WE remember as it were yesterday the first time we saw her, though
it was a brief glance, and she was so quickly forgotten that most of
us had passed into the supper-room and the rest had reached the
door, heedless of the stranger, when one of our party, perhaps more
thoughtful than the others, cast her eyes on the quiet little figure
that stood, near the fire as if irresolute, whether to follow or
remain. With lady-like politeness she received the excuses which one
of the gentlemen offered for having preceded her, and entered the
room.
She was very slight, and thin, and pale, her, eyes were of a light
gray and her hair inclined to redness, but her forehead, was broad
and smooth and, about her thin lips there hovered an expression of
sweetness and repose.
We have forgotten now what first led us to feel that beneath that
unprepossessing exterior were concealed the pulses of a warm,
generous heart, and the powers of a strong and cultivated mind, but
we remember well the morning that she set her seal upon our heart.
It was a clear, cold, brilliant morning in March. The whole broad
country was covered with a thick crust of hard, glittering snow, and
every tree was encased in ice. The oaks and elms and chestnuts and
beeches from their trunks upward and outward to their minutest
twigs, and the pines and firs with their greenness shining through,
sparkled like diamonds and emeralds in the brightness of the sun.
O, it was a glorious morning, and we have seldom since been so young
in feeling as never we are sure in years, as when we walked forth
into its bracing air. And Aunt Rachel--she enjoyed it; the broad icy
fields, the difficult ascent of the steep slippery hills and the
"duckies" down them, and the crackling of the icicles as we thrust
our way through the bristling under-brush of those diamond-cressed
woods. We loved even to eat the icicles that hung from the pines
with their pungent flavour, strong as though their pointed leaves
had been steeped in boiling water. It was a pleasure to taste as
well as see the trees.
As we entered the "Main Road" and were passing along by the "Asylum
for the Insane," a clear, pleasant voice from one of the cells in
the upper story, accosted us: "Good morning, ladies." We looked up
and bowed in reply to the salutation. "It is a beautiful morning,"
he continued, "and I should like myself to take a walk down on 'Main
Street,' but my folks have sent me here to be shut up because they
say I am crazy, but I am sure I am not crazy, and I can't see why
they should think so." And we thought the same as we listened to the
calm, pleasant tones of his voice, till he added, "It will soon make
me beside myself to be with this wild, screaming set; and it doesn't
do them any good either to shut them up here. What they want is the
Grace of God, and I'll put the Grace of God into them."
His voice grew wild and excited, but we knew that a whole volume of
truth had been uttered in those simple words: "What they want is the
Grace of God."
The Grace of God. How many has it saved--rescued--from madness! how
have prayer and watchfulness been blest in conquering self, in
subduing rampant passion and the wild, disorderly vagaries of the
brain!
As we listen, the low whispered prayer of a Hall when he felt the
billows of angry passion about to sweep over his soul, "O, Lamb of
God, calm my perturbed spirit," we feel that but for such
interceding prayer and that watchfulness which accompanied it, the
insanity to which he was temporarily subject would have won the same
mastery over the mighty powers of his mind as over those of Swift,
and the glory of his "wide fame" as well as the peace of his "humble
hope," would have been exchanged for the vagaries of the madman or
the drivellings of the idiot.
The Grace of God. We thought of John Randolph, with his sway over
the minds of others, with a "wit and eloquence that recalled the
splendours of ancient oratory," yet with so little command over
himself that his weak frame sometimes sank beneath the excitement of
his temper, and gusts of passion were succeeded by fainting-fits;
and when the one desire of his heart was denied, when a love mighty
as every other passion of his soul failed him, his grief,
ungovernable and frenzied as his rage, overwhelmed him, and the
"taint of madness which ran in his line," flooded his brain. But
when the atheist became a Christian; when, in his own words, he felt
"the Spirit of God was not the chimera of heated brains, nor a
device of artful men to frighten and cajole the credulous, but an
existence to be felt and understood as the whisperings of one's own
heart;" his prayer of, "Lord! I believe, help thou my unbelief," was
answered in calm and peace to his soul.
"The saddest thought," said Aunt Rachel, as we turned away from that
gloomy edifice, "the saddest thought connected with that building
is, that so large a number of its unhappy inmates have brought their
misery upon themselves, are the victims of their own irregular and
indulged passions."
As we turned and looked upon her smooth brow, her serious and serene
eyes and her sweet, calm mouth, we marked a look of subdued
suffering mingled with an expression of Christian triumph; and we
knew that she had felt "the ploughings of grief;" that she had
learned "how sublime a thing it is to suffer and grow strong;" but,
though we wondered deeply, we never knew in what form she had been
called "to pass under the rod;" but we heard a voice that said,
"Fear not; when thou passest through the waters, I will be with
thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."
Nay, fear not, weak and fainting soul,
Though the wild waters round thee roll,
He will sustain thy faltering way,
Will be thy sure, unfailing stay.
And though it were the fabled stream
Whose waves were fire of fearful gleam,
He still would bear thee safely through
The fire, but cleanse thy soul anew.