The shore upon which we had landed was thickly populated, as I have said. Through a sweep of surpassingly beautiful suburbs, we approached the streets of a town. It is hard to say why I should have been surprised at finding in this place the signs of human traffic, philanthropy, art, and study—what otherwise I expected, who can say? My impressions, as Marie SauvÉe led me through the city, had the confusion of sudden pleasure. The width and shining cleanliness of the streets, the beauty and glittering material of the houses, the frequent presence of libraries, museums, public gardens, signs of attention to the wants of animals, and places of shelter for travelers such as I had never seen in the most advanced and benevolent of cities below,—these were the points that struck me most forcibly.

The next thing, which in a different mood might have been the first that impressed me was the remarkable expression of the faces that I met or passed. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe, in any throng, the preponderant look of unrest and dissatisfaction in the human eye. Nothing, to a fine vision, so emphasizes the isolation of being, as the faces of people in a crowd. In this new community to which I had been brought, that old effect was replaced by a delightful change. I perceived, indeed, great intentness of purpose here, as in all thickly-settled regions; the countenances that passed me indicated close conservation of social force and economy of intellectual energy; these were people trained by attrition with many influences, and balanced with the conflict of various interests. But these were men and women, busy without hurry, efficacious without waste; they had ambition without unscrupulousness, power without tyranny, success without vanity, care without anxiety, effort without exhaustion,—hope, fear, toil, uncertainty it seemed, elation it was sure—but a repose that it was impossible to call by any other name than divine, controlled their movements, which were like the pendulum of a golden clock whose works are out of sight. I watched these people with delight. Great numbers of them seemed to be students, thronging what we should call below colleges, seminaries, or schools of art, or music, or science. The proportion of persons pursuing some form of intellectual acquisition struck me as large. My little guide, to whom I mentioned this, assented to the fact, pointing out to me a certain institution we had passed, at which she herself was, she said, something like a primary scholar, and from which she had been given a holiday to meet me as she did, and conduct me through the journey that had been appointed for me on that day. I inquired of her what her studies might be like; but she told me that she was hardly wise enough as yet to explain to me what I could learn for myself when I had been longer in this place, and when my leisure came for investigating its attractions at my own will.

“I am uncommonly ignorant, you know,” said Marie SauvÉe humbly, “I have everything to learn. There is book knowledge and thought knowledge and soul knowledge, and I have not any of these. I was as much of what you used to call a heathen, as any Fiji-Islander you gave your missionaries to. I have so much to learn, that I am not sent yet upon other business such as I should like.”

Upon my asking Marie SauvÉe what business this might be, she hesitated. “I have become ambitious in Heaven,” she answered slowly. “I shall never be content till I am fit to be sent to the worst woman that can be found—no matter which side of death—I don’t care in what world—I want to be sent to one that nobody else will touch; I think I might know how to save her. It is a tremendous ambition!” she repeated. “Preposterous for the greatest angel there is here! And yet I—I mean to do it.”

I was led on in this way by Marie SauvÉe, through and out of the city into the western suburbs; we had approached from the east, and had walked a long distance. There did not occur to me, I think, till we had made the circuit of the beautiful town, one thing, which, when I did observe it, struck me as, on the whole, the most impressive that I had noticed. “I have not seen,” I said, stopping suddenly, “I have not seen a poor person in all this city.”

“Nor an aged one, have you?” asked Marie SauvÉe, smiling.

“Now that I think of it,—no. Nor a sick one. Not a beggar. Not a cripple. Not a mourner. Not—and yet what have we here? This building, by which you are leading me, bears a device above the door, the last I should ever have expected to find here.”

It was an imposing building, of a certain translucent material that had the massiveness of marble, with the delicacy of thin agate illuminated from within. The rear of this building gave upon the open country, with a background of hills, and the vision of the sea which I had crossed. People strolled about the grounds, which had more than the magnificence of Oriental gardens. Music came from the building, and the saunterers, whom I saw, seemed nevertheless not to be idlers, but persons busily employed in various ways—I should have said, under the close direction of others who guided them. The inscription above the door of this building was a word, in a tongue unknown to me, meaning “Hospital,” as I was told.

