seized me irresistibly before I could reach the narrow stairs and
summon the family from below.

As I was driven home in the winter storm, the wind through the
trees seemed laden with a passing soul and the riddle of life and
death pressed hard; once to be young, to grow old and to die,
everything came to that, and then a mysterious journey out into
the Unknown. Did she mind faring forth alone? Would the journey
perhaps end in something as familiar and natural to the aged and
dying as life is to the young and living? Through all the drive
and indeed throughout the night these thoughts were pierced by
sharp worry, a sense of faithlessness because I had forgotten the
text Polly had confided to me long before as the one from which
she wished her funeral sermon to be preached. My comfort as
usual finally came from my father, who pointed out what was
essential and what was of little avail even in such a moment as
this, and while he was much too wise to grow dogmatic upon the
great theme of death, I felt a new fellowship with him because we
had discussed it together.

Perhaps I may record here my protest against the efforts, so
often made, to shield children and young people from all that has
to do with death and sorrow, to give them a good time at all
hazards on the assumption that the ills of life will come soon
enough. Young people themselves often resent this attitude on
the part of their elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if
they were denied the common human experiences. They too wish to
climb steep stairs and to eat their bread with tears, and they
imagine that the problems of existence which so press upon them
in pensive moments would be less insoluble in the light of these