Produced by Al Haines Intra Muros _By_ REBECCA RUTER SPRINGER DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING CO. ELGIN, ILLINOIS Copyright, 1898, By David C. Cook Publishing Co. Elgin, Illinois. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The pages of this little volume contain no fancy sketch, written to while away an idle hour; but are the true, though greatly condensed, record of an experience during days when life hung in the balance between Time and Eternity, with the scales dipping decidedly toward the Eternity side. I am painfully aware of the fact that I can never paint for others the scenes as they appeared to me during those wonderful days. If I can only dimly show the close linking of the two lives--the mortal with the divine--as they then appeared to me, I may be able to partly tear the veil from the death we so dread, and show it to be only an open door into a new and beautiful phase of the life we now live. If any of the scenes depicted should seem irreverent in view of our religious training here, I can only say, "I give it as it came to me." In those strange, happy hours the close blending of the two lives, so wrapped about with the Father's watchful care and tender love; the reunion of friends, with the dear earth-ties unchanged; the satisfied desires, the glad surprises and the divine joys, all intensified and illumined by the reverence and love and adoration that all hearts gave to the blessed Trinity, appeared to me the most perfect revelation of that "blessed life" of which here we so fondly dream. With the hope that it may comfort and uplift some who read, even as it then did, and as its memory ever will do, for me, I submit this imperfect sketch of a most perfect vision. R.R.S. "_Shall we stop at that poor line, the grave, which all our Christianity is always trying to wipe out and make nothing of, and which we always insist on widening into a great gulf? Shall we not stretch our thought beyond, and feel the life-blood of this holy church, this living body of Christ, pulsing out into the saints who are living there, and coming back throbbing with tidings of their glorious and sympathetic life?_" --_Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D._ CHAPTER I. When the holy angels meet us, As we go to join their band, Shall we know the friends that greet us, In the glorious spirit-land? Shall we see the same eyes shining On us, as in days of yore? Shall we feel their dear arms twining Fondly 'round us as before? Shall we know each other there? --[Rev. R. Lowry.