Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/186

176 words would be vain. It was not that she was always gentle, low-voiced, dainty, and full of repose; it was not that she knew how to produce in her simple household, and with small means, the effect of almost luxury of living, in all matters of food and service, and personal comfort; it was not that she had, spite of her Quaker training, a passion for color; and from December round to December, never permitted her home to be one day without the brightness of blossoming flowers; it was not that her warm, active nature was thoroughly alive to all the events, all the interests of the day, and that she had ever some new thing to speak of with eager interest, and found the days far too short for inquiring into all the matters which she desired to search out. It was no one of these; it was not all of these. I have seen women of whom all these things were true, but they did not create a home as did this woman. Neither was it the great lovingness of her nature, marvelous as that was: God makes many women who are all love and lovingness. It was—so far as language can state it—it was because in all these traits, into every one of the acts springing from them, there entered a deep significance, a symbolic meaning, a spiritual vitality, born of her intensity of temperament and purity of nature. The smallest thing had its soul, as well as its body; and the soul radiated through and through the body until transfiguration became an ever-present reality. For thirty-three years she had