ies. Explain as the teacher explains to the child she is
trying to teach."

"I mean," answered the girl, "that death is an enlightenment and a
discovery. It will give us revelations of ourselves; for never do we
find Him save as we find Him in His, and we are His. You will not know
who and what you are until you get far enough ahead, my master, to look
back upon yourself. We must go up and go on a long way before we know
what we are now."

Here the conversation paused for a while and nothing disturbed the
profound silence but the roar of the rapids whose ceaseless sound
swelled and sank in the silence like the waves of the sea. At length the
man said, "Have you thought of the land ahead? Is it real? And where is
it, and what the life lived there?"

"Why do you ask me such questions," answered the girl, "when you know
that I have thought only as you have taught me to think, am but
repeating the faith I learned from your lips? Surely, there is a land
ahead, or rather many lands,--lands and seas and blessed islands in the
seas where the blessed live; and loves and lovers and homes exquisitely
and endlessly peaceful are there; and men who have grown nobler than
they were here; and women, far sweeter than their short life here might
make them, live and love in the lands ahead."

The girl spoke low but earnestly, and her words sounded on the silent
air like softly-breathed music, so much did her sweet self possess her
words. And the man listened as men listen to music when it comes softly
and sweetly to their ears.

"Mary," said the man, "you make the life ahead seem so sweet that I
shrink from entering it, lest by so doing I escape the punishment for my
sin I would fain inflict upon myself."

"Oh, master!" exclaimed the girl, "you do mistake; for though I do
believe all I have said and would trust myself to the far future as
young eagles trust themselves to the warm air when they have grown equal
to the joy of flight, yet the life of this earth is sweet, so sweet when
the heart is satisfied that one might fear to exchange it for another as
one fears to part with what fully satisfies, even though the promise of
more abundant things is sure as God. It is sweet to breathe the airs of
the earth as health receives them. 'Tis sweet to live and love and serve
in loving and find your happiness in giving it. 'Tis sweet to teach and
guide men up and on to wider knowledge and nobler living,--to make them
gentler and finer in the