So it speaks to the distant through space and time; but it speaks also
to the near.

Although not half risen out of the earth, encumbering it rough and
shapeless, already it draws into its service many who dwell around.
These seek to cast their weaknesses on its strength, to join their brief
day to its innumerable years, to fall into the spiritual splendor of it
as out in space small darkened wanderers drop into the orbit of a sun.
Anguished memories begin to bequeath their jewels to its shrine; dimmed
eyes will their tears to its eyes, its windows. Old age with one foot in
the grave drags the other resignedly about its crypt. In its choir sound
the voices of children herded in from the green hillside of life's
April.

* * * * *

Rachel Truesdale! Her life became one of these near-by lives which it
blesses, a darkened wanderer caught into the splendor of a spiritual
sun. It gathered her into its service; it found useful work for her to
do; and in this new life of hers it drew out of her nature the last
thing that is ever born of the mother--faith that she is separated a
little while from her children only because they have received the gift
of eternal youth.

Many a proud happy thought became hers as time went on. She had had her
share in its glory, for it had needed him whom she had brought into the
world. It had called upon him to help give song to its message and to
build that ever-falling rainbow of music over which human Hope walks
into the eternal.