Page:Orange Grove.djvu/97

 evening shadows exchanged the fantastic variety of her childhood's imagination for the gloomy phantoms of a vague, undefined sensation of dreariness; the moon, that shone in unclouded splendor through the whole week of the Indian Summer, which, owing to the unusual mildness of the season, had protracted its annual round until December, shed its pale, cold rays cheerlessly enough over copse and meadow, ravine and cliff. Every one knows the changed aspect of the whole material world, when one of the lights that radiated the inner self has merged into shadow, leaving us to grope our way in darkness, until the radiance of a new light, emerging from ourselves, shall penetrate the shadow and shine with the combined brightness of both. Even Spring, with its freshening gales and whispering zephyrs, when flower and bird, the springing grass and the murmuring brook, attest the birth of a new life from the icebound shroud of Winter, may suggest to the lonely mourner only the painful association of decay and death which hang like a sable pall over all familiar objects.

Not such was Mrs. Claremont's experience. Though many an hour of daily anguish and midnight prayer bore witness to the severe struggle through which she was passing, her abiding faith illumined the dark valley, and nature's sweet influences reminded her of the "Better Land," where sorrow and sickness cannot enter.

Banishing her own grief, in the presence of her children she always wore a cheerful smile, and