' 
 with Enoch, who did not call fishermen his ser- 
 vants, such will be that ' presence of God,' that 
 ' adoration,' on which we have looked from afar off 
 with despairing eyes that wept, they were so dazzled, 
 and turned themselves away as from the thing they 
 greatly feared." 
 
 I think we neither of us cared to talk for a while 
 after this. Something made me forget even that I 
 was going to see Roy in heaven. "Three-and-thirty 
 years. Three-and-thirty years." The words rang 
 themselves over. 
 
 " It is on the humanity of Christ," she said after 
 some musing, " that all my other reasons for hoping 
 for such a heaven as' I hope for rest for foundation. 
 He knows exactly what we are, for he has been one 
 of us ; exactly what we hope and fear and crave, 
 for he has hoped and feared and craved, not the 
 less humanly, but only more intensely. 
 
 " 'If it were not sol do you take in the thought- 
 ful tenderness of that ? A mother stilling her 
 frightened child in the dark, might speak just so, 
 ' if it were not so, I would have told you' That 
 brooding love makes room for all that we can want.
 
 THE .GATES AJAR. 2O3 
 
 He has sounded every deep of a troubled and 
 tempted life. Who so sure as he to understand 
 how to prepare a place where troubled and tempted 
 lives may grow serene ? Further than this ; since 
 he stands as our great Type, no less in death and 
 after than before it, he answers for us many of these 
 lesser questions on the event of which so much of 
 our happiness depends. 
 
 " Shall we lose our personality in a vague ocean 
 of ether, you one puff of gas, I another ? 
 
 " He, with his own wounded body, rose and ate 
 and walked and talked. 
 
 " Is all memory of this life to be swept away ? 
 
 " He, arisen, has forgotten nothing. He waits 
 to meet his disciples at the old, familiar places ; as 
 naturally as if he had never been parted from them, 
 he falls in with the current of their thoughts. 
 
 " Has any one troubled us with fears that in the 
 glorified crowds of heaven we may miss a face 
 dearer than all the world to us ? 
 
 " He made himself known to his friends, Mary, 
 and the two at Emmaus, and the bewildered group 
 praying and perplexed in their bolted room. 
 
 " Do we weary ourselves with speculations whether 
 human loves can outlive the shock of death ?
 
 2O4 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Mary knew how He loved her, when, turning, 
 she heard him call her by her name. They knew, 
 whose hearts ' burned within them while he talked 
 with them by the way, and when he tarried with 
 them, the day being far spent.' " 
 
 " And for the rest ? " 
 
 " For the rest, about which He was silent, we can 
 trust him, and if, trusting, we please ourselves with 
 fancies, he would be the last to think it blame to 
 us. There is one promise which grows upon me 
 the more I study it, * He that spared not his own 
 Son, how shall he not also with him freely give us 
 all things ? ' Sometimes I wonder if that does not 
 infold a beautiful double entendre, a hint of much 
 that you and I have conjectured, as one throws 
 down a hint of a surprise to a child. 
 
 " Then there is that pledge to those who seek 
 first His kingdom : ' All these things shall be added 
 unto you! 'These things/ were food and clothing, 
 were varieties of material delight, and the words 
 were spoken to men who lived hungry, beggared, 
 and died the death of outcasts. If this passage 
 could be taken literally, it would be very signifi- 
 cant in its bearing on the future life ; for Christ 
 must keep his promise to the letter, in one world
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 20$ 
 
 or another. It may be wrenching the verse, not as 
 a verse, but from the grain of the argument, to 
 insist on the literal interpretation, though I am 
 not sure."
 
 206 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 August 15. 
 
 T ASKED the other day, wondering whether all 
 * ministers were like Dr. Bland, what Uncle 
 Forceythe used to believe about heaven. 
 
 "Very much what I do," she said. "These ques- 
 tions were brought home to him, early in life, by 
 the death of a very dear sister ; he had thought 
 much about them. I think one of the things that 
 so much attached his people to him was the way 
 he had of weaving their future life in with this, till 
 it grew naturally and pleasantly into their frequent 
 thought. O yes, your uncle supplied me with half 
 of my proof-texts." 
 
 Aunt Winifred has not looked quite well of late, 
 I fancy ; though it may be only fancy. She has 
 not spoken of it, except one day when I told her 
 that she looked pale. It was the heat, she said. 
 
 20th. 
 
 Little Clo came over to-night. I believe she 
 thinks Aunt Winifred the best friend she has in the
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2O/ 
 
 world. Auntie has become much attached to all 
 her scholars, and has a rare power of winning her 
 way into their confidence. They come to her with 
 all their little interests, everything, from saving 
 their souls to trimming a bonnet. Clo, however, is 
 the favorite, as I predicted. 
 
 She looked a bit blue to-night, as girls will look ; 
 in fact, her face always has a tinge of sadness about 
 it. Aunt Winifred, understanding at a glance that 
 the child was not in a mood to talk before a third, 
 led her away into the garden, and they were gone a 
 long time. When it grew dark, I saw them coming 
 up the path, Clo's hand locked in her teacher's, and 
 her face, which was wet, upturned like a child's. 
 They strolled to the gate, lingered a little to talk, 
 and then Clo said good night without coming in. 
 
 Auntie sat for a while after she had gone, think- 
 ing her over, I could see. " Poor thing ! " she said 
 at last, half to herself, half to me, " poor little 
 foolish thing ! This is where the dreadful individ- 
 uality of a human soul irks me. There comes a 
 point, beyond which you cant help people." 
 
