"You just seem to live in the present," wealthy Mrs. Greyson said with a
sigh, as she folded her jeweled fingers over her rich brocade, "I don't
see how you do it! Life is one long presentiment with me. I am filled
with such horrible forebodings. I tell Doctor Randolph, it is a sort of
moral nightmare."
"Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of pain you endured,
From evils that never arrived!"
Evadne quoted the words from a book of old French poems she had found in
the library. Then she asked gently, "Why should you worry about the
future, dear Mrs. Greyson, when it is such a waste of time? Don't you
believe our Father loves his children?
"A waste of time." That was a new way of looking at it! Mrs. Greyson had
always prided herself upon being thrifty, and, if God loved, would he
let any real harm happen? She knew she would shield her children. How
blind she had been!
"Ah, but you have never known sorrow!" and Mrs. Morner drew her sable
draperies around her with a sigh. "Just look at your face! Not a shadow
upon it and hardly a wrinkle. You are one of the favored ones with whom
life has been all sunshine."
Mrs. Everidge laughed brightly. She had never pined to pose as a martyr
before the world.
"God has been wondrous kind to me," she said, "but there is a cure for
all sorrow, dear friend, in his love. The great Physician is the only
one who has a medicament for that disease. It is not forgetfulness, you
know--he does not deal in narcotics--but he lays his pierced hand upon
our bleeding hearts and stills their pain. Our memory is as fresh as
ever, but it is memory with the sting taken out."
"Ah, but you cannot understand--how should you? You have always had
everything you wanted, and you have never lost anything or longed for
what has been denied you!" and a toilworn woman, whose life seemed one
long battle with disappointment, looked enviously at Miss Diana, over
whose peaceful face life's twilight was falling in tender colors.
"Not quite everything I wanted, dear," said Miss Diana softly, "but I
have come to know that God himself is sufficient for all our needs."
"Our dear Miss Diana has learned that 'we must sit in the sunshine if we
would reflect the rainbow,'" said Aunt Marthe in her low tones. "It is a
good rule, 'for every look we take at self, to take ten looks at Jesus.'
She lives in the light of his smile."
Then through the open window they heard Evadne singing,
"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west,
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness,
Round our restlessness, his rest."
And the weary soul folded its tired wings, all wounded with vain
beatings against the prison bars of circumstance, and was hushed into a
great stillness against the heart of its Father.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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