“One night, lying on my lounge when very tired,
my children all around me in full romp and hilarity
and laughter, half awake and half asleep, I dreamed
this dream: I was in a far country. It was
not in Persia, although more than oriental luxuries
crowned the cities. It was not the tropics, although
more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens.
It was not Italy, although more than Italian softness
filled the air. And I wandered around looking
for thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them
grew there; and I saw the sun rise and watched to see
it set, but it set not. And I saw people in holiday
attire, and I said, ’When will they put off
all this, and put on workman’s garb, and again
delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?’
But they never put off the holiday attire.
“And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to
find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked
all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place
where the dead might most blissfully sleep, and I saw
towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument
or a white slab was to be seen. And I went into
the chapel of the great town, and I said: ’Where
do the poor worship, and where are the benches on which
they sit?’ And the answer was made me, ‘We
have no poor in this country.’
“And then I wandered out to find the hovels
of the destitute, and I found mansions of amber and
ivory and gold; but not a tear could I see, not a
sigh could I hear; and I was bewildered, and I sat
down under the branches of a great tree, and I said,
’Where am I, and whence comes all this scene?’
And then out from among the leaves and up the flowery
paths and across the bright streams, there came a
beautiful group thronging all about me, and as I saw
them come I thought I knew their step, and as they
shouted I thought I knew their voices, but they were
so gloriously arrayed in apparel such as I had never
before witnessed, that I bowed as stranger to stranger.
But when again they clapped their hands and shouted
‘Welcome! Welcome!’ the mystery all
vanished, and I found that time had gone and eternity
had come, and we were all together again in our new
home in Heaven.
“And I looked around, and I said, ‘Are
we all here?’ And the voices of many generations
responded, ‘All here!’ And while tears
of gladness were raining down our cheeks, and the
branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their
hands, and the towers of the great city were chiming
their welcome, we all together began to leap and shout
and sing, ’Home, home, home, home!’”
INDEX
Abbott, Emma, her bequest to the Brooklyn Tabernacle,
244;
character, 244.
Aberdeen, Lord and Lady, 299.
Adams, Edwin, 71.
Adams, John, his administration, 8.
Adler, Dr., 118.
Agnus, General Felix, 223.
Alba, 368.
Albany, intemperance, 45;
bribery, 46;
lobbyists driven out, 132.
Alice, Princess, her death, 90.
