Josiah may say what he’s a mind to, but I believe it is the natural nobility of my linement that drawed it from her.  While she wuz away visitin’ this school chum in a southern city she met a young chap handsome as Appolyan, I knew from what she said, and so talented and gifted, I could see in a minute they had fell in love voylently from the very first time they met, and day by day the attraction growed till they wuz completely wropped up in each other.  She said he seemed to worship her.

But strange, strange thing! with all the love he showed her, in every word and act, he left her without a word, only a sort of a wild note saying he could not endure the wretchedness of seeing a heaven so near that he could not hope to enter, and after that silence, deep, dark and onbroken silence and despair.  “And my heart is broken!” sez she, as she laid her pretty head in my lap sobbin’ out, “What shall I do!  Oh, what shall I do!”

She wep’ and cried and cried and wep’, and I wep’ with her, my snowy handkerchief held in one hand, the other hand tenderly caressin’ the bowed head in my lap.  But as she said the word Silence it brung up sunthin’ I had read that very day, and I sez: 

“Dear, did you ever hear of enterin’ into the Silence?”

“Yes,” sez Molly, liftin’ her tear wet, sweet face, “I have a friend who enters into the Silence for hours, and she says that everything she greatly desires and asks for at that time, is given her.  She calls it the New Thought.”

“And I call it the Old Thought, Molly, older than the creation of man.  And what they call Entering into the Silence, I call Waiting on the Lord.  And what I call prayer, they, from what I read, most probable call waking up the solar plexus, whatever that may be.  But it don’t make much difference what a thing is called, the name is but a pale shadow compared to the reality.  Disciples of the New Thought, Christian Scientists, Healers, Spiritualists, etc., are, I believe, reaching out and feeling for the Light as posies growin’ in a dark suller send out little pale shoots huntin’ for the sunlight.  And so I feel kinder soft and meller towards the hull caboodle on ’em though I can’t foller all their beliefs.

“For I, as a member of the M.E. meetin’ house, call this great beneficient over-rulin’ Power that sot the world spinnin’ on its axletrees and holds it up, lest it dashes aginst the planets, and directs the flight of the tiny bird fleeing before the snows; this Mighty Force that controls us from the cradle to the grave, but which we cannot see no more than we can see His servants, the cold and wind that freezes us or the warmth and love that blesses us.  This Power, that whether we scoff or pray, holds us all in the hollow of His mighty hand, I call God the Father, Son and Holy Guest, and believe it once took mortal shape and dwelt with humanity to uplift and bless it.  And that love, that torture, crucifixion and death could not slay still yearns over this sad old world, still as the comforting Guest makes its home in human hearts that love and trust.”