a noble riz up look to my
face. But Josiah sez it is because I have such a soft look that folks
think they can pour their griefs into me and they will sink in, some
like water into cotton battin, and they can lose sight of their sorrows
for a spell and relieve 'em some. Well, Id'no which it is, but
'tennyrate as Molly sot there with me lookin' as wan and pale as a white
rose on a cold November evenin' she told me the whole story, hid from
her own folks but revealed unto a Samantha.

Josiah may say what he's a mind to, but I believe it is the natural
nobility of my linement that drawed it from her. While she wuz away
visitin' this school chum in a southern city she met a young chap
handsome as Appolyan, I knew from what she said, and so talented and
gifted, I could see in a minute they had fell in love voylently from the
very first time they met, and day by day the attraction growed till they
wuz completely wropped up in each other. She said he seemed to worship
her.

But strange, strange thing! with all the love he showed her, in every
word and act, he left her without a word, only a sort of a wild note
saying he could not endure the wretchedness of seeing a heaven so near
that he could not hope to enter, and after that silence, deep, dark and
onbroken silence and despair. "And my heart is broken!" sez she, as she
laid her pretty head in my lap sobbin' out, "What shall I do! Oh, what
shall I do!"

She wep' and cried and cried and wep', and I wep' with her, my snowy
handkerchief held in one hand, the other hand tenderly caressin' the
bowed head in my lap. But as she said the word Silence it brung up
sunthin' I had read that very day, and I sez:

"Dear, did you ever hear of enterin' into the Silence?"

"Yes," sez Molly, liftin' her tear wet, sweet face, "I have a friend who
enters into the Silence for hours, and she says that everything she
greatly desires and asks for at that time, is given her. She calls it
the New Thought."

"And I call it the Old Thought, Molly, older than the creation of man.
And what they call Entering into the Silence, I call Waiting on the
Lord. And what I call prayer, they, from what I read, most probable call
waking up the solar plexus, whatever that may be. But it don't make much
difference what a thing is called, the name is but a pale shadow
compared to the reality. Disciples of the New Thought, Christian
Scientists, Healers, Spiritualists, etc., are, I believe, reaching out
and feel