“They are the sick at heart,” said Marie SauvÉe, in answer to my look of perplexity, “who are healed there. And they are the sick of soul; those who were most unready for the new life; they whose spiritual being was diseased through inaction, they are the invalids of Heaven. There they are put under treatment, and slowly cured. With some, it takes long. I was there myself when I first came, for a little; it will be a most interesting place for you to visit, by-and-by.”

I inquired who were the physicians of this celestial sanitarium.

“They who unite the natural love of healing to the highest spiritual development.”

“By no means, then, necessarily they who were skilled in the treatment of diseases on earth?” I asked, laughing.

“Such are oftener among the patients,” said Marie SauvÉe sadly. To me, so lately from the earth, and our low earthly way of finding amusement in facts of this nature, this girl’s gravity was a rebuke. I thanked her for it, and we passed by the hospital—which I secretly made up my mind to investigate at another time—and so out into the wider country, more sparsely settled, but it seemed to me more beautiful than that we had left behind.

“There,” I said, at length, “is to my taste the loveliest spot we have seen yet. That is the most homelike of all these homes.”

We stopped before a small and quiet house built of curiously inlaid woods, that reminded me of Sorrento work as a great achievement may remind one of a first and faint suggestion. So exquisite was the carving and coloring, that on a larger scale the effect might have interfered with the solidity of the building, but so modest were the proportions of this charming house, that its dignity was only enhanced by its delicacy. It was shielded by trees, some familiar to me, others strange. There were flowers—not too many; birds; and I noticed a fine dog sunning himself upon the steps. The sweep of landscape from all the windows of this house must have been grand. The wind drove up from the sea. The light, which had a peculiar depth and color, reminding me of that which on earth flows from under the edge of a breaking storm-cloud at the hour preceding sunset, formed an aureola about the house. When my companion suggested my examining this place, since it so attracted me, I hesitated, but yielding to her wiser judgment, strolled across the little lawn, and stood, uncertain, at the threshold. The dog arose as I came up, and met me cordially, but no person seemed to be in sight.

“Enter,” said Marie SauvÉe in a tone of decision. “You are expected. Go where you will.”

I turned to remonstrate with her, but the girl had disappeared. Finding myself thus thrown on my own resources, and having learned already the value of obedience to mysterious influences in this new life, I gathered courage, and went into the house. The dog followed me affectionately, rather than suspiciously.

For a few moments I stood in the hall or ante-room, alone and perplexed. Doors opened at right and left, and vistas of exquisitely-ordered rooms stretched out. I saw much of the familiar furniture of a modest home, and much that was unfamiliar mingled therewith. I desired to ask the names or purposes of certain useful articles, and the characters and creators of certain works of art. I was bewildered and delighted. I had something of the feeling of a rustic visitor taken for the first time to a palace or imposing town-house.

Was Heaven an aggregate of homes like this? Did everlasting life move on in the same dear ordered channel—the dearest that human experiment had ever found—the channel of family love? Had one, after death, the old blessedness without the old burden? The old sweetness without the old mistake? The familiar rest, and never the familiar fret? Was there always in the eternal world “somebody to come home to”? And was there always the knowledge that it could not be the wrong person? Was all that eliminated from celestial domestic life? Did Heaven solve the problem on which earth had done no more than speculate?

While I stood, gone well astray on thoughts like these, feeling still too great a delicacy about my uninvited presence in this house, I heard the steps of the host, or so I took them to be; they had the indefinable ring of the master’s foot. I remained where I was, not without embarrassment, ready to apologize for my intrusion as soon as he should come within sight. He crossed the long room at the left, leisurely; I counted his quiet footsteps; he advanced, turned, saw me—I too, turned—and so, in this way, it came about that I stood face to face with my own father.... I had found the eternal life full of the unexpected, but this was almost the sweetest thing that had happened to me yet.

