The World As I Have Found It | Page 2

through high debate. The soldier dies surrounded; could he live Alone to suffer, and alone to strive?"
So was rendered the sad soul-music of one of the legion,
"Who learned in sorrow What they taught in song."
and the weird words have been echoed by the voice of many a woman all along, whose weary wanderings have burned the sacrificial fires; amid the ashes of whose dead hopes the embers have flickered and faded only to rekindle the lurid, lustrous light of added, and still added offerings. There, waiting and watching the deep tracery "upon the sands beside the sounding sea," find wave after wave wash away the mystic hand-writing.
The ebbing tide carries afar the ships freighted with aching, anguished hearts; when borne upon the swell of the flowing sea, come the swift sails of Argosies richly laden with hope, full with fruition.
Within the heart of all there lies deeply imbedded the "Black Drop" of which the Mahometan legend tells, and which the angel revealed to the Prophet of Allah. 'Tis in aching anguish this drop must be probed and purified, to be healed only through the endless eloquence of duty done.
The sightless eyes have vivid visions. Theirs is the light in darkness which stirred the soul of a Milton with a "gift divine;" inspired a Homer with the "fire and frenzy" which crowned an Iliad and an Odyssey, the master pieces of Epic verse; gave to the antique and traditional literature of the Celtic race its meteoric brilliancy, and produced the weird, wondrous sublimity of an Ossian.
All who have read the Invocation to Light by the blind authoress, Mrs. De Kroyft, must have realized the luminous light of a soul sublimated by sorrow and swelling and soaring in eloquent strains.
'Tis but a simple song I must sing, a bird-note amid cathedral tones; but may not its minstrelsy meet the heart and search the soul of many a sorrowing one, or rise like the song of the nightingale to the throne of Him who sees the lives enthralled?
If this little lesson of life can find a single searcher for the truth it tells, or bear on the breath of the breeze "one soft ?olian strain," may I not hope that it may help to swell the harp-notes of the heavenly harmonies?

CHAPTER II.
"I remember, I remember How my childhood fleeted by-- The mirth of its December, And the warmth of its July."
In a former volume I have recounted the varied scenes of an eventful childhood, whose auroral dawn was tinted with the rose-hue and perfumed with the breath of light-winged moments; even as the Goddess of the Morning ushers in the new-born day with her flower-laden chariot, and the bright Morning Star lends its light ere it sinks under the horizon.
Having my birth on the rich soil of a Southern land, and cradled under its tropical skies and sunny smiles, I was early transplanted to colder climes and ruder blasts, yet through the nurture of a mother's gentle hand, and the ministrations of a loving band of sisters and brothers, whose talismanic touch toned every note, softened every sorrow and heightened every hope, I could but bloom like an Alpine flower in its bed of snow.
But in the golden chain there came to be, in time, a "missing link;" the mother's life went out, and from the darkened fireside vanished the little flock, scattered through various ways to various destinies.
My own was a slippery path to tread, and ofttimes led my weary feet into the shadow, and gloom, and darkness. Through sickness, neglect and maltreatment came all too soon "sorrow's crown of sorrow;" when over the young life fell a dark pall, and eyes so used to light no longer held the prisoned sunbeams, and passed forever under the relentless bond and cruel curse of blindness. Then indeed my soul grew dark! And could my restless eyes wait in thraldom for the dawn of an eternal day, and must my wandering feet pass through the "valley of the shadow," ere I could see the light "around the Great White Throne?"
Through a singular complication of circumstances I was led to the home of a sister in Chicago, from whom I had long been separated; and by equally singular ways I was also there reunited to three of my brothers (Charles, William and Howard). Then my veiled vision could not shut out the loved lineaments living in the pictured halls of memory--the vision of a love-hallowed home, and a mother's face crowning all. Scenes and faces gone, passed like a panorama before my mind's eye, and
"So the blessed train passed by me, But the vision was sealed upon my soul."
Through the agency of family friends I returned to my birth-place, and with strange and mingled emotions was welcomed back to Baltimore, with kind greetings from relatives