Project Gutenberg's A Little Pilgrim, by Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

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Title: A Little Pilgrim
Stories of the Seen and the Unseen

Author: Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10050]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A LITTLE PILGRIM

By Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

A LITTLE PILGRIM.

I.

IN THE UNSEEN.

She had been talking of dying only the evening before, with a friend, and
had described her own sensations after a long illness when she had been
at the point of death. "I suppose," she said, "that I was as nearly gone
as any one ever was to come back again. There was no pain in it, only a
sense of sinking down, down--through the bed as if nothing could hold me
or give me support enough--but no pain." And then they had spoken of
another friend in the same circumstances, who also had come back from the
very verge, and who described her sensations as those of one floating
upon a summer sea without pain or suffering, in a lovely nook of the
Mediterranean, blue as the sky. These soft and soothing images of the
passage which all men dread had been talked over with low voices, yet
with smiles and a grateful sense that "the warm precincts of the cheerful
day" were once more familiar to both. And very cheerfully she went to
rest that night, talking of what was to be done on the morrow, and fell
asleep sweetly in her little room, with its shaded light and curtained
window, and little pictures on the dim walls. All was quiet in the house:
soft breathing of the sleepers, soft murmuring of the spring wind
outside, a wintry moon very clear and full in the skies, a little town
all hushed and quiet, everything lying defenceless, unconscious, in the
safe keeping of God.

How soon she woke no one can tell. She woke and lay quite still, half
roused, half hushed, in that soft languor that attends a happy waking.
She was happy always, in the peace of a heart that was humble and
faithful and pur