r?" I said. "I understand, of course, how
it should be a fit symbol or likeness for one; but a live pigeon to come
out of a heart!"

"It MUST puzzle you! It cannot fail to do so!"

"A prayer is a thought, a thing spiritual!" I pursued.

"Very true! But if you understood any world besides your own, you would
understand your own much better.--When a heart is really alive, then it
is able to think live things. There is one heart all whose thoughts
are strong, happy creatures, and whose very dreams are lives. When some
pray, they lift heavy thoughts from the ground, only to drop them on it
again; others send up their prayers in living shapes, this or that, the
nearest likeness to each. All live things were thoughts to begin with,
and are fit therefore to be used by those that think. When one says to
the great Thinker:--'Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now!'
that is a prayer--a word to the big heart from one of its own little
hearts.--Look, there is another!"

This time the raven pointed his beak downward--to something at the foot
of a block of granite. I looked, and saw a little flower. I had never
seen one like it before, and cannot utter the feeling it woke in me by
its gracious, trusting form, its colour, and its odour as of a new world
that was yet the old. I can only say that it suggested an anemone, was
of a pale rose-hue, and had a golden heart.

"That is a prayer-flower," said the raven.

"I never saw such a flower before!" I rejoined.

"There is no other such. Not one prayer-flower is ever quite like
another," he returned.

"How do you know it a prayer-flower?" I asked.

"By the expression of it," he answered. "More than that I cannot tell
you. If you know it, you know it; if you do not, you do not."

"Could you not teach me to know a prayer-flower when I see it?" I said.

"I could not. But if I could, what better would you be? you would not
know it of YOURSELF and ITself! Why know the name of a thing when the
thing itself you do not know? Whose work is it but your own to open your
eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of
you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!"

But I did see that the flower was different from any flower I had ever
seen before; therefore I knew that I must be seeing a shadow of the
prayer in it; and a great awe came over me to think of the heart
listening to the flower.

CHAPTER VI. THE SEXTON'S COTTAGE