An Extract.
IT was a bright and beautiful day in the month of August, 18―. The summer sun poured down his genial rays upon the earth, and the perfume of flowers filled the air with fragrant sweetness. The fragile form of a little girl was stretched upon a bed of sickness―soon to become the bed of death. For many long months had she suffered, yet without murmuring. Friends had hoped that she would recover; but on that day the quivering lip and starting tear told that hope had fled. Her parents were about moving to the far west. She had anticipated great joy in the journey, and desired very much to see the broad prairies of Illinois, and to gather the pretty flowers that grew upon them. But now she must give up all these bright hopes. She was told she must die. She called her only brother to her bedside. He was a wayward boy of twelve years. She took his hand, and, in a faint whisper, said, “Brother, I shall soon die, but I do not fear death, because my Saviour has died. I have put my trust in Him, and, though my body shall lie in the cold ground, my spirit shall be with Him. In His bosom I shall be happy; I shall be free from suffering there. There I shall sing praises. Brother, will you meet me in heaven?” Gently as the summer’s breeze she passed away, and now a plain white stone in the churchyard of S―, with the inscription of “S. M., aged 10 years,” tells where she lies. Years rolled away; but wherever that brother went, whether wandering over the wide prairies of Illinois, the deep groves of North Carolina, or the rugged hills of Vermont, those words, “Will you meet me in heaven?” have sounded in his ears until he has been brought, like her, to trust in the Saviour, and to hope that, through Him, he may at last meet her in that happy place. And at midnight, when the noise of rolling wheels is hushed, and the little songsters have gone to rest, and the stars look out from their hiding-places, he can almost imagine that he hears little Sarah’s voice lisping in gentle accents, “Will you meet me in heaven?”