Project Gutenburg/Make A Difference Day Project 1999.





THE CHOIR INVISIBLE

by James Lane Allen




"O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence. . .
. . . feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused
And in diffusion evermore intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."

GEORGE ELIOT

THE middle of a fragrant afternoon of May in the green wilderness of
Kentucky: the year 1795.

High overhead ridges of many-peaked cloud--the gleaming, wandering Alps of
the blue ether; outstretched far below, the warming bosom of the earth,