 " What has happened to Clo ? " 
 
 " Nothing, lately. It has been happening for two 
 years. Two miserable years are an eternity, at
 
 208 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Clo's age. It is the old story, a summer board- 
 er ; a little flirting ; a little dreaming ; a little 
 pain ; then autumn, and the nuts dropping on the 
 leaves, and he was gone, and knew not what he 
 did, and the child waked up. There was the 
 future ; to bake and sweep, to go to sewing-circles, 
 and sing in the choir, and bear the moonlight 
 nights, and she loved him. She has lived 
 through two years of it, and she loves him now. 
 Reason will not reach such a passion in a girl like 
 Clo. I did not tell her that she would put it away 
 with other girlish things, and laugh at it herself 
 some happy day, as women have laughed at their 
 young fancies before her ; partly because that 
 would be a certain way of repelling her confidence, 
 she does not believe it, and my believing could 
 not make her ; partly because I am not quite sure 
 about it myself. Clo has a good deal of the woman 
 about her ; her introspective life is intense. She 
 may cherish this sweet misery as she does her mu- 
 sical tastes, till it has struck deep root. There is 
 nothing in the excellent Mrs. Bentley's household, 
 nor in Homer anywhere, to draw the girl out from 
 herself in time to prevent the dream from becom- 
 ing a reality."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Poor little thing ! What did you say to her ? " 
 
 " You ought to have heard what she said to me ! 
 I wish I were at liberty to tell you the whole story. 
 What troubles her most is that it is not going to 
 help the matter any to die. ' O Mrs. Forceythe/ 
 she says, in a tone that is enough to give the heart- 
 ache, even to such an old woman as Mrs. Forceythe, 
 ' O Mrs. Forceythe, what is going to become of me 
 up there ? He never loved me, you see, and he 
 never, never will, and he will have some beautiful, 
 good wife of his own, and I won't have anybody I 
 For I can't love anybody else, I Ve tried ; I tried 
 just as hard as I could to love my cousin 'Bin ; he's 
 real good, and I 'm afraid 'Bin likes me, though 
 I guess he likes his carpet-sweepers better. O, 
 sometimes I think, and think, till it seems as if I 
 could not bear it ! I don't see how God can make 
 me happy. I wish I could be buried up and go to 
 sleep, and never have any heaven !' ' 
 
 " And you told her ? " 
 
 " That she should have him there. That is, if 
 not himself, something, somebody who would so 
 much more than fill his place, that she would never 
 have a lonely or unloved minute. Her eyes bright- 
 ened, and shaded, and pondered, doubting. She
 
 2IO THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ' did n't see how it could ever be.' I told her not 
 to try and see how, but to leave it to Christ. He 
 knew all about this little trouble of hers, and he 
 would make it right. 
 
 " ' Will he ? ' she questioned, sighing ; ' but there 
 are so many of us ! There 's 'Bin, and a plenty 
 more, and I don't see how it 's going to be smoothed 
 out. Everything is in a jumble, Mrs. Forceythe, 
 don't you see ? for some people cant like and keep 
 liking so many times.' Something came into my 
 mind about the rough places that shall be made 
 plain, and the crooked things straight. I tried to 
 explain to her, and at last I kissed away her tears, 
 and sent her home, if not exactly comforted, a little 
 less miserable, I think, than when she came. Ah, 
 well, I wonder myself sometimes about these 
 'crooked things'; but still I never doubt" 
 
 She finished her sentence somewhat hurriedly, 
 and half started from her chair, raising both hands 
 with a quick, involuntary motion that attracted my 
 notice. The lights came in just then, and, unless 
 I am much mistaken, her face showed paler than 
 usual ; but when I asked her if she felt faint, she 
 said, ' O no, I believe I am a little tired, and will 
 go to bed."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 211 
 
 September i. 
 
 I am glad that the summer is over. This heat 
 has certainly worn on Aunt Winifred, with that 
 kind of wear which slides people into confirmed 
 invalidism. I suppose she would bear it in her 
 saintly way, as she bears everything, but it would 
 be a bitter cup for her. I know she was always 
 pale, but this is a paleness which 
 
 Night. 
 A dreadful thing has happened ! 
 
 I was in the middle of my sentence, when I heard 
 a commotion in the street, and a child's voice shout- 
 ing incoherently something about the doctor, and 
 " mother 's killed ! O, mother 's killed ! mother 's 
 burnt to death ! " I was at the window in time 
 to see a blond-haired girl running wildly past the 
 house, and to see that it was Molly Bland. 
 
 At the same moment I saw Aunt Winifred 
 snatching her hat from its nail in the entry. She 
 beckoned to me to follow, and we were half-way 
 over to the parsonage before I had a distinct 
 thought of what I was about. 
 
 We came upon a horrible scene. Dr. Bland was 
 trying to do everything alone ; there was not a 
 woman in the house to help him, for they have
 
 212 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 never been able to keep a servant, and none of the 
 neighbors had had time to be there before us. The 
 poor husband was growing faint, I think. Aunt 
 Winifred saw by a look that he could not bear 
 much more, sent him after Molly for the doctor, and 
 took everything meantime into her own charge. 
 
 I shall not write down a word of it. It was a 
 sight that, once seen, will never leave me as long 
 as I live. My nerves are thoroughly shaken by it, 
 and it must be put out of thought as far as possible. 
 
 It seems that the little boy the baby crept 
 into the kitchen by himself, and began to throw 
 the contents of the match-box on the stove, " to 
 make a bonfire," the poor little fellow said. In five 
 minutes his apron was ablaze. His mother was on 
 the spot at his first cry, and smothered the little 
 apron, and saved the child, but her dress was mus- 
 lin, and everybody was too far off to hear her at 
 first, and by the time her husband came in from 
 the garden it was too late. 
 
 She is living yet. Her husband, pacing the 
 room back and forth, and crouching on his knees 
 by the hour, is praying God to let her die before 
 the morning.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 213 
 
 Morning. 
 
 There is no chance of life, the doctor says. But 
 he has been able to find something that has lessened 
 her sufferings. She lies partially unconscious. 
 
 Wednesday night. 
 
 Aunt Winifred and I were over to the parsonage 
 to-night, when she roused a little from her stupor 
 and recognized us. She spoke to her husband, and 
 kissed me good by, and asked for the children. 
 They were playing softly in the next room ; we 
 sent for them, and they came in, the four un- 
 conscious, motherless little things, with the sun- 
 light in their hair. 
 
 The bitterness of death came into her marred 
 face at sight of them, and she raised her hands to 
 Auntie to the only other mother there with a 
 sudden helpless cry : " I could bear it, I could bear 
 it, if it were n't for them. Without any mother all 
 their lives, such little things, and to go away 
 where I can't do a single thing for them !" 
 
