Virginia said: “I have always prayed. When I was little I got in the habit of saying a silly little German prayer, so that I could not go to sleep without saying something. So when the little prayer seemed too silly to me, I began saying each evening the stanza of a poem.” “What poem?” I asked. “The last stanza of the ‘Chambered Nautilus.’ I could not go to sleep unless I said it.” She recited it for us. Marian said: “It depends on what you mean by prayer. I never learned to say any, nor ever wanted to, but I do have a prayer-feeling.” We all agreed that the prayer which asked for something definite was folly. I said prayer was getting into oneness with the vast Self around and behind us, and drawing strength from that which was ours for the asking, which _was_ ourself. Marian said it was getting into harmony with the world. We thought every one had that feeling of vastness, of oneness with God, at times. Virginia said she got it especially when she was by the sea. “I feel it most,” said Marian, “when I am out of doors, and feel my close relation with nature.” Henry said he felt it most in a big crowd of people. “Yes,” answered Ruth; “then you feel how little all this is, and the vast, big life above it all.” “You don’t mean, Ruth,” I asked “that you feel the crowd to be a little thing?” “Oh, no,” she answered. “I feel it in the crowd.” Henry said: “To be among people always arouses that feeling of sympathy.” There are many ways of praying, I said; to speak certain words that aroused in us the prayer-feeling was a good way; but that the words were only to awaken the feeling in us, and were worth nothing by themselves. If one could feel the prayer without any words whatever, it would be just as well. Florence thought it very hard not to get to repeat words by rote. Henry said he always made a particular effort to think of the meaning of the words as he said them. “I don’t believe,” said Virginia, “that it is so much thought as feeling. I don’t always think of the meaning of those words when I say them, but I get from them the feeling that I must have, to go to sleep.” “And now,” I went on, “it seems especially important to get into this frame of mind just before we go to sleep. For during sleep it seems as if the bigger self were working for us. And as we go to sleep, so shall we be next day. I think that if, as you fall asleep, you ask—your vast self—for strength, for the power to do whatever you know you must do next day, and to solve whatever problems you have to solve, and then get the deep sense of prayer, you usually awaken with the strength you need, and your problems solved. Is it not so?”