forgot that the days and years of God held any duty for her, forgot the sweet little soul he had gin to her charge for weal or woe, forgot to speak a word to her from mornin' till night. Why, it wuz worse than the children mentioned in Scripter when they asked for bread and got a stun, poor little Mary asked for the bread of love and got nothin' but a piece of paper, though there hain't a stun on the face of the earth, from Gibrialtar down to a slate stun, that I wouldn't ruther had gin to me than to have owned one of them picters and had to look at it. But she kep' at 'em.
Well, it wuz the third day we had been there, and it wuz a beautiful evenin'. I wuz settin' in my winder overlookin' the lake, and, seem' how bright the stars looked reflected in the smooth water and how the crescent moon lay down there like a big golden boat all full and flashin' with light, and the glowin' path that led to it shone so it looked like one of them streets of gold we read about in the New Jerusalem, it seemed so solid and bright that it fairly tempted one to walk out on it and set sail in that great dazzlin' boat for the golden shores and fairy pinnacles of that city that lay becalmed in the west.
And as I sot there I heard, with a small part of my brain, the other part bein' occupied with my rapt musin's, little Mary's voice talkin' down under the winder on the stoop with her Uncle Hamen, she had always lived inland and had never seen such a glorious show on the water, the nights she had stayed there bein' cloudy or stormy, I hearn her say in her earnest way, "What is that light, Uncle Hamen, way off there on the water? It looks like a great shinin' boat."