 Aunt Winifred stooped down and spoke low, but 
 decidedly. 
 
 " You will do for them. God knows all about it. 
 He will not send you away from them. You shall
 
 214 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 be just as much their mother, every day of their 
 lives, as you have been here. Perhaps there is 
 something to do for them which you never could 
 have done here. He sees. He loves them. He 
 loves you." 
 
 If I could paint, I might paint the look that 
 struck through and through that woman's dying 
 face ; but words cannot touch it. If I were Aunt 
 Winifred, I should bless God on my knees to-night 
 for having shown me how to give such ease to a 
 soul in death. 
 
 Thursday morning. 
 
 God is merciful. Mrs. Bland died at five o'clock. 
 
 loth. 
 
 How such a voice from the heavens shocks one 
 out of the repose of calm sorrows and of calm joys. 
 This has come and gone so suddenly that I cannot 
 adjust it to any quiet and trustful thinking yet. 
 
 The whole parish mourns excitedly ; for, though 
 they worked their minister's wife hard, they loved 
 her well. I cannot talk it over with the rest. It 
 jars. Horror should never be dissected. Besides, 
 my heart is too full of those four little children with 
 the sunlight in their hair and the unconsciousness 
 in their eyes.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 215 
 
 I5th. 
 
 Mrs. Quirk came over to-day in great perplexity. 
 She had just come from the minister's. 
 
 " I don't know what we 're a goin' to do with 
 him ! " she exclaimed in a gush of impatient, un- 
 comprehending sympathy ; " you can't let a man 
 take on that way much longer. He '11 worry him- 
 self sick, and then we shall either lose him or have 
 to pay his bills to Europe ! Why, he jest stops in 
 the house, and walks his study up and down, day 
 and night ; or else he jest sets and sets and don't 
 notice nobody but the children. Now I 've jest 
 ben over makin' him some chicken-pie, he used 
 to set a sight by my chicken-pie, and he made 
 believe to eat it, 'cause I 'd ben at the trouble, I 
 suppose, but how much do you suppose he swal- 
 lowed ? Jest three mouthfuls ! Thinks says I, I 
 won't spend my time over chicken-pie for the 
 afflicted agin, and on ironing-day, too ! When I 
 knocked at the study door, he said ' Come in,' and 
 stopped his walkin' and turned as quick. 
 
 " ' O,' says he, 'good morning. I thought it was 
 Mrs. Forceythe.' 
 
 " I told him no, I was n't Mrs. Forceythe, but 
 I 'd come to comfort him in his sorrer all the
 
 2l6 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 same. But that 's the only thing I have agin our 
 minister. He won't be comforted. Mary Ann 
 Jacobs, who 's been there kind of looking after the 
 children and things for him, you know, sence the 
 funeral she says he 's asked three or four times 
 for you, Mrs. Forceythe. There 's ben plenty of 
 his people in to see him, but you have n't ben nigh 
 him, Mary Ann says." 
 
 " I stayed away because I thought the presence 
 of friends at this time would be an intrusion," 
 Auntie said ; " but if he would like to see me, that 
 alters the case ; I will go, certainly." 
 
 " I don't know," suggested Mrs. Quirk, looking 
 over the top of her spectacles, I s'pose it 's 
 proper enough, but you bein' a widow, you know, 
 and his wife " 
 
 Aunt Winifred's eyes shot fire. She stood up 
 and turned upon Mrs. Quirk with a look the like 
 of which I presume that worthy lady had never 
 seen before, and is not likely to see soon again (it 
 gave the beautiful scorn of a Zenobia to her fair, 
 slight face), moved her lips slightly, but said noth- 
 ing, put on her bonnet, and went straight to Dr. 
 Eland's. 
 
 The minister, they told her, was in his study.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 2I/ 
 
 She knocked lightly at the door, and was bidden 
 in a lifeless voice to enter. 
 
 Shades and blinds were drawn, and the glare of 
 the sun quite shut out. Dr. Bland sat by his 
 study-table, with his face upon his hands. A Bi- 
 ble lay open before him. It had been lately used ; 
 the leaves were wet. 
 
 He raised his head dejectedly, but smiled when 
 he saw who it was. He had been thinking about 
 her, he said, and was glad that she had come. 
 
 I do not know all that passed between them, but 
 I gather, from such hints as Auntie in her uncon- 
 sciousness throws out, that she had things to say 
 which touched some comfortless places in the man's 
 heart. No Greek and Hebrew " original," no pol- 
 ished dogma, no link in his stereotyped logic, not 
 one of his eloquent sermons on the future state, 
 came to his relief. 
 
 These were meant for happy days. They rang 
 cold as steel upon the warm needs of an afflicted 
 man. Brought face to face, and sharply, with the 
 blank heaven of his belief, he stood up from before 
 his dead, and groped about it, and cried out against 
 it in the bitterness of his soul. 
 
 " I had no chance to prepare myself to bow to 
 
 10
 
 2l8 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 the will of God," he said, his reserved ministerial 
 manner in curious contrast with the caged way in 
 which he was pacing the room, "I had no 
 chance. I am taken by surprise, as by a thief 
 in the night. I had a great deal to say to her, and 
 there was no time. She could tell me what to do 
 with my poor little children. I wanted to tell her 
 other things. I wanted to tell her Perhaps we 
 all of us have our regrets when the Lord removes 
 our friends ; we may have done or left undone 
 many things ; we might have made them happier. 
 My mind does not rest with assurance in its con- 
 ceptions of the heavenly state. If I never can tell 
 her " 
 
 He stopped abruptly, and paced into the darkest 
 shadows of the shadowed room, his face turned 
 away. 
 
 " You said once some pleasant things about 
 heaven ? " he said at last, half appealingly, stopping 
 in front of her, hesitating ; like a man and like a 
 minister, hardly ready to come with all the learning 
 of his schools and commentators and sit at the feet 
 of a woman. 
 
 She talked with him for a time in her unobtrusive 
 way, deferring, when she honestly could, to his cler-
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 ical judgment, and careful not to wound him by 
 any word ; but frankly and clearly, as she always 
 talks. 
 
 When she rose to go he thanked her quietly. 
 
