How childhood, youth, and age need each other’s companionship.  How perfect is the household group which includes them all, from the infant to the white-haired sire.  Homes without children!  Heaven help those who have not the sunshine of innocent childhood to keep them fresh-hearted.

Through this sphere of life and love, he found his life revived.  Gradually the sorrow-clouds passed away, fringed by the sunshine of hope which was rising in his breast.

Dawn was his strength and counsellor every day.  Through her he learned how closely we are related to the other life, and yet how firmly we must hold our relation to this, that we may become instruments for good, and not mere sensitives, feeling keenly human wants, but doing nothing to supply them.

“I intend to devote myself to life, and help the human family in some way,” he said to Dawn one evening, as the twilight was robing itself in purple clouds.  “I have caught my inspiration from you, and will no longer moan my days away.  My treasures lie beyond, and I will strive to make myself worthy of the union when I am permitted to go over the silent stream.

“Do,” answered Dawn, “and thus make her life richer and happier.”

“I make her happier?  Has she not gone to rest?”

“A kind of rest, I know; but does she not still live and mingle her life with yours each day?  Therefore, whatever the quality of your thought and action is, she must partake of it, and for the time absorb it into her spirit.  If your life is vague and full of unrest, her life will become so.  On the contrary, if yours is strong and full of purpose, you give her strength and rest of soul.”

“Is it so?  Are we so united after death?”

“What part of Florence died, Herbert?  The spirit passed out, carrying every faculty, every sense and emotion, to that land where many dream that we lose all consciousness of life, below, and remain in some blest state of dreamy ease.  Not so.  Our lives at death, so called, are made more sensitive to all we owe our friends on earth, and death is but the clasp that binds us closer.”

“Your words stimulate me to labor and make my dear ones happy through my life.  O, that like you, I could know that they at times are with me; or, rather, that they could come and give me that evidence I so much need, of their presence and their power to commune with us.”

“I could not bring to you that evidence, because I know them and you, but I have a lovely girl who has just come to our Home, a stranger to you and to myself, who has this gift of second-sight, and if you wish, I will present her to you.”

“Do so, for nothing would give me more happiness.”

A young girl, with light hair, and blue eyes which ever seemed looking far away, was led into the sitting room by Dawn, and stood silent and speechless as soon as she had entered.  Her outer senses seemed closed, as she spoke in a voice full of feeling these words: