Alcoholics -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Alcoholism -- Great Britain -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
"I have no dear one to save, now," the other answered. "But I would
give a thousand lives if I had them to save America from Alcohol. I
love my land! There is much about my country that the ordinary English
man or woman has no glimmering of. Your papers are full of the
extravagances and divorces of wealthy vulgarians--champagne corks
floating on cess-pools. You read of trusts and political corruption.
These are the things that are given prominence by the English
newspapers. But of the deep true heart of America little is known here.
We are not really a race of money-grubbers and cheap humourists. We are
great, we shall be greater. The lamps of freedom burn clearly in the
hearts of millions of people of whom Europe never hears. God is with us
still! The Holy Spirit broods yet over the forests and the prairies,
the mountains and the rivers of my land. Read the 'Choir Invisible' by
James Lane Allen and learn of us who are America."
"I will, dear Mrs. Daly. How you have comforted me to-night! God sent
you to me. I feel quite happy now about my darling sister. I feel much
happier about my husband. Whatever this life has in store, there is
always the hereafter. It seems very close to-night, the veil wears
thin."
"We will rest, Mary, while these good thoughts and hopes remain within
us. But before we go to bed, listen to this."
Julia Daly felt in her dressing bag and withdrew a small volume bound
in vermilion morocco.
"It's your best English novel," she said, "far and away the
greatest--Charles Reade's 'The Cloister and the Hearth,' I mean. I'm
reading it for the fifth time. For five years now I have done so each
year."
"For ever?" she began in her beautiful voice, that voice which had
brought hope to so many weary hearts in the great Republic of the West.
"'For ever? Christians live "for ever," and love "for ever" but
they never part "for ever." They part, as part the earth and sun,
only to meet more brightly in a little while. You and I part here
for life. And what is our life? One line in the great story of the
Church, whose son and daughter we are; one handful in the sand of
time, one drop in the ocean of "For ever." Adieu--for the little
moment called "a life!" We part in trouble, we shall meet in peace;
we part in a world of sin and sorrow, we shall meet where all is
purity and love divine; where no ill passions are, but Christ is,
and His Saints around Him clad in white. There, in the turning of
an hour-glass, in the breaking of a bubble, in the passing of a
cloud, she, and thou, and I shall meet again; and sit at the feet
of angels and archangels, apostles and saints, and beam like them
with joy unspeakable, in the light of the shadow of God upon His
throne, for ever--and ever--and ever.'"
The two women undressed and said their prayers, making humble
supplication at the Throne of Grace for themselves, those they loved
and for all those from whom God was hidden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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