“Almost persuaded, now to believe.”

That was certainly herself; she felt it, knew it; in the face of that knowledge think how solemn the words grew: 

    “Almost will not prevail,
    Almost is but to fail;
    Sad, sad that bitter wail,
    Almost,—­but lost!”

Was that for her, too?  In short, Eurie out there alone, among the silent trees, felt and admitted this fact:  that the time had actually come to her when this question must be decided, either for or against, and decided forever.

Sunday morning at Chautauqua!  A white day.  There can be none of all that throng who spent the 15th day of August, 1875, in that sacred place, who remember it without a thrill.  A perfect day!  Glorious and glowing sunshine everywhere; and beauty, such perfect beauty of lake and grove!  The God of nature smiled lovingly on Chautauqua that morning.

Our girls seemed to think that the perfect day required perfection of attire, and it was noticeable that the taste of each settled on spotless white, without color or ornament, other than a spray of leaves and grasses, which one and another of them gathered almost without knowing it, and placed in belt or hair.  Outward calm, but inward unrest, at least so far as some were concerned; Marion Wilbur among the number.

It was a very heavy heart that she carried that day.  There was no unbelief; that demon was conquered.  Instead there was an overpowering, terrible certainty.  And now came Satan with the whole of her past life which had turned to sin before her, and hurled it on her poor shrinking shoulders, until she felt almost to faint beneath the load; she lay miserably on her bed, and thought that she would not add to her burden by going to the service, that she knew already too much.  But an appeal from Flossy to keep her company, as the others had gone, had the effect of changing her mind.

Armed each with a camp-chair, they made their way to the stand, after the great congregation were seated.  A fortunate thought those camp-chairs had been; there was not a vacant seat anywhere.

Marion placed her chair out of sight both of stand and speaker, but within hearing, and gave herself up to her own troubled thoughts, until the opening exercises were concluded and the preacher announced his text:  “The place that is called Calvary.”

She roused a little and tried to determine whose voice it was, it had a familiar sound, but she could not be sure, and she tried to go back to the useless questionings of her own heart; but she could not.  She could never be deaf to eloquence; whoever the speaker was, there was that in his very opening sentences which roused and held her.  Whatever he had to say, whether or not it was anything that had to do with her, she must listen.  Still the wonderment existed as to which voice it was.

But when he reached the sentences:  “Jump the ages!  Come down here to Chautauqua Lake to-day, O Son of God!  O Son of Man!  O Son of Mary!  When the prophet of old said, ’He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied,’ did he look along the centuries and see the gathered thousands here, who have just sung, ’Tell me the old, old story’?  What story?  Why, the story of the place that is called Calvary!”—­Marion leaned forward and addressed the person next to her.