After supper he honestly meant to watch at his father's bedside, while
his mother slept; but he had scarcely seated himself on the old settle,
when sleep, like an armed man, overpowered him, and in spite of all
his efforts he was soon bound in the dreamless slumber of healthful
youth. But with eyes so wide and lustrous that it seemed as if sleep
could never close them again, the wife and mother, pale and silent,
watched between her loved ones. The troubled expression was gone, for
the ranks of her little band had closed up, and all were about her in
one more brief rest in the forward and uncertain march of life. She
seemed looking intently at something far off--something better discerned
by the spiritual than by the natural eye. Disappointments had been
bitter, poverty hard and grinding, but she had learned to escape into
a large world that was fast becoming real to her strong imagination.
While her husband was indulging in chimerical visions of boundless
prosperity here on earth which he would bring to pass by some lucky
stroke of fortune or invention, she also was picturing to herself
grander things which God would realize to her _beyond_ time and
earth. When alone, in moments of rest from incessant toil, she would
take down the great family Bible, and with her finger on some
description of the "new heavens and new earth," as the connecting link
between the promise and her strong realization of it, she would look
away with that intent gaze. The new world, purged from sin and sorrow,
would rise before her with more than Edenlike loveliness. Her spirit
would revel in its shadowy walks and sunny glades, and as the crowning
joy she would meet her Lord and Saviour in some secluded place, and
sit listening at His feet like Mary of old. Thus, in the strong illusion
of her imagination, Christ's words seemed addressed directly to her,
while she looked up into His face with rapt attention. Instead of
_reading_ her Lord's familiar sayings, she seemed to _listen_ to them as
did the early disciples. After a little time she would close the Bible