 " This is a somewhat novel train of thought to 
 me," he said ; " I hope it may not prove an un- 
 scriptural one. I have been reading the Book of 
 Revelation to-day with these questions especially in 
 mind. We are never too old to learn. Some pas- 
 sages may be capable of other interpretations than 
 I have formerly given them. No matter what I 
 wish, you see, I must be guided by the Word of my 
 God." 
 
 Auntie says that she never respected the man so 
 much as she did when, hearing those words, she 
 looked up into his haggard face, convulsed with its 
 human pain and longing. 
 
 " I hope you do not think that / am not guided 
 by the Word of God," she answered. " I mean to 
 be." 
 
 " I know you mean to be," he said cordially. " I 
 do not say that you are not. I may come to see 
 that you are, and that you are right. It will be a 
 peaceful day for me if I can ever quite agree with 
 your methods of reasoning. But I must think
 
 22O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 these things over. I thank you once more for 
 coming. Your sympathy is grateful to me." 
 
 Just as she closed the door he called her back. 
 
 " See," he said, with a saddened smile. " At 
 least I shall never preach this again. It seems to 
 me that life is always undoing for us something 
 that we have just laboriously done." 
 
 He held up before her a mass of old blue manu- 
 script, and threw it, as he spoke, upon the embers 
 left in his grate. It smoked and blazed up and 
 burned out. 
 
 It was that sermon on heaven of which there is 
 an abstract in this journal. 
 
 20th. 
 
 Aunt Winifred hired Mr. Tripp's gray this after- 
 noon, and drove to East Homer on some unexplained 
 errand. She did not invite me to go with her, 
 and Faith, though she teased impressively, was left 
 at home. Her mother was gone till late, so late 
 that I had begun to be anxious about her, and 
 heard through the dark the first sound of the buggy 
 wheels with great relief. She looked very tired 
 when I met her at the gate. She had not been 
 able, she said, to accomplish her errand at East
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 221 
 
 Homer, and from there had gone to Worcester by 
 railroad, leaving Old Gray at the East Homer 
 Eagle till her return. She told me nothing more, 
 and I asked no questions.
 
 222 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Sunday. 
 
 'I 7AITH has behaved like a witch all day. She 
 I 
 
 -* knocked down three crickets and six hymn- 
 books in church this morning, and this afternoon 
 horrified the assembled and devout congregation 
 by turning round in the middle of the long prayer, 
 and, in a loud and distinct voice, asking Mrs. Quirk, 
 for " 'nother those pepp'mints such as you gave me 
 one Sunday a good many years ago, you 'member." 
 After church, her mother tried a few Bible ques- 
 tions to keep her still. 
 
 " Faith, who was Christ's father ? " 
 
 " Jerusalem ! " said Faith, promptly. 
 
 " Where did his parents take Jesus when they 
 fled from Herod?" 
 
 " O, to Europe. Of course I knew that ! Every- 
 body goes to Europe." 
 
 To-night when her mother had put her to bed, 
 she catre down laughing. 
 
 " Faith does seem to have a hard time with the 
 Lord's Prayer. To-night, being very sleepy and in
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 223 
 
 a hurry to finish, she proceeded with great solem- 
 nity : ' Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed 
 be thy name ; six days shalt thou labor and do all 
 thy work, and Oh ! ' 
 
 "I was just thinking how amused her father 
 must be." 
 
 Auntie says many such things. I cannot ex- 
 plain how pleasantly they strike me, nor how they 
 help me. 
 
 Dr. Bland gave us a good sermon yesterday. 
 There is an indescribable change in all his sermons. 
 There is a change, too, in the man, and that some- 
 thing more than the haggardness of grief. I not 
 only respect him and am sorry for him, but I feel 
 more ready to be taught by him than ever before. 
 A certain indefinable humanness softens his eyes 
 and tones, and seems to be creeping into everything 
 that he says. Yet, on the other hand, his people 
 say that they have never heard him speak such 
 pleasant, helpful things concerning his and their 
 relations to God. I met him the other night, com- 
 ing away from his wife's grave, and was struck by 
 the expression of his face. I wondered if he were
 
 224 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 not slowly finding the " peaceful day," of which he 
 told Aunt Winifred. 
 
 She, by the way, has taken another of her mys- 
 terious trips to Worcester. 
 
 3oth. 
 
 We were wondering to-day where it will be, I 
 mean heaven. 
 
 "It is impossible to do more than wonder," 
 Auntie said, " though we are explicitly told that 
 there will be new heavens and a new earth, which 
 seems, if anything can be taken literally in the 
 Bible, to point to this world as the future home of 
 at least some of us." 
 
 " Not for all of us, of course ? " 
 
 " I don't feel sure. I know that somebody spent 
 his valuable time in estimating that all the people 
 who have lived and died upon the earth would 
 cover it, alive or buried, twice over ; but I know 
 that somebody else claims with equal solemnity to 
 have discovered that they could all be buried in 
 ihe State of Pennsylvania ! But it would be of 
 little consequence if we could not all find room 
 here, since there must be other provision for us." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Certainly there is ' a place ' in which we are
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 22$ 
 
 promised that we shall be ' with Christ,' this world 
 being yet the great theatre of human life and 
 battle-ground of Satan ; no place, certainly, in 
 which to confine a happy soul without prospect 
 of release. The Spiritualistic notion of ' circles ' 
 of dead friends revolving over us is to me intoler- 
 able. I want my husband with me when I need 
 him, but I hope he has a place to be happy in, 
 which is out of this woful world. 
 
 " The old astronomical idea, stars around a sun, 
 and systems around a centre, and that centre the 
 Throne of God, is not an unreasonable one. Isaac 
 Taylor, among his various conjectures, inclines, I 
 fancy, to suppose that the sun of each system is the 
 heaven of that system. Though the glory of God 
 may be more directly and impressively exhibited in 
 one place than in another, we may live in different, 
 planets, and some of us, after its destruction and 
 renovation, on this same dear old, happy and mis- 
 erable, loved and maltreated earth. I hope I shall 
 be one of them. I should like to come back and 
 build me a beautiful home in Kansas, I mean in 
 what was Kansas, among the happy people and 
 the familiar, transfigured spots where John and I 
 worked for God so long together. That with 
 10* o
 
 226 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 my dear Lord to see and speak with every day 
 would be ' Heaven our Home.' " 
 
 " There will be no days, then ? " 
 
 " There will be succession of time. There may 
 not be alternations of twenty-four hours dark or 
 light, but ' I use with thee an earthly language,' as 
 the wife said in that beautiful little 'Awakening,' 
 of Therrmin's. Do you remember it ? Do read it 
 over, if you have n't read it lately. 
 
