just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call “the unseen world.” that means the state of existence after death. many of our readers have written asking what i think or know about this. most of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather hard conditions. they have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or some dear friend. now like most other reasoning people, i have tried to imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death, and i have had some curious experiences which you might or might not credit. when i was a boy, i was thrown much into the society of avowed spiritualists. i knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many “séances.” the evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those things disgusted me, yet i must admit that some of these “mediums” did possess a strange and peculiar power which i have never been able to understand.
most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble over which they constantly brooded. i have come to believe that the blind and deaf and all seriously afflicted see and understand things which most others do not. an afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or faculty. the blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears. the deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick judgment or instinct of decision. the man plunged into grief or despondency at the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. someone has said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from the great “unseen world.” for example, i will ask you this question: take a woman like helen keller, without sight or speech or hearing. take a man who is totally deaf and also blind—how would they know physically when they are dead? i think i can understand why it is that real advancement in true religion and christian thought has for the most part been made by some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!
years ago, in a western state, there lived a farmer. i do not know whether he is living now or not. perhaps he will read this. perhaps he has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little child had with the ruler of the universe. this man was deaf. through long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark discouragement upon him. he owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do. a hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically, through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. he did not know what it was; a longing for human sympathy and love. his wife was a good woman but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she could not understand. she made her husband comfortable and loved him in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. they had no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. sometimes at night you would see the deaf man standing in the barnyard at the gate, looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious in the sunset. and his practical wife would see him standing there with the empty milk pail on his arm. she could not understand the vision and glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul at such times. so she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming husband by the arm and shout in his ear:
“wake up and get that milking done.”
she meant well, and her husband never complained. she meant to save his money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”
some day, i think i will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,” which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. one saturday afternoon this man and his wife drove to town together. while his wife was doing her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. as he stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed by a little child. it was a little black-haired thing with great brown eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. a poor thin little thing with a shabby dress and tattered shoes. as she passed, the child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. the woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little stone.
“you awkward little brat,” shrilled the woman, “take that,” and with her heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. then something like the love of a lioness for her cub suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. many fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded together forever. under excitement, the deaf are rarely dignified, but they are strangely and forcibly emphatic. the woman quailed before the roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for protection. a crowd gathered and lawyer brown came running down from his office.
“i want this child,” said the farmer. “you know me; get her for me.”
it was not very hard to do. the woman had married a man with this little girl. the man had run away and left her (i do not much blame him), and this “brat” had been left on her hands.
“take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “a good riddance to bad rubbish.”
so lawyer brown fixed it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where his wagon stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.
when the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband sitting on the wagon seat with the little girl sitting on his lap. she had found that she could not make him hear, so she just sat there looking into his face, and they both understood. but the good woman did not understand.
“what do you mean by picking up a child like you would a stray kitten? put her down and leave her here.”
but that was as far as she got. her husband looked at her with a fierce glare, and there was a sound in his throat which she did not like. i can tell you that when these good-natured and long-suffering men finally assert themselves, there is a great clumsy force about it that cannot be resisted. and when they got home and the little child sat up at the table between them, something of mother-love stirred in the woman’s heart. she actually tried to kiss the little thing, but the child trembled and ran to the farmer and climbed on his knee. the woman paused at her work to watch them as they sat before the fire, and something that was like the beginning of jealous rage came into her heart, for it came to her that this little one had seen at once something in her husband’s life and soul that she had not been able to understand.
there was something more than beautiful in the strange intimacy which sprang up between the deaf farmer and the little girl. in some way she made herself understood and she followed him about day by day at his work or on his lonely walk of a sunday afternoon. you would see her riding on the wagon beside him, standing near as he milked, or holding his finger as he came down the lane at sunset. on a sunny sunday afternoon, you might come upon them sitting at the top of a high hill with the old dog beside them, looking off across the pleasant country. and as the shadows grew longer, they would come home, the farmer carrying the little one, and the old dog walking ahead. i cannot tell you the peace and renewed hope which the little waif brought to that farmer’s heart through the gentle yet mighty force of love. and the farmer’s wife would look out of the window and see them coming. she could not walk with her husband through lonely places and make him understand, because she had never learned how. yet the little one was drawing the older people closer together and was showing them more of the greatest mystery and the greatest meaning of life. but there came a sunday when the little one could not walk over the hills. the day was bright and fair, the farmer stood looking at the cool shadows of the blue pines sadly and the old dog put his head on one side and regarded his master curiously. they could both hear the voice of the hills calling them away. and the voices came to the little one, hot and weary with fever, tossing on her little bed upstairs. the doctor shook his head when they called him in. the child was done with earthly things,—surely called off into the country unseen just as love and home had come to her. the farmer went up into the sick-room where his wife sat by the little sufferer. this man had never regarded his wife as a handsome woman, but he was startled at her face as she bent over the child. for at last in the face of death and sacrifice, love had really come to that woman’s lonely heart, and the joy of it illuminated her face like a lamp within.
the farmer was left alone with the child. she knew him and beckoned him to come near and moved her lips to speak. the man lay on the bed beside her and put his ear close to the little mouth, but try as he would, he could not hear her message. i suppose there can be no sadder picture in the book of time than this denial by fate of the right to hear the last message of love from one passing off into the long journey from which there comes no report. hopeless and bitter with disappointment, the man found pencil and paper and a large book and gave them to the child. sitting up in bed with a last painful effort the little one painfully wrote or printed a single sentence and gave it to him with her little face aflame with love. he hid the note in his pocket as his wife and the doctor came in—for the message from the unseen world seemed to him too sacred for other human eyes.
the woman watched her husband closely and wondered why he felt so cheerful as the days passed by. the little one was no longer with him, yet he went about his work with cheerfulness and often with a smile. she could not understand, but now and then she would see him take from his pocket an envelope, open it and read what seemed to be a letter. he would sometimes sit before the fire at night, silent and thoughtful. as she went about her work, she would see him take out this mysterious letter and read it over and over, as one would read a message from a friend very dear of old and happy days. and she wondered what it could be that brought the happy, beautiful smile to his face, and then there came the time when one evening in june the sun seemed to pass behind the western hill with royal splendor. it seemed as if there had never been such gorgeous coloring as the western sky put on that night, and the practical wife looked from her back-door and saw her husband standing in the barnyard gate like one in a glorious vision. the cows stood in the lane, the empty milk pail hung on a post, yet the farmer stood gazing off to the west unheeding the call to his work. and as the woman waited she saw her dreaming husband take that mysterious letter from his pocket and read it once more. she could see the look of joy which spread over his face as he read it. and this plain, practical woman, moved by some sudden impulse, walked down to the gate and put her hand gently on her husband’s shoulder. he started out of his dream and looked guiltily at the empty milk pail, but she only smiled and pointed to the paper he had in his hand. he hesitated shyly for a moment, and then he passed it to her. it was just the scrawl which the little child had written after her failure to make him hear. it was the last message from one who stood on the threshold of the unseen country, and was permitted to look within. and this was what the woman read, written in straggling childish letters:
“i’ll tell god how good you are.”
and the shy, unresponsive man and woman, starved of love and sympathy through all these years, standing in the lonely silence of that golden sunset knew that god’s blessing had fallen upon them out of the unseen country through the influence of that little child.