e
we can lean on it like a wall. And so we can lean on their love, strong
as a wall, stronger than anything visible to us, because love is the
strongest thing there is. You see, life wouldn't be worth living for
any of us--it wouldn't have been worth creating--if the dead really
died. The glory of the deathless dead lights our way, with the bright
deeds they have done, till we come where we can see for ourselves that
there's no dividing line. 'The milestones end.' That's all. They're not
needed any more.

"I heard other people talking of these things when I went where the
milestones end. Since then I've wondered why I didn't know the things
before. _Listen to your hopes_, and _you_ can know without waiting;
because hope is the voice of instinctive knowledge, and soul-instinct
is what we were _born_ knowing. Believe this, and you won't have to
stumble slowly up, as I did, with a hod full of old precepts on my
back. You can plane down from the sky with your arms full of stars, and
live with them, as I live with the flowers in my garden.

"The accident which put me into close touch with what we call 'death,'
put me out of touch--mentally--with life on this side for a while. An
operation brought me back. Just as, hovering between the known and the
unknown, I let my past drop, so on my return to it I had for a while no
memories of the borderland. My brain busied itself picking up lost
threads. I recalled the instant when I thought I was meeting death: a
great shock when all supports fell away as from under a ship that is
launched, and I plunged into measureless depths. Beyond that sensation,
there was blankness. By and by glimpses of something bright came and
went, oftenest in dreams. The effort to seize their meaning waked me
with a start. It is only now that I am beginning to hold some of the
best meanings, I think. I have come back with a little star-dust, even
I; and by its glimmer, in good moments, I try to interpret my own
dreams.

"If I read them rightly, I've told you only an old, old truth in saying
that there should be no such word as death, or grief for it among the
living. We've only to lift the veil of Death to see the face of Life--a
wonderful, shining face with no pain in its smile. Looking into its
eyes, what we do, instead of 'dying,' is to flow over our own narrow
limitations as growing vines flow over the high wall of a little
garden. We escape out of bounds into the boundless and are part of it.

"Do