DEATH

nor the sweet night-air through it blow — ^never again for you on tbe little coverlet of your bed ivill the moonlight faU;

And yet mayhap for the first time ymU. the wind really blow and the moonlight fall.

For the first time shall you really see the face of your father whom you usod to meet so oft^i on the stairs.

Ail the spaces and corners of the house, and the svdnging of the doors, and the tones and voioes of those behind them, shall be full of meanings which were hidden from you while you dwelt among them.^

Basing upon some such expérience as this, he rises to the generalization that we " take by leaving," we *' hold by letting go " • ; and applies the Law thus formulated to Death.

When at last Death oomes, then ail of Life shall be to us as the house of our childhood — For the first time we shall really possess it.*

Death is the great revealer. It strips ofl the mask. It is the wind that drives away the delusive earth-mists. The night of death will make clear that which has been long hidden from us by the Ught-curtain of the day of Life. We Uve tented in mortality. There is no other world than Hère; and Eternity is New. In reaUty, we exist in a great world, full of visions and glories and immortal présences ; with boundless horizons, endless vistas, roofed by Infinity. But we are in a tent. Within its narrow confines we go about our work, consort with friends, gaining what may

» T D„ p. soii Ihid,, p. 50p. • Ibid., p. 502;