She had moments of feeling that there was a reach of happiness possessed by these people of which she knew nothing.  Little side thrusts had come to her from time to time in places where she least expected them.  That question, asked by Flossy during her night of unrest, “Should you be afraid to die?” hovered around this quietly poised young lady in a most unaccountable manner.  All the more persistently did it cling because she could not shake it off with the thought that it was silly.  Common sense told her that the strange, solemn shadow, which came so steadily after men, and so surely enveloped one after another among the grandest intellects that the world owned, was not a thing to pass over lightly.

After all, why should she not be afraid of death?  Then that strange gentleman who had persisted in ranking her among the praying people! he had left his shadow.  Why did she not pray?  She wondered over this in a vague sort of way; wondered how it seemed to kneel down alone, and speak to an invisible presence; wondered if those who so knelt always felt as though they were really speaking to God.

There were times when Ruth was exceedingly disgusted with these perplexing thoughts, and wanted nothing so much as to get away from them.  She resented this intrusion upon her quiet.  This day was one of those in which she was impatient of all these things, and she had made her toilet with great satisfaction, and said within herself complacently:  “We are to have one hour at last devoted to this mundane sphere and the mortals who inhabit it; most of the time these Chautauquans talk and act as though earth was only a railroad station, where people changed cars and went on to heaven.  Dr. Cuyler is going to refresh us with some actual living specimens of humanity.  He can’t make a sermon out of that subject if he tries.”

But Ruth Erskine had not measured the power of the earnest preachers of Jesus Christ.  As if Dr. Cuyler could talk for an hour to thousands of immortal souls, and leave Christ and heaven and immortality out.

To Ruth these three words constituted a sermon, and she got them that day.  Not that he had an idea that he was preaching Christ, except incidentally, as a man refers almost unconsciously to the one whom he loves best in all the world but Ruth knew he was.  It came in little sudden touches when she least expected it, when heart and soul were wrought upon with some strong enthusiasm by the splendid picture of a splendid man—­as when he told of Spurgeon.  It was a glowing description, such as thrilled Ruth, and made her feel that to have just one glimpse of that great man, with his great marvelous power over humanity, would be worth a lifetime.