A man’s grand life, says someone, is a dream of his youth realized in and by his later years; what then shall we say of a woman’s? Think not on this; but let your soul answer. The answer should be there, in the hearts of all; but whether it comes from memory, from things now half forgotten, or from within, or from some birth-dream had in childhood, who shall say? Yet is it there; like a child’s dream of a star; happy he whose manhood sees the star, its dream not yet departed. And all of us have fancied women so, at some time in our lives; have we never known one such? For but one such is enough, mother, bride, or daughter. Some slight girl whose maidenhood was a sweet bloom, like Mary’s lily in the Temple; and then we may have lost sight or knowledge of her, for a time. And then perhaps we have met some other woman, some old woman, with white hairs; not the same, of course, and yet it seems as if we could have pieced together their two lives and make them like one brook, that we have known in places only, which brings soft fields and flowers. And be sure that there was in between some womanhood, some mother’s life, not known save to her sons and God, not preached in meetings and conventions; deep hidden in some human fireside, like the brook that makes so green a summer wood--Such lives are white and shining, like a dream of God’s made real on the earth. And all the world seems thirst, and lust, and envy, and desire; the fires of heaven are put out, and all men struggling, trampling, for the colored stones of earth; and yet such blooms do come upon it. But they blossom stilly, like silent lilies born above the meadow-mire. White and pure they shine, and breathe in heaven’s sunlight, and give out heaven’s fragrance, borne each upon its slender stem above the blind, black bog.