Page:A Cloud of Independent Witnesses.djvu/146

140 Youth is exuberant with joy and hope, the earth looks fair, for it sparkles with May-dews wet, and no shadow hath fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could live here forever. The home-centre is on the hither side of the river, and why should we strain our eyes to look beyond? But this state of things does not continue long. Our circle grows less and less. It is broken and broken, and then closed up again; but every break and close make it narrower and smaller. Perhaps before the sun is at his meridian the majority are on the other side, the circle there is as large as the one here, and we are drawn contrariwise and vibrate between the two. A little longer, and we have almost all crossed over; the balance settles down on the spiritual side, and the home-centre is removed to the upper sphere. At length you see nothing but an aged pilgrim standing alone on the river's brink, and looking earnestly towards the country on the other side. In the morning, that large and goodly company rejoicing together with music and wine; in the evening, dwindled down to that solitary old man, the last of his family and the last of his generation, waiting to go home, and filled with pensive memories of the Long Ago!

"A question which the bereaved heart has sometimes revolved painfully, receives now a full and satisfactory solution: 'Shall we know our friends after