Presently my father took me over the house and the grounds; with a boyish delight, explaining to me how many years he had been building and constructing and waiting with patience in his heavenly home for the first one of his own to join him. Now, he too, should have “somebody to come home to.” As we dwelt upon the past and glanced at the future, our full hearts overflowed. He explained to me that my new life had but now, in the practical sense of the word, begun; since a human home was the centre of all growth and blessedness. When he had shown me to my own portion of the house, and bidden me welcome to it, he pointed out to me a certain room whose door stood always open, but whose threshold was never crossed. I hardly feel that I have the right, in this public way, to describe, in detail, the construction or adornment of this room. I need only say that Heaven itself seemed to have been ransacked to bring together the daintiest, the most delicate, the purest, thoughts and fancies that celestial skill or art could create. Years had gone to the creation of this spot; it was a growth of time, the occupation of that loneliness which must be even in the happy life, when death has temporarily separated two who had been one. I was quite prepared for his whispered words, when he said,—

“Your mother’s room, my dear. It will be all ready for her at any time.”

This union had been a marriage—not one of the imperfect ties that pass under the name, on earth. Afterwards, when I learned more of the social economy of the new life, I perceived more clearly the rarity and peculiar value of an experience which had in it the elements of what might be called (if I should be allowed the phrase) eternal permanency, and which involved, therefore, none of the disintegration and redistribution of relations consequent upon passing from temporary or mistaken choices to a fixed and perfect state of society.

Later, on that same evening, I was called eagerly from below. I was resting, and alone;—I had, so to speak, drawn my first breath in Heaven; once again, like a girl in my own room under my father’s roof; my heart at anchor, and my peace at full tide. I ran as I used to run, years ago, when he called me, crying down,—

“I’m coming, Father,” while I delayed a moment to freshen my dress, and to fasten it with some strange white flowers that climbed over my window, and peered, nodding like children, into the room.

When I reached the hall, or whatever might be the celestial name for the entrance room below, I did not immediately see my father, but I heard the sound of voices beyond, and perceived the presence of many people in the house. As I hesitated, wondering what might be the etiquette of these new conditions, and whether I should be expected to play the hostess at a reception of angels or saints, some one came up from behind me, I think, and held out his hand in silence.

“St. Johns!” I cried, “Jamie St. Johns! The last time I saw you”—

“The last time you saw me was in a field-hospital after the battle of Malvern Hills,” said St. Johns. “I died in your arms, Miss Mary. Shot flew about you while you got me that last cup of water. I died hard. You sang the hymn I asked for—‘Ye who tossed on beds of pain’—and the shell struck the tent-pole twenty feet off, but you sang right on. I was afraid you would stop. I was almost gone. But you never faltered. You sang my soul out—do you remember? I’ve been watching all this while for you. I’ve been a pretty busy man since I got to this place, but I’ve always found time to run in and ask your father when he expected you.

“I meant to be the first all along; but I hear there’s a girl got ahead of me. She’s here, too, and some more women. But most of us are the boys, to-night, Miss Mary,—come to give you a sort of house-warming—just to say we’ve never forgotten!... and you see we want to say ‘Welcome home at last’ to our army woman—God bless her—as she blessed us!

“Come in, Miss Mary! Don’t feel bashful. It’s nobody but your own boys. Here we are. There’s a thing I remember—you used to read it. ‘For when ye fail’—you know I never could quote straight—‘they shall receive you into everlasting habitations’—Wasn’t that it? Now here. See! Count us! Not one missing, do you see? You said you’d have us all here yet—all that died before you did. You used to tell us so. You prayed it, and you lived it, and you did it, and, by His everlasting mercy, here we are. Look us over. Count again. I couldn’t make a speech on earth and I can’t make one in Heaven—but the fellows put me up to it. Come in, Miss Mary! Dear Miss Mary—why, we want to shake hands with you, all around! We want to sit and tell army-stories half the night. We want to have some of the old songs, and—What! Crying, Miss Mary?—You? We never saw you cry in all our lives. Your lip used to tremble. You got pretty white; but you weren’t that kind of woman. Oh, see here! Crying in Heaven?”—