‘No matter, dear,’ said she when she put the paper away, ‘there are many more things to try.’
But she was mistaken. There were very few things indeed to try. My memory was indeed so impenetrable that it rendered experiment almost hopeless. So, by degrees, Alice Lee desisted, and I own that I was grateful when she did so, for the dark struggles, the blind efforts her questions and suggestions excited in me grew too fierce for my strength. She of course never could have imagined the anguish she caused me. But once I observed her viewing me steadfastly after she had asked me some question, and from that time she gradually relaxed her efforts to help me.
Mrs. Lee was glad to have me as a companion for her daughter. It made me happy to wait upon the dear girl, and my ministrations lightened the mother’s duties. I read aloud to Alice, and heard her read aloud to me. She had a hundred things to tell me about her home, about Newcastle, and the sister who had been taken from her. She possessed a little draught-board, and she taught me to play that simple game--taught me to play it though it had been one of the most familiar of our games at home! She owned a volume of solemn, heart-inspiring thoughts, which she loved to read to me and I to listen to. Often have I desired to meet with that book since; but persistently as I have inquired never could I hear of a copy. It was a collection of extracts from great and holy thinkers. Many human griefs and sufferings were dealt with, and the language of every man was simple and sublime, so that there was scarcely a passage that Alice Lee read aloud which I was unable to understand.
Never can I forget her look as we sat together in her cabin one afternoon, she reading from this book and I listening. The subject was Death. As she read her face lighted up. I gazed with wonder, with something of awe and adoration at the tender triumphant enthusiasm of her expression. A delicate flush tinged her cheeks, her bosom rose and fell as though to a sobbing of joy. From time to time she paused with lifted eyes, and her lips murmured inarticulately.
‘It is beautiful and it is true!’ she exclaimed as she closed the book. ‘Why is not death always thus represented? All must suffer. Why should death be called the King of Terrors? The imaginations of men picture sleep as an angel bending over the weary, lulling pain, wreathing sorrowful lips with smiles. But death--the deeper sleep, the angel that is God’s messenger to man--death must be made terrifying and shocking! It is a dreadful spectre poising a lance! Oh, death is divine; it is no terrifying skeleton, but an angel of love, whose gift of slumber is sweet and sure, from whose dreamless sleep you arise to find yourself in the presence of God.’