A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

When the choir sang of "Seas of heavenly rest," a breath of salt wind came in with the words through the open door, from the sheltered waters of the bay, so softly blue and so lovely, I always wondered how a world could be beautiful where "there was no more sea." I concluded that the hymn and the text could not really contradict other; that there must be something like the sea in heaven, after all. One stanza that I used to croon over, gave me the feeling of being rocked in a boat on a strange and beautiful ocean, from whose far-off shores the sunrise beckoned:-- "At anchor laid, remote from home, Toiling I cry, Sweet Spirit, come! Celestial breeze, no longer stay! But spread my sails, and speed my way!" Some of the chosen hymns of my infancy the world recognizes among its noblest treasures of sacred song. That one of Doddridge's, beginning with "Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell!" made me feel as if I had just been gazing in at some window of the "many mansions" above:-- "Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my divine abode-" Had I not known that, ever since I was a baby? But the light does not stream down even into a baby's soul with equal brightness all the time. Earth draws her dark curtains too soon over the windows of heaven, and the little children fall asleep in her dim rooms, and forget their visions. That majestic hymn of Cowper's,--