Part 9 (1/2)
A heavenly smile spread over his face and a look of perfect satisfaction and acquiescence, and he said after a ot my Heavenly Father Oh, what a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father He is!”
Then, after another moment, he said in a distressed voice, ”But o to the Heavenly Father?”
”Oh, dear, no!” said I; ”but e are broken all to pieces, or starved, or are very sick, He takes us; but generally people grow to be old like the old et very tired and kind of go to sleep, and the Heavenly Father takes theain in their old bodies, which are buried as the children buried the bodies of the robins”
He expressed hireat many questions, and it seemed as if he had already known of the fact of death At all events, he now accepted it as the coive new realization to hisbut a , and that normal nature did not shrink from death The subsequent questions were innumerable I read to him Kruarden of Thirza, after the death of Abel, as it was paraphrased by Mr Alcott when he read it in his school, in which I was assisting him at the very time that I was called away to the child's mother And it was the study I had made of childhood in his school which had enabled me to pursue with so h it was inof it to Dr Channing in 1824, and how h he told me that in his own case he was indebted to the symbolism of nature, especially the ocean seen fro hiswhich he had heard These grand objects, and later the beauty of soe and power to the weak, kindled his ideal, and gave form and substance to his consciousness of God
For a tiht expressed in the fact of death, the relief froee of God and His ways At last a little incident showed him the shadohich attends death in this world
We often went to call on the family of the physician who attended his mother One day ent, the Doctor, as very fond of F, took hi with the baby in his mother's arms
They always called it ”baby” I said to Mrs D, ”Has not baby any name?” The mother replied, ”His naht, joyous expression, and said, ”Where is your other Edward?” The Doctor's face changed instantaneously; he clasped the child close to hione to his Heavenly Father,” with a burst of grief F stretched hiitated face, and said with a look of the greatest concern, ”Are you sorry that he has gone to the Heavenly Father?” ”Oh, very, very sorry,” said the poor father ”Should not you be sorry if he should take away your dearthe child down, he immediately left the rooot over the death of that child, and we never name him in his presence”
I immediately left the house, and alked some distance in silence, and as I found F did not incline to speak, I said, ”F, did the Doctor look glad when you spoke to him about his other Edward?” He pressed hierly, ”No, no! he looked very sorry
What made him sorry? Did he not like to have his other Edith the Heavenly Father?” ”Oh, yes! he liked that, but then he wanted to have him in his own arms You see he cannot see hiedand well, and I suppose he will live in his body a good many years, and he has Mrs D and Julia and the rest, but he wants that other Edward, too, every day of his life” F replied syht, and when I go into the sky, I shall look all over to see where he is” I said, after a little while, ”Shall you say anything more to the Doctor about his other Edward?” ”No, indeed!” said he ”I never shall say another word about him Do you think I want to ot horeed that it ell he should see the sad side of death for the survivors
It was soon a question with F hoere to live without the body, and he asked me I told him I did not know exactly hoas to be, but I supposed God would let new eyes, ears, and whatever lirow out of us, made of the finest stuff like air, which we could not see because it was so delicate, or even feel, as we did the air when it moved, but which souls could use just as they pleased He said, ”I have seen soone out of their bodies, and I did not know before what they were” Surprised, I asked hi but heads ings”
The delightful thing was to see the effect of all this earnest prattle upon the mother; and one day, after I had returned from a visit to a friend in the town, she tolddeath that was very satisfactory
She said she had his bread and milk put on a little table opposite her easy-chair, and when he was happily engaged, she said, ”F, I think our Heavenly Father will soon take reat feeling, and said tenderly: ”Do you? Then you will get rid of that poor, sick body, and your cough;” and he added presently, ”Perhaps he will give you _wings_!” She said nothing could be likened to the impression of peace and sweetness which these simple words made upon her Soon after, he said, ”But ill be done with your poor old body?” (She said he spoke as if it was of not much importance) She replied, ”Your father and Aunt Lizzy will take it to Carass will grow over the place, and souess I shall look out of heaven and see you” But in a few o with you into the sky” She said, ”Oh, you have a nice little body, which gives you a great deal of pleasure, and you must stay here with poor, dear father! What would he do when he has no wife any longer, without his little boy to rows old?” After a little more of such remonstrance he said, ”Well, I will stay with hi with me he never referred to this subject of hisdeath, which evidently had touched him tenderly, and I did not introduce the subject
It was also a curious circumstance, that after this matter of death was, as it were, settled satisfactorily, and the mind of his mother freed from all trouble on the point, _the love of this life_, to which she had hitherto been y, and she proposed to break up the house, and go to Florida for cure! Her husband and I could not share the hope, but we could not but sympathize in the new joy in life, that she seemed to have received from her now happy child, hos were so arranged that she made her husband's father's house, about thirty oal of her journey She reached with great fatigue this first stage, and stopped to rest, and never mentioned Florida afterwards She breathed on another year, during which ti returned to Mr Alcott's school in Boston Her disease was not very painful, but so lingering that every trace of her forhastly emaciation
There were in the house two little cousins, younger than F, taken care of exclusively by a very sweet ave him the most desirable social intercourse and play that took the place of our discourses at the right moment, and called into action very sweet traits of character My weekly visit of a day or tas a great affair to the children I told them stories, innuriress_, modified to their infant minds I always repeated the stories in precisely the sa stories to children, and impresses them on the meraphs, and would take theot Pilgrim laid away in the upper chamber of the House Beautiful, whose white draperies Iout, ”And the name of that charaphs that I purposely rammatic
