a
"Might-have-been" that touches with a sting, but reveals also to us
an inner glimpse of the wide and beautiful "May Be." It is all
there; somebody else has it now while we wait; but the years of God
are full of satisfying, each soul shall have its turn; it is His
good _pleasure_ to give us the kingdom. There is so much room, there
are such thronging possibilities, there is such endless hope!

To feel this, one must feel, however dimly, the inner realm, out of
which the shadows of this life come and pass, to interpret to us the
laid up reality.

"The real world is the inside world."

Desire Ledwith blessed Uncle Oldways in her heart for giving her
that word.

It comforted her for her father. If his life here had been hard,
toilsome, mistaken even; if it had never come to that it might have
come to; if she, his own child, had somehow missed the reality of
him here, and he of her,--was he not passed now into the within?
Might she not find him there; might they not silently and
spiritually, without sign, but needing no sign, begin to understand
each other now? Was not the real family just beginning to be born
into the real home?

Ah, that word _real_! How deep we have to go to find the root of it!
It is fast by the throne of God; in the midst.

Hazel Ripwinkley talked about "real folks." She sifted, and she
found out instinctively the true livers, the genuine _neahburs_,
nigh-dwellers; they who abide alongside in spirit, who shall find
each other in the everlasting neighborhood, when the veil falls.

But there, behind,--how little, in our petty outside vexations or
gladnesses, we stop to think of or perceive it!--is the actual, even
the present, inhabiting; there is the kingdom, the continuing city,
the real heaven and earth in which we already live and labor, and
build up our homes and lay up our treasure and the loving Christ,
and the living Father, and the innumerable company of angels, and
the unseen compassing about of friends gone in there, and they on
this earth who truly belong to us inwardly, however we and they may
be bodily separated,--are the Real Folks!

What matters a little pain, outside? Go _in_, and rest from it!

There is where the joy is, that we read outwardly, spelling by
parts imperfectly, in our own and others' mortal experience; there
is the content of homes, the beauty of love, the delight of
friendship,--not shut in to any one or two, but making the common
air that all souls breathe.