The Land of Long Ago Part 15

I never had a sorrow that I didn't know there was a happiness comin'

to make up for it. I've spent my life 'as a tale that is told,' and I'm nearly to the end of it, but I'd be right glad, child, if I could go back to the beginnin' and have it told all over again."

It is easy to p.r.o.nounce a benediction on life when life is in its morning; but with the darkness of the long night closing around us the words that rise most often to human lips are the words of the cynic king who, from "the dazzling height of a throne," surveyed the magnificent ruin of his years and said,

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity."

G.o.d once looked at a seething chaos which he called his world and p.r.o.nounced it good. Only a divinity could do this. And only the divinity in man enables one to look back on the chaos of sorrow, ecstasy, hope, despair, labor, failure, sin, and suffering which we call life and say, "It is all good; I would live it again if I might."

Aunt Jane closed her Bible and laid it on the mahogany centre-table.

"Half-past ten o'clock," she said, glancing at the clock in the corner. "I sometimes think, honey, that I'd like to watch the old year out once more, for there's somethin' about the night that the day hasn't got. But I'm too old to lose sleep unless there's a good reason for it, so cover up the fire and we'll sleep the old year out instead o' watchin' it out. This night's no more'n any other night, and it's jest as Parson Page said, every day's a New-year's day."