rs peeping from under
the hem and her snow-white hair confined by priceless lace; just as she
had thrown aside the thoughts and worries which are the outcome of the
turmoil and unrest of civilisation, to sit awhile, quietly, with her
eyes upon the dazzling peaks which show so clearly when we push aside
the nightmare fog we have wrapped about ourselves.

Not for her own relief did she sit at rest, for in that way rest does
not come to us; but to the relieving of others by withdrawing from the
lights and noises of this tumultuous planet and so obtaining a better
perspective of things as they stand spiritually, and a clearer insight
into the message of the only book she considered worth studying and
committing to memory.

She was no great thinker, this little old lady, neither did she store
up the printed thoughts of others to repeat them aptly upon fitting
occasions; she invariably mixed up the philosophers and their works;
'osophies simply bewildered her; ritual left her cold, psychology
troubled her but little, save only in its practical application to the
lives of those she loved. But she knew the book of life, with its
tragedies and comedies, humour and crass stupidity, nettles and balm
from the first chapter to the last, and could prescribe you a remedy to
cure your mental hurt just as easily as she could undress your
screaming baby, find the criminal pin and re-dress it for you; and
every member of every Church and every disciple of every creed could
have fought a pitched battle at her feet and left her unmoved, so long
as the sick and sinning crept to her for help and children, rich or
poor, in silks or rags, rushed at her coming to cling about her knees.

She had no fixed time for her hour of understanding. At her window in
moonlight, starlight or the coming of the dawn; in her gilded armchair
in the firelight or the light of the sun; in her rose-garden, in her
parks, anywhere, as long as she was withdrawn from noise and strife.

Not that she did not thoroughly enjoy going out to battle upon the most
mundane of material planes. A born fighter, she would plunge into the
strife for the sheer love of fighting and would take the bull by the
horns or the man by the scruff of his neck and lay about her right
heartily with her stout ebony stick backed by verbal blows from her
vitriolic tongue.

Well, if we all rested for one hour, even for one minute, out of the
twenty-four during the frantic passing of modern da