There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman__he white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles__he work of a shell.The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries__omething between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey__ startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck.

Here I can become the blessing, a little life that multiplies joy, making the larger world a better place.God can enter into me, even me, and use these hands, these feet, to be His love, a love that goes on and on and on forever, endless cycle of grace.

Sometimes you just have to hold each other__ hands and walk through it all.

So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!

What did I fear, and why? _ I, to whom the night had beena more familiar facethan that of man __, in whom that element of hereditary superstition from which none of us is altogether free had given to solitude and darkness and silence only a more alluring interest and charm!

Ah, children of the sunlight and the gaslight, how little you know of the world in which you live!