 " As to our coming back here, there is an echo 
 to Peter's assertion, in the idea of a world under a 
 curse, destroyed and regenerated, the atonement 
 of Christ reaching, with something more than po- 
 etic force, the very sands of the earth which he trod 
 with bleeding feet to make himself its Saviour. 
 That makes me feel don't you see ? what a 
 taint there is in sin. If dumb dust is to have such 
 awful cleansing, what must be needed for you and 
 me ? 
 
 " How many pleasant talks we have had about 
 these things, Mary ! Well, it cannot be long, at the 
 longest, before we know, even as we are known." 
 
 I looked at her smiling white face, it is always 
 very white now, and something struck slowly 
 through me, like a chill.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 22/ 
 
 October 16, midnight. 
 
 There is no such thing as sleep at present. 
 Writing is better than thinking. 
 
 Aunt Winifred went again to Worcester to-day. 
 She said that she had to buy trimming for Faith's 
 sack. 
 
 She went alone, as usual, and Faith and I kept 
 each other company through the afternoon, she 
 on the floor with Mary Ann, I in the easy-chair 
 with Macaulay. As the light began to fall level on 
 the floor, I threw the book aside, being at the end 
 of a volume, and, Mary Ann having exhausted 
 her attractions, I surrendered unconditionally to 
 the little maiden. 
 
 She took me up garret, and down cellar, on top 
 of the wood-pile, and into the apple-trees ; I fath- 
 omed the mysteries of Old Man's Castle and Still 
 Palm ; I was her grandmother, I was her baby, I 
 was a rabbit, I was a chestnut horse, I was a watch- 
 dog, I was a mild-tempered giant, I was a bear, 
 " warranted not to eat little girls," I was a roaring 
 hippopotamus and a canary-bird, I was Jeff Davis 
 and I was Moses in the bulrushes, and of what I 
 was the time faileth me to tell. 
 
 It comes over me with a curious, mingled sense
 
 228 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 of the ludicrous and the horrible, that I should 
 have spent the afternoon like a baby and almost as 
 happily, laughing out with the child, past and future 
 forgotten, the tremendous risks of " I spy " absorb- 
 ing all my present ; while what was happening was 
 happening, and what was to come was coming. 
 Not an echo in the air, not a prophecy in the sun- 
 shine, not a note of warning in the song of the 
 robins that watched me from the apple-boughs ! 
 
 As the long, golden afternoon slid away, we 
 came out by the front gate to watch for the child's 
 mother. I was tired, and, lying back on the grass, 
 gave Faith some pink and purple larkspurs, that 
 she might amuse herself in making a chain of 
 them. The picture that she made sitting there on 
 the short, dying grass the light which broke all 
 about her and over her at the first, creeping slowly 
 down and away to the west, her little fingers linking 
 the rich, bright flowers tube into tube, the dimple 
 on her cheek and the love in her eyes has pho- 
 tographed itself into my thinking. 
 
 How her voice rang out, when the wheels 
 sounded at last, and the carriage, somewhat slowly 
 driven, stopped ! " Mamma, mamma ! see what 
 I Ve got for you, mamma ! "
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 22Q 
 
 Auntie tried to step from the carriage, and called 
 me : " Mary, can you help me a little ? I am 
 tired." 
 
 I went to her, and she leaned heavily on my arm, 
 and we came up the path. 
 
 " Such a pretty little chain, all for you, mamma," 
 began Faith, and stopped, struck by her mother's 
 look. 
 
 " It has been a long ride, and I am in pain. I 
 believe I will lie right down on the parlor sofa. 
 Mary, would you be kind enough to give Faith her 
 supper and put her to bed ? " 
 
 Faith's lip grieved. 
 
 " Cousin Mary is n't you, mamma. I want to be 
 kissed. You have n't kissed me." 
 
 Her mother hesitated for a moment ; then kissed 
 her once, twice ; put both arms about her neck ; 
 and turned her face to the wall without a word. 
 
 " Mamma is tired, dear," I said ; " come away." 
 
 She was lying quite still when I had done what 
 was to be done for the child, and had come back. 
 The room was nearly dark. I sat down on my 
 cricket by her sofa. 
 
 " Shall Phoebe light the lamp ? " 
 
 " Not just yet."
 
 23O THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 " Can't you drink a cup of tea if I bring it ? " 
 
 " Not just yet" 
 
 " Did you find the sack-trimming ? " I ventured, 
 after a pause. 
 
 I believe so, yes." She drew a little package 
 from her pocket, held it a moment, then let it roll to 
 the floor forgotten. When I picked it up, the soft 
 tissue-paper wrapper was wet and hot with tears. 
 
 " Mary ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I never thought of the little trimming till the 
 last minute. I had another errand." 
 
 I waited. 
 
 " I thought at first I would not tell you just yet. 
 But I suppose the time has come ; it will be no 
 more easy to put it off. I have been to Worcester 
 all these times to see a doctor." 
 
 I bent my head in the dark, and listened for the 
 rest 
 
 " He has his reputation ; they said he could help 
 me if anybody could. He thought at first he 
 could. But to-day Mary, see here." 
 
 She walked feebly towards the window, where a 
 faint, gray light struggled in, and opened the bosom 
 of her dress. . .
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 23! 
 
 There was silence between us for a long while 
 after that ; she went back to the sofa, and I took 
 her hand and bowed my face over it, and so we sat. 
 
 The leaves rustled out of doors. Faith, up 
 stairs, was singing herself to sleep with a droning 
 sound. 
 
