at such luxurious ease and calm.  But by and by, as she came to full possession of her waking senses, it appeared to her that there was some change in the atmosphere, in the scene.  There began to steal into the air about her, the soft dawn as of a summer morning, the lovely blueness of the first opening of daylight before the sun.  It could not be the light of the moon, which she had seen before she went to bed; and all was so still, that it could not be the bustling, wintry day which comes at that time of the year late, to find the world awake before it.  This was different; it was like the summer dawn, a soft suffusion of light growing every moment.  And by and by it occurred to her that she was not in the little room where she had lain down.  There were no dim walls or roof, her little pictures were all gone, the curtains at her window.  The discovery gave her no uneasiness in that delightful calm.  She lay still to think of it all, to wonder, yet undisturbed.  It half amused her that these things should be changed, but did not rouse her yet with any shock of alteration.  The light grew fuller and fuller round, growing into day, clearing her eyes from the sweet mist of the first waking.  Then she raised herself upon her arm.  She was not in her room, she was in no scene she knew.  Indeed it was scarcely a scene at all, nothing but light, so soft and lovely, that it soothed and caressed her eyes.  She thought all at once of a summer morning when she was a child, when she had woke in the deep night which yet was day, early, so early that the birds were scarcely astir, and had risen up with a delicious sense of daring and of being all alone in the mystery of the sunrise, in the unawakened world which lay at her feet to be explored, as if she were Eve just entering upon Eden.  It was curious how all those childish sensations, long forgotten, came back to her as she found herself so unexpectedly out of her sleep in the open air and light.  In the recollection of that lovely hour, with a smile at herself, so different as she now knew herself to be, she was moved to rise and look a little more closely about her, and see where she was.

When I call her a little Pilgrim, I do not mean that she was a child; on the contrary, she was not even young.  She was little by nature, with as little flesh and blood as was consistent with mortal life; and she was one of those who are always little for love.  The tongue found diminutives for her, the heart kept her in a perpetual youth.  She was so modest and so gentle, that she always came last, so long as there was any one whom she could put before her.  But this little body, and the soul which was not little, and the heart which was big and great, had known all the round of sorrows that fill a woman’s life, without knowing any of its warmer blessings.  She had nursed the sick, she had entertained the weary, she had consoled the dying.  She had gone about the world, which had no prize or recompense for her, with a smile.  Her little presence had been always bright.  She was not clever; you might have said she had no mind at all; but so wise and right and tender a heart, that it was as good as genius.  This is to let you know what this little Pilgrim had been.