“Changes on every hand,” said Mr. Davis, “and now that the pulpit has come down nearer to the people, and I can send my thoughts directly into their hearts, instead of over their heads, as I have been so often forced to do, we may hope that the chain of our love will weld us together as a unit in strength and feeling.  I almost wish our town could be called New Light, for it seems to me the world looks new as it lies about us.  The lantern of love, we know, is newly and well trimmed, and I feel its light can never die; it may give place to one which is larger, and whose rays can be felt further, but it can never die.  I really begin to believe there is no such thing as death.  I dislike the word, for it only signifies decay.  I call it change, and that seems nearer right.”

“So it is, Mr. Davis,” said Clara, as he talked earnestly with us of his interest in the children and the people about us, “for, even as children are gradually changing into men and women, so shall our expanding lives forever climb to reach the stature of our angelhood, which must come to us when we let the perishable garments fall, and the mortal puts on its immortality.  If we all could only see that our Father will help us to shape these garments even here; could we know that stitches daily taken in the garment that our soul desires are necessary that it may be ready for us when we enter there,—­how great would be the blessing!  This would relieve death of its clinging fears, and our exit from earth and entrance to the waiting city would be made as a pleasant journey.

“Louis, dear boy, feels all this, and if the cold hearts of speculative men could be warmed and softened into an unfolding life, he would not constantly do battle with the wrong; but truth is mightier than error.  God’s love must at last be felt, and when the delay is over, how many hearts, now deaf to his entreaties, will say with one accord, ’we are sorry, if we could live our days over, we would help you!’”

Louis did do battle, that is true; he paid due respect to people of all classes, but fearlessly and trustfully he dealt, both by word and practice, vigorous blows against all enslaving systems.  He said to us sometimes, that when he went to the mill—­as he constantly did, working until every one of the twenty boys to whom he promised liberty, found it—­he came in contact with three different conditions; he classified them as mind, heart and soul.  “When I talk to them,” he said, “or if I go there on my mission and speak no words, I hear their souls say ’he is right and we are wrong;’ I hear the earthly hearts whisper hoarsely, ‘curse the plans of that fellow, he is in our way;’ and the worldly policy of the mind steps forth upon the balcony of the brain and says, ‘treat him well, it is the best policy to pursue, for he has money.’  Yes, my Emily, I thank God for the fortune my father left me, hidden in the silver service.  It shall all be used.  You and I will use it all.  And was the bequest not typical, its very language being ’a fortune in thy service, oh, my father!’”