away on your snowy wings
To my eternal home."

Her dark face was fairly radiant. She lifted her hands toward heaven,
and though our eyes were holden that we could not see, we _felt_ that
the Lord and his angels were glorifying that humble abode, making it the
gateway of heaven. Holding fast to our hands as we knelt beside her bed,
she murmured responses to our prayers.

With uplifted hearts, we said our last good-bye, and went away rejoicing
in her triumph over the terrors of death and at the thought of the glory
that awaited her. As we passed out of sight, she entered within the
gates, with that radiant look upon her face; and the next day at sunset
we laid her away to rest.

From this "Beulah-land," we hastened on to visit a man who was in the
last stages of consumption. We had been for some time doing what we
could that he might be prepared for the great change that was drawing
near. In the low doorway, sat an old hag-like woman, who stared at us
with a look of rage, as we passed by her into the room where the sick
man was. Sultry as was the day, there was a hot blaze in the cavernous
fireplace. Over it hung an iron kettle, from which most sickening odors
emanated. The sick man was in a heavy stupor. We tried in vain to arouse
him, even for a moment. His wife looked unusually cheerful, as she
assured us that he "was a great deal better; that he did not cough at
all, and rested mighty easy."

We understood the situation at once. The poor woman was densely
ignorant, and believed her husband had been "conjured." The old hag in
the doorway was "a witch doctor," who had promised to cure him for ten
dollars! How the poor wife with her five little children to support
managed to raise it, God only knows; but she had done it, and was
pouring down that unconscious man's throat, hourly doses of a villainous
compound of most loathsome things, over which the old hag muttered her
incantations, and worked her Satanic spells. She watched us with her
evil eye as we looked pityingly upon the poor sufferer, and glared
menacingly when we told the poor wife that he was no better; that the
end was near.

That very night the death-like stupor was broken by agonies of torture
which racked the wasted frame for many hours. There was no respite for a
prayer, or for a thought of the eternity into which his poor soul was
hastening. The witch doctor fled in haste, unable to endure the sight of
the tortures she herself had invoked. It