The substantial character of the child's piety and sense of i up at the naht as exhibited unan to express itself at once in his association with his little cousins, which proved a very ti out his moral character by means of what he constantly did to ood, but he never said anything to them about the Heavenly Father That subject see to see how fatherly he was to the little one, and he continued this fatherly manner all his after life to all the children ho his childhood it was singularly un spirit He would play as they wanted to with them He seemed to be drawn to children because he could so easily understand their innocence, and make them happy by his companionshi+p, and because he enjoyed _them_
All his subsequent life he exhibited an exquisite sensibility to beauty, which he continued to accept as the Creator's _s which He had made In the last part of his htfully emaciated, that it was evidently painful for hi about it; and it eet to see the delicacy hich he tried to conceal this pain from _her_, when he was adth, came to be only in the middle of the day, when she was seated in an easy-chair, with a broad white footstool at her feet He would co on the floor, and seat himself on the footstool, with his back partly turned to her, and, drawing down her hands, cover thenize her, under that ghastly mask, which, however, did not shut off from his _remembrance_, her former loveliness; for, as soon as she was really dead, and he began to think of her _in heaven_, she beca the little more than a year that he continued under my care, ”_not_ so beautiful as my mother,” or ”_as_ beautiful as my mother” ords very frequently in his mouth As she approached her death, she was so careful lest he should have any of the _shock_ which her own ave to her, that she readily consented that he should go for the last few days with the other children to stay with a kind neighbor He was therefore not present at her death; neither was I
It was an event greatly longed for by herself, at last, and its approach, which she knew before any one else discerned any special change, seeladden her Her last breath was peaceful; her last words, ”Giveafter the funeral, fro, calling for the child to go hohted to do
He was put to bed in the room where his mother had died, and I went in with him, to explain her absence, if he should notice it But he was tired, and so occupied with my presence, he did _not_,--not even when he woke in theAt last, I said to him, ”Do you see what room we are in?” He rose up and looked around, and said, ”Why, it is my mother's chamber! Where is my mother?” I paused a moment to see if he would divine the truth, and then said, ”The dear Heavenly Father has taken her at last!” He fell back on the pilloith a single exclamation of _not painful wonder_, and a countenance subliled expression of awe, love, and joyful satisfaction The fact of her absent body seemed to be a more palpable proof of the truth of her deathless soul, than even her form and word, which had represented it to his senses He was ”silent, as we grohen feeling most,” as if he realized that he was in the presence of the ”substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” You may be sure I respected this sacred silence, which seemed to me to last several ently, ”Was theopen?” I replied, ”I don't know; I only know our Heavenly Father, who is everywhere, you know, took her to himself He does not mind about s, you know”
”_No, indeed!_ I know that very well,” he said, with a little laugh (as if he wondered at his ive her a new body right away?” ”I do not know anything more about that than _you_ do,” I replied; ”I only knoill do better things for her than we can think of” ”Do you think,” said he, ”that she looks beautiful as she used to?” but, before I could reply, he suddenly added, ”I want to _go_ to an to cry
I kissed hiently to recall the conversation that she had had with him the day she told him she expected soon to leave him; and, after a while, he said spontaneously, as he had done when he talked with her he ”would stay with his father to comfort him for the loss of her”
His father told round again, beginning with saying that he wanted to go to her; but when his father represented to him how solitary he should be with no wife or son to show their love to him, F closed the conversation with the words, ”Well, I will stay with you till I grow up” (as if it was quite within his option to do so or not)
Very soon after this I took him aith me to Salem, where he remained in our family for a year orat the corner of an old burial ground, two sides of the house being bordered by it The day we arrived ent directly to round He was immediately attracted to theby the trees, and exclaiarden this is! What are those things?” (referring to the toarden is where people lay away, underground, the _poor old worn-out dead bodies_ of their friends, who are with our Father in Heaven, and those things are called tombstones; they are put there with the names carved on them of the persons whose bodies are buried in those spots” He at once seereatly interested and pleased, and became still more so after he had seen soht of the enfranchised spirits entering on their heavenly life, being tempered with tender sy-robes, who He was always very anxious to kno the buried ones had died, froer they had escaped; and one day when my sister Mary came back from a walk, he joyfully told her that he had found out another way in which souls went to heaven She, of course, asked hio to sea are driven by the wind against some rocks and broken to pieces, and all the h the water”
Another tireat excitement, and said: ”Oh, Aunt Mary! I saw a little baby's body buried in the green garden; so already, and people got out of the carriages, and one man had a little box in his arms in which the baby's body was; and they put some ropes around it, and let it down; and then they filled up the hole with the dirt, and I saw the little baby fly up, fly up, fly up!” and he accoesture of his arm Whether the subjective conception was so vivid, that it reproduced itself to his iination in an objective form, as the Sistine Madonna is said to have done to Raphael; or it hat is called ”a spiritual manifestation”; it was evidently a reality to him, and no comment was made, except that my sister said, ”_I never saw a soul fly up_”
I should say here that this child was not iinative, and we never saw in him the seration In this he rese of a scientist, and studied ood classical scholar in college, and before his early death, had completed in manuscript the history of one of the mechanical arts I think he was not of a visionary temperament (See Appendix E)
His life with us in Saleh a certain pertinacity (which was an expression of inherited firmness of character) sosubjected to any punish any, in all his childhood He had not the usual impetuosity of children; perhaps the effect of his early depression of spirits
My sister Mary had a day-school in the house, e; he was allowed to have his playthings in the school-room, and loved to listen to her oral instruction of the children in natural history and science, especially in the stories that she told or read to thes, in whoht him how to read by the word method in _The Story without an End_, a slower and more laborious way both for hiarten Guide_, of which I have lately published a priarten, what?_