 " He talked of risking an operation," she said, at 
 length, " but decided to-day that it was quite use- 
 less. I suppose I must give up and be sick now ; 
 I am feeling the reaction from having kept up so 
 long. Pie thinks I shall not suffer a very great 
 deal. He thinks he can relieve me, and that it 
 may be soon over." 
 
 " There is no chance ? " 
 
 " No chance." 
 
 I took both of her hands, and cried out, I believe, 
 as I did that first night when she spoke to me of 
 Roy, " Auntie, Auntie, Auntie ! " and tried to think 
 what I was doing, but only cried out the more. 
 
 " Why, Mary ! " she said, " why, Mary ! " and 
 again, as before, she passed her soft hand to and 
 fro across my hair, till by and by I began to think, 
 as I had thought before, that I could bear anything 
 which God who loved us all who surely loved us 
 all should send.
 
 232 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 So then, after I had grown still, she began to tell 
 me about it in her quiet voice, and the leaves 
 rustled, and Faith had sung herself to sleep, and I 
 listened wondering. For there was no pain in the 
 quiet voice, no pain, nor tone of fear. Indeed, 
 it seemed to me that I detected, through its subdued 
 sadness, a secret, suppressed buoyancy of satisfac- 
 tion, with which something, struggled. 
 
 " And you ? " I asked, turning quickly upon her. 
 
 "I should thank God with all my heart, Mary, if 
 it were not for Faith and you. But it is for Faith 
 and you. That 's all." 
 
 When I had locked the front door, and was 
 creeping up here to my room, my foot crushed 
 something, and a faint, wounded perfume came up. 
 It was the little pink and purple chain.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 233 
 
 XVI. 
 
 October 17. 
 
 Lord God a'mighty help us! but His 
 ways are past finding out. What with one 
 thing and another thing, that child without a 
 mother, and you with the crape not yet rusty for 
 Mr. Roy'l, it does seem to me as if His manner of 
 treating folks beats all ! But I tell you this, Miss 
 Mary, my dear ; you jest say your prayers reg'lar 
 and stick to Him, and He '11 pull you through, 
 sure ! " 
 
 This was what Phoebe said when I told her. 
 
 November 8. 
 
 To-night, for the first time, Auntie fairly gave up 
 trying to put Faith to bed. She had insisted on it 
 until now, crawling up by the banisters like a 
 wounded thing. This time she tottered and sank 
 upon the second step. She cried out, feebly : " I 
 am afraid I must give it up to Cousin Mary. 
 Faith ! " the child clung with both hands to her, 
 " Faith, Faith ! Mother's little girl ? "
 
 234 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 It was the last dear care of motherhood yielded ; 
 the last link snapped. It seemed to be the very 
 bitterness of parting. 
 
 I turned away, that they might bear it together, 
 they two alone. 
 
 Yet I think that took away the sting. 
 
 The days are slipping away now very quietly, 
 and to her I am sure, and to me for her sake 
 very happily. 
 
 She suffers less than I had feared, and she lies 
 upon the bed and smiles, and Faith comes in and 
 plays about, and the cheery morning sunshine falls 
 on everything, and when her strong hours come, we 
 have long talks together, hand clasped in hand. 
 
 Such pleasant talks ! We are quite brave to 
 speak of anything, since we know that what is to 
 be is best just so, and since we fear no parting. I 
 tell her that Faith and I will soon learn to shut our 
 eyes and think we see her, and try to make it almost 
 the same, for she will never be very far away, will 
 she ? And then she shakes her head smiling, for it 
 pleases her, and she kisses me softly. Then we 
 dream of how it will all be, and how we shall love 
 and try to please each other quite as much as now.
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 235 
 
 "It will be like going around a corner, don't you 
 see?" she says. "You will know that I am there 
 all the while, though hidden, and that if you call me 
 I shall hear." Then we talk of Faith, and of how 
 I shall comfort her ; that I shall teach her this, and 
 guard her from that, and how I shall talk with her 
 about heaven and her mother. Sometimes Faith 
 comes up and wants to know what we are saying, 
 and lays poor Mary Ann, sawdust and all, upon the 
 pillow, and wants " her toof-ache kissed away." So 
 Auntie kisses away the dolly's " toof-ache " ; and 
 kisses the dolly's little mother, sometimes with a 
 quiver on her lips, but more often with a smile in 
 her eyes, and Faith runs back to play, and her 
 laugh ripples out, and her mother listens listens 
 
 Sometimes, too, we talk of some of the people for 
 whom she cares ; of her husband's friends ; of her 
 scholars, or Dr. Bland, or Clo, or poor 'Bin Quirk, 
 or of somebody down town whom she was planning 
 to help this winter. Little Clo comes in as often 
 as she is strong enough to see her, and sends over 
 untold jellies and blanc-manges, which Faith and I 
 have to eat. " But don't let the child know that," 
 
 % 
 
 Auntie says. 
 
 But more often we talk of the life which she is
 
 236 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 so soon to begin ; of her husband and Roy ; of what 
 she will try to say to Christ ; how much dearer He 
 has grown to her since she has lain here in pain at 
 His bidding, and how He helps her, at morning and 
 at eventide and in the night-watches. 
 
 We talk of the trees and the mountains and the 
 lilies in the garden, on which the glory of the light 
 that is not the light of the sun may shine ; of the 
 " little brooks " by which she longs to sit and sing 
 to Faith ; of the treasures of art which she may 
 fancy to have about her ; of the home in which her 
 husband may be making ready for her coming, and 
 wonder what he has there, and if he knows how 
 near the time is now. 
 
 But I notice lately that she more often and more 
 quickly wearies of these things ; that she comes 
 back, and comes back again to some loving thought 
 as loving as a child's of Jesus Christ. He 
 seems to be as she once said she tried that He 
 should be to Faith her " best friend." 
 
 Sometimes, too, we wonder what it means to 
 pass out of the body, and what one will be first 
 conscious of. 
 
