about like a madcap, at the first coming
of spring, with a handful of half-blown jessamines tied in a corner of
my muslin scarf, and as I stroked my forehead with the soft, rounded,
tapering buds, the touch of my mother's fingers would come back to me;
and I clearly realised that the tenderness which dwelt in the tips of
those lovely fingers was the very same as that which blossoms every day
in the purity of these jessamine buds; and that whether we know it or
not, this tenderness is on the earth in boundless measure.

The acquaintance which I made with Death at the age of twenty-four was a
permanent one, and its blow has continued to add itself to each
succeeding bereavement in an ever lengthening chain of tears. The
lightness of infant life can skip aside from the greatest of calamities,
but with age evasion is not so easy, and the shock of that day I had to
take full on my breast.

That there could be any gap in the unbroken procession of the joys and
sorrows of life was a thing I had no idea of. I could therefore see
nothing beyond, and this life I had accepted as all in all. When of a
sudden death came and in a moment made a gaping rent in its
smooth-seeming fabric, I was utterly bewildered. All around, the trees,
the soil, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, remained as immovably
true as before; and yet the person who was as truly there, who, through
a thousand points of contact with life, mind, and heart, was ever so
much more true for me, had vanished in a moment like a dream. What
perplexing self-contradiction it all seemed to me as I looked around!
How was I ever to reconcile that which remained with that which had
gone?

The terrible darkness which was disclosed to me through this rent,
continued to attract me night and day as time went on. I would ever and
anon return to take my stand there and gaze upon it, wondering what
there was left in place of what had gone. Emptiness is a thing man
cannot bring himself to believe in; that which is _not_, is untrue; that
which is untrue, is not. So our efforts to find something, where we see
nothing, are unceasing.

Just as a young plant, surrounded by darkness, stretches itself, as it
were on tiptoe, to find its way out into the light, so when death
suddenly throws the darkness of negation round the soul it tries and
tries to rise into the light of affirmation. And what other sorrow is
comparable to the state wherein darkness prevents the finding of a way
ou