"I know his courts; I'll enter in,
Whatever may oppose;"

and so I fancied there would be lions in the way, as there were
in the Pilgrim's, at the "House Beautiful"; but I should not be
afraid of them; they would no doubt be chained. The last verse
began with the lines,--

"I can but perish if I go:
I am resolved to try:"

and my heart beat a brave echo to the words, as I started off in
fancy on a "Pilgrim's Progress" of my own, a happy little
dreamer, telling nobody the secret of my imaginary journey, taken
in sermon-time.

Usually, the hymns for which I cared most suggested Nature in
some way,--flowers, trees, skies, and stars. When I repeated,--

"There everlasting spring abides,
And never-withering flowers," -

I thought of the faintly flushed anemones and white and blue
violets, the dear little short-lived children of our shivering
spring. They also would surely be found in that heavenly land,
blooming on through the cloudless, endless year. And I seemed to
smell the spiciness of bay berry and sweet-fern and wild roses
and meadow-sweet that grew in fragrant jungles up and down the
hillside back of the meeting-house, in another verse which I
dearly loved:--