“As I nestled on the bed where she lay so very still, I asked the bystanding mourners where the talking part of my mother had gone to? If she would never talk to, love and pet me any more? and they said ‘Never more,’ and they repeated that dreadful but untrue refrain till my poor heart was full almost to bursting, with its load and pressure of grief; and then I threw myself upon her dear body, and cried till tears refused to flow, for I had lost my mother, sirs--I had lost my mother! Would that I could weep _now_ as I did _then_; it would relieve my over-burdened heart. But I cannot, for the tear fountain seldom thaws. The floods still gather and well up, but they freeze ere they reach the surface, and the heart strings snap and crack, but they will not break. I wish they would, so that I might join, even for a while, that dear mother whom I loved so well. “Childhood’s griefs are written with a feather, upon warm parchment, with stainless ink; but the heart’s greater woes are burned into the memory with a fiery iron stylus; the first lines speedily wear away; the last are ineffaceable. As I lay upon the cold breast of my darling mother, a woman said to me, ‘Do not cry, poor child! She is happy now! She has just gone up, on her way to heaven!’ And I believed what that woman said; and I looked out through the deep foliage of the trees hard by; looked eagerly up into the sky, expecting to see her ascending soul; and as my eye caught the shadowy fleece of a melting silvery cloud, I thought and believed it to be my mother’s sainted soul. I half believe so still; for as the cloud vanished into nothingness on the breast of the blue, I distinctly heard a voice, gentle, soft, and sweetly mournful, like unto the dying notes of a wind-harp, lightly touched by the zephyr’s breath, whisper in my ear these words--which at that time I could not fully comprehend--‘Lonely one of the ages! there may be rest for thee in the life thou’rt now commencing. Let thy motto be--TRY! Despond not, but ever remember that how bitter soever our lot may be, that despite it all, WE MAY BE HAPPY YET! Peace, poor child! Thou’rt watched and guarded by thy mother!’ ‘and the stranger,’ added another, and more silvery voice from out the deep stillness of that noon-tide heaven. I knew that mystic voice--the first one--and felt that it was from beyond Time’s threshold. I trusted it’s sacred words of promise, for I had, child as I was, an unshaken faith, an intuition, if you will, that instant flowing to me, that my blessed mother still lived.