 " I used to have a very human, and by no means 
 slight, dread of the physical pain of death," she
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 237 
 
 said to-day ; " but, for some reason or other, that is 
 slowly leaving me. I imagine that the suffering of 
 any fatal sickness is worse than the immediate 
 process of dissolution. Then there is so much 
 beyond it to occupy one's thoughts. One thing I 
 have thought much about ; it is that, whatever may 
 be our first experience after leaving the body, it is 
 not likely to be a revolutionary one. It is more in 
 analogy with God's dealings that a quiet process, a 
 gentle accustoming, should open our eyes on the 
 light that would blind if it came in a flash. Per- 
 haps we shall not see Him, perhaps we could not 
 bear it to see Him at once. It may be that the faces 
 i)f familiar human friends will be the first to greet 
 us ; it may be that the touch of the human hand 
 dearer than any but His own shall lead us, as we 
 are able, behind the veil, till we are a little used to 
 the glory and the wonder, and lead us so to Him. 
 
 " Be that as it may, and be heaven where it may, 
 I am not afraid. With all my guessing and my 
 studying and my dreaming over these things, I am 
 only a child in the dark. ' Nevertheless, I am not 
 afraid of the dark.' God bless Mr. Robertson for 
 saying that ! I 'm going to bless him when I see 
 him. How pleasant it will be to see him, and some
 
 238 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 other friends whose faces I never saw in this world ! 
 David, for instance, or Paul, or Cowper, or President 
 Lincoln, or Mrs. Browning. The only trouble is 
 that / am nobody to them ! However, I fancy that 
 they will let me shake hands with them. 
 
 " No, I am quite willing to trust all these things 
 to God. 
 
 ' And what if much be still unknown ? 
 
 Thy Lord shall teach thee that, 
 When thou shalt stand before His throne, 
 Or sit as Mary sat' 
 
 I may find them very different from what I have 
 supposed. I know that I shall find them infinitely 
 more satisfying than I have supposed. As Schiller 
 said of his philosophy, ' Perhaps I may be ashamed 
 of my raw design, at sight of the true original. 
 This may happen ; I expect it ; but then, if reality 
 bears no resemblance to my dreams, it will be a 
 more majestic, a more delightful surprise.' 
 
 " I believe nothing that God denies. I cannot 
 overrate the beauty of his promise. So it surely 
 can have done no harm for me to take the comfort 
 of my fancying till I am there ; and what a comfort 
 it has been to me, God only knows. I could 
 scarcely have borne some things without it."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 239 
 
 " You are never afraid that anything proving a 
 little different from what you expect might " 
 
 " Might disappoint me ? No ; I have settled 
 that in my heart with God. I do not think I shall 
 be disappointed. The truth is, he has obviously 
 not opened the gates which bar heaven from our 
 sight, but he has as obviously not shut them ; they 
 stand ajar, with the Bible and reason in the way, to 
 keep them from closing ; surely we should look in 
 as far as we can, and surely, if we look with rever- 
 ence, our eyes will be holden, that we may not 
 cheat ourselves with mirages. And, as the little 
 Swedish girl said, the first time she saw the stars : 
 ' O father, if the wrong side of heaven is so beauti- 
 ful, what must the right side be ? " 
 
 January. 
 
 I write little now, for I am living too much. The 
 days' are stealing away and lessening one by one, 
 and still Faith plays about the room, though very 
 softly now, and still the cheery sunshine shimmers 
 in, and still we talk with clasping hands, less often 
 and more pleasantly. Morning and noon and even- 
 ing come and go ; the snow drifts down and the 
 rain falls softly ; clouds form and break and hurry 
 past the windows ; shadows melt and lights are
 
 240 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 shattered, and little rainbows are prisoned by the 
 icicles that hang from the eaves. 
 
 I sit and watch them, and watch the sick-lamp 
 flicker in the night, and watch the blue morning 
 crawl over the hills ; and the old words are stealing 
 down my thought : That is the substance, this the 
 shadow ; that the reality, this the dream. 
 
 I watch her face upon the pillow ; the happy se- 
 cret on its lips ; the smile within its eyes. It is 
 nearly a year now since God sent the face to me. 
 What it has done for me He knows ; what the next 
 year and all the years are to be without it, He 
 knows, too. 
 
 It is slipping away, slipping. And I must 
 lose it. 
 
 Perhaps I should not have said what I said to- 
 night ; but being weak from watching, and seeing 
 how glad she was to go, seeing how all the peace 
 was for her, all the pain for us, I cried, " O Auntie, 
 Auntie, why can't we go too ? Why cant Faith 
 and I go with you ? " 
 
 But she answered me only, " Mary, He knows." 
 
 We will be brave again to-morrow. A little more 
 sunshine in the room ! A little more of Faith and 
 the dolly !
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 24! 
 
 The Sabbath. 
 
 She asked for the child at bedtime to-night, and 
 I laid her down in her night-dress on her mother's 
 arm. She kissed her, and said her prayers, and 
 talked a bit about Mary Ann, and to-morrow, and 
 her snow man. I sat over by the window in the 
 dusk, and watched a little creamy cloud that was 
 folding in the moon. Presently their voices grew 
 low, and at last Faith's stopped altogether. Then 
 I heard in fragments this : 
 
 " Sleepy, dear ? But you won't have many more 
 talks with mamma. Keep awake just a minute, 
 Faith, and hear can you hear ? Mamma will 
 never, never forget her little girl ; she won't go 
 away very far ; she will always love you. Will you 
 remember as long as you live ? She will always see 
 you, though you can't see her, perhaps. Hush, my 
 darling, don't cry ! Is n't God naughty ? No, God 
 is good ; God is always good. He won't take 
 mamma a great way ,off. One more kiss ? There ! 
 now you may go to sleep. One more! Come, 
 Cousin Mary." 
 
 June 6. 
 
 It is a long time since I have written here. I 
 did not want to open the book till I was sure that
 
 242 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 I could open it quietly, and could speak as she 
 would like to have me speak, of what remains to be 
 written. 
 
 But a very few words will tell it all. 
 
 It happened so naturally and so happily, she was 
 so glad when the time came, and she made me so 
 glad for her sake, that I cannot grieve. I say it 
 from my honest heart, I cannot grieve. In the 
 place out of which she has gone, she has left me 
 peace. I think of something that Miss Procter 
 said about the opening of that golden gate, 
 
 " round which the kneeling spirits wait 
 
 The halo seems to linger round those kneeling closest to the door : 
 The joy that lightened from that place shines still upon the watch- 
 er's face." 
 
