But in that other heart how was it?--how
with the sweet saint that was talking to herself in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs?
The good child had remembered her mother's parting words the night
before,--"Put your mind upon your duties,"--and had begun her first
conscious exercise of thought with a prayer that grace might be given
her to do it. But even as she spoke, mingling and interweaving with that
golden thread of prayer was another consciousness, a life in another
soul, as she prayed that the grace of God might overshadow him, shield
him from temptation, and lead him up to heaven; and this prayer so got
the start of the other, that, ere she was aware, she had quite forgotten
self, and was feeling, living, thinking in that other life.
The first discovery she made, when she looked out into the fragrant
orchard, whose perfumes steamed in at her window, and listened to the
first chirping of birds among, the old apple-trees, was one that has
astonished many a person before her; it was this: she found that all
that had made life interesting to her was suddenly gone.
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