Heavenly vision,
the white ideals that shone out in my mind so high and clear in the
mornin' light, and I wuz so sure I could reach. But havin' set down
to rest in the heat of the day, and bein' drawn off into the shadders
and thickets of environin' cares and perplexities, I didn't git nigh
enough to grasp holt of, and I whispered as much to my pardner.

And he said he felt different, he had always ever sence he sot out
marched right straight towards the Kingdom.

Sez I, "Josiah Allen, hain't you ever meandered at all from that
straight and narrer way?"

"No mom, not a inch, not a hair's breadth." I wuz dumb-foundered by
his conceit as many times as I had witnessed it.

The sermon that follered wuz white and glowin' with the light of
Heaven. You could see that _he_ had not been disobedient to that
Divine vision that had been revealed to him. The deep sweet look of
his eyes told of them supreme heights his own soul had reached.
Upliftin', sympathizin', soul searchin', callin' on the best in every
heart there to rise up and try to fly Heavenward.

His looks and words rousted up my soul and carried me off so fur from
the world and Piller Pint, that I lost sight entirely of the crowd
around me. But anon I hearn a voice at my side and I see Faith had
come back onbeknown to me (she had been in Sister Meechum's tent
mendin' a rent in her dress). But when I looked at her I realized how
the face of St. Stephen looked. It sez, "His face shone like the face
of an angel." Faith's looked jest so, only tears wuz slowly droppin'
from her eyes and runnin' down her white cheeks. Sez I, whisperin' to
her with or in my axents,

"What is it, Faith? What is it, dear? Is it the Power?"

I most knew it wuz, and I wuz mekanically turnin' it over in my mind
what I should do with her if she fell over prostrate, and where I
should lay her out. When she turned, her glowin' awe-struck eyes held
a world of joy and glory in each one on 'em.

"Yes, it is the Power, the power and goodness of God." And she
whispered in blissful axents, "It is Richard, Richard redeemed and
working for my Master."

I see it all, it wuz the lost lover of her youth, I read it in her
face. You could have knocked me down with a clothes-pin aimed by a
infant.

"How come he here?" sez I in a onbelievin' way.

"God sent him!" She whispered. "He sent this blessedness to me, to
know his soul is saved, that he is working for Him."

I felt queer.

That afternoon th