 I think more often of some things that she herself 
 said in the very last of those pleasant talks, when, 
 turning a leaf in her little Bible, she pointed out to 
 me the words : 
 
 " It is expedient for you that I go away ; for, if I 
 go not away, the Comforter will not come." 
 
 It was one spring-like night, the twenty-ninth 
 of March. 
 
 She had been in less pain, and had chatted and
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 243 
 
 laughed more with us than for many a day. She 
 begged that Faith might stay till dark, and might 
 bring her Noah's ark and play down upon the foot 
 of the bed where she could see her. I sat in the 
 rocking-chair with my face to the window. We did 
 not light the lamps. 
 
 The night came on slowly. Showery clouds 
 flitted by, but there was a blaze of golden color be- 
 hind them. It broke through and scattered them ; 
 it burned them and melted them ; it shot great pink 
 and purple jets up to the zenith ; it fell and lay in 
 amber mist upon the hills. A soft wind swept by, 
 and darted now and then into the glow, and shifted 
 it about, color away from color, and back again. 
 
 " See, Faith ! " she said softly ; " put down the 
 little camel a minute, and look ! " and added after, 
 but neither to the child nor to me, it seemed : " At 
 eventide there shall be light." Phoebe knocked 
 presently, and I went out to see what was wanted, 
 and planned a little for Auntie's breakfast, and 
 came back. 
 
 Faith, with her little ark, was still playing quietly 
 upon the bed. I sat down again in my rocking- 
 chair with my face to the window. Now and then 
 the child's voice broke the silence, asking Where
 
 244 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 should she put the elephant, and was there room 
 there for the yellow bird ? and now and then her 
 mother answered her, and so presently the skies 
 had faded, and so the night came on. 
 
 I was thinking that it was Faith's bedtime, and 
 that I had better light the lamp, when a few dis- 
 tinct, hurried words from the bed attracted my 
 attention. 
 
 " Faith, I think you had better kiss mamma now, 
 and get down." 
 
 There was a change in the voice. I was there 
 in a moment, and lifted the child from the pillow, 
 where she had crept. But she said, " Wait a min- 
 ute, Mary; wait a minute," for Faith clung to 
 her, with one hand upon her cheek, softly patting it. 
 
 I went over and stood by the window. 
 
 It was her mother herself who gently put the 
 little fingers away at last. " Mother's own little 
 girl ! Good night, my darling, my darling." 
 
 So I took the child away to Phoebe, and came 
 back, and shut the door. 
 
 " I thought you might have some message for 
 Roy," she said. 
 
 " Now ? " 
 
 " Now, I think."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 245 
 
 We had often talked of this, and she had prom- 
 ised to remember it, whatever it might be. So I 
 told her But I will not write what I told her. 
 
 I saw that she was playing weakly with her 
 wedding-ring, which hung very loosely below its 
 little worn guard. 
 
 " Take the little guard," she said, " and keep it 
 for Faith ; but bury the other with me : he put it 
 on : nobody else must take it " 
 
 The sentence dropped, unfinished. 
 
 I crept up on the bed beside her, for she seemed 
 to wish it. I asked if I should light the lamp, but 
 she shook her head. The room seemed light, she 
 said, quite light She wondered then if Faith were 
 asleep, and if she would waken early in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 After that I kissed her, and then we said nothing 
 more, only presently she asked me to hold her hand. 
 
 It was quite dark when she turned her face at 
 last towards the window. 
 
 " John ! " she said, " why, John ! " 
 
 ******* 
 
 They came in, with heads uncovered and voices 
 hushed, to see her, in the days while she was lying 
 down stairs among the flowers.
 
 246 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 Once when I thought that she was alone, I went 
 in, it was at twilight, and turned, startled by 
 a figure that was crouched sobbing on the floor. 
 
 " O, I want to go too, / want to go too ! " it cried. 
 
 " She 's ben there all day long," said Phoebe, 
 wiping her eyes, "and she won't go home for a 
 mouthful of victuals, poor creetur ! but she jest sets 
 there and cries and cries, an' there 's no stoppin' of 
 her!" 
 
 It was little Clo. 
 
 At another time, I was there with fresh flowers, 
 when the door opened, creaking a little, and 'Bin 
 Quirk came in on tiptoe, trying in vain to still the 
 noise of his new boots. His eyes were red and wet, 
 and he held out to me timidly a single white carna- 
 tion. 
 
 " Could you put it somewhere, where it would n't 
 do any harm ? I walked way over to Worcester 
 and back to get it. If you could jest hide it under 
 the others out of sight, seems to me it would do 
 me a sight of good to feel it was there, you know." 
 
 I motioned to him to lay it himself between her 
 fingers. 
 
 "O, I darsn't. I 'm not fit, 7'm not. She'd 
 rether have you."
 
 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 But I told him that I knew she would be as 
 pleased that he should give it to her himself as she 
 was when he gave her the China pinks on that dis- 
 tant summer day. So the great awkward fellow 
 bent down, as simply as a child, as tenderly as a 
 woman, and left the flower in its place. 
 
 " She liked 'em," he faltered ; " maybe, if what 
 she used to say is all so, she '11 like 'em now. She 
 liked 'em better than she did machines. I 've just 
 got my carpet-sweeper through ; I was thinking 
 how pleased she 'd be ; I wanted to tell her. If I 
 should go to the good place, if ever I do go, it 
 will be just her doin's, I '11 tell her then, maybe, 
 I " 
 
 He forgot that anybody was there, and, sobbing, 
 hid his face in his great hands. 
 
 So we are waiting for the morning when the 
 gates shall open, Faith and I. I, from my stiller 
 watches, am not saddened by the music of her life. 
 I feel sure that her mother wishes it to be a cheery 
 life. I feel sure that she is showing me, who will 
 have no motherhood by which to show myself, how 
 to help her little girl.
 
 248 THE GATES AJAR. 
 
 And Roy, ah, well, and Roy, he knows. 
 Our hour is not yet come. If the Master will that 
 we should be about His Father's business, what is 
 that to us ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge : Printed by Welch, Bigelow, and Company.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
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