Within the heart of all there lies deeply imbedded the “Black Drop” of which the Mahometan legend tells, and which the angel revealed to the Prophet of Allah.  ’Tis in aching anguish this drop must be probed and purified, to be healed only through the endless eloquence of duty done.

The sightless eyes have vivid visions.  Theirs is the light in darkness which stirred the soul of a Milton with a “gift divine;” inspired a Homer with the “fire and frenzy” which crowned an Iliad and an Odyssey, the master pieces of Epic verse; gave to the antique and traditional literature of the Celtic race its meteoric brilliancy, and produced the weird, wondrous sublimity of an Ossian.

All who have read the Invocation to Light by the blind authoress, Mrs. De Kroyft, must have realized the luminous light of a soul sublimated by sorrow and swelling and soaring in eloquent strains.

’Tis but a simple song I must sing, a bird-note amid cathedral tones; but may not its minstrelsy meet the heart and search the soul of many a sorrowing one, or rise like the song of the nightingale to the throne of Him who sees the lives enthralled?

If this little lesson of life can find a single searcher for the truth it tells, or bear on the breath of the breeze “one soft AEolian strain,” may I not hope that it may help to swell the harp-notes of the heavenly harmonies?

CHAPTER II.

    “I remember, I remember
      How my childhood fleeted by—­
    The mirth of its December,
      And the warmth of its July.”

In a former volume I have recounted the varied scenes of an eventful childhood, whose auroral dawn was tinted with the rose-hue and perfumed with the breath of light-winged moments; even as the Goddess of the Morning ushers in the new-born day with her flower-laden chariot, and the bright Morning Star lends its light ere it sinks under the horizon.

Having my birth on the rich soil of a Southern land, and cradled under its tropical skies and sunny smiles, I was early transplanted to colder climes and ruder blasts, yet through the nurture of a mother’s gentle hand, and the ministrations of a loving band of sisters and brothers, whose talismanic touch toned every note, softened every sorrow and heightened every hope, I could but bloom like an Alpine flower in its bed of snow.

But in the golden chain there came to be, in time, a “missing link;” the mother’s life went out, and from the darkened fireside vanished the little flock, scattered through various ways to various destinies.

My own was a slippery path to tread, and ofttimes led my weary feet into the shadow, and gloom, and darkness.  Through sickness, neglect and maltreatment came all too soon “sorrow’s crown of sorrow;” when over the young life fell a dark pall, and eyes so used to light no longer held the prisoned sunbeams, and passed forever under the relentless bond and cruel curse of blindness.  Then indeed my soul grew dark!  And could my restless eyes wait in thraldom for the dawn of an eternal day, and must my wandering feet pass through the “valley of the shadow,” ere I could see the light “around the Great White Throne?”