e
fingers loosened their hold, and yet I did not feel that I was falling.
It was gone, and I floated on. With its absence came the wish for
action. My eyes were unloosed, and I looked up. Far above me I saw the
Hand that had brought me up hither. It had gone on before, and was
waiting my coming. I made an effort to reach it.

A voice came; and clouds, rosy, ambient, such as angels hang around the
pavilion of the sun, were unfolding their glory-woven webs and weaving
me in. "It is good to be here," I whispered to my spirit's inmost sense
of hearing; and the voice that I heard spake these words unto me:--

"You have been brought up hither to learn your mission upon the earth to
which you go."

Old, prophetic, syllabic sounds, lisped in the place whence I had come,
were given unto me, and I answered,--

"Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth!"

Then a rushing wind of sound filled my ears, and I saw the flashing of a
wing of angel in among the cumulosity of clouds, and it made an opening
into an ethereous region beyond. An oval, azurous picture was before me,
set in this rolling, surging frame of ambient gold and silver glory.

"It is not for me to see in there," I thought; and I shut my eyes.

The voice that I had heard before spake once more:--

"Learn what thy God would have thee to do. Look up!"

Obeying the mighty behest, I beheld, and an ovaline picture, painted in
the artistry of heaven, let down from the crystalline walls, that I
might not see, and held fast by a cord of gold, safe in an angel's
keeping, God had sent for me to look upon.

It was not such as masters of earth toil to paint. It was a living group
that I saw.

Four figures stood there.

The first one was the face that I had just asked Chloe the semblance of.
Loving past expression's power. The love emitted from those eyes brought
tears into mine, and I heard one of them go dropping down, down into the
cloudy deep below, as one day I had heard one falling elsewhere, on a
cold stone.

Two hands were wafted out towards me, and the lips were just parted, as
if waiting for coming words. I looked and listened, a little blinded by
the glory and my tears.

"Go forth, dear child, to the work thy God appoints for thee to do!"

I looked up a little higher, just over the face of my mother, and, in
holiest benediction, the Hand that had brought me up hither was laid
upon her head. One stood beside her, leaning upon her shoulder. I
recognized the fa