Every One
Was Talking, Smiling, Laughing, Commenting, And Criticizing.
It was a
little picture of the very worldly world that loves the things of
to-day and the chime of the passing hours.
And suddenly some people
near me were silent, and some turned their heads to stare with a
strangely fixed attention. And I saw coming toward me an emaciated
figure, rather bent, much drawn together, walking slowly on legs like
sticks. It was clad in black, with a gleam of color. Above it was a
face so intensely thin that it was like the face of death. And in this
face shone two eyes that seemed full of - the other world. And, like a
breath from the other world passing, this man went by me and was
hidden from me by the throng. It was Cardinal Manning in the last days
of his life.
The face of the king is like his, but it has an even deeper pathos as
it looks upward to the rock. And the king's silence bids you be
silent, and his immobility bids you be still. And his sad, and
unutterable resignation sifts awe, as by the desert wind the sand is
sifted into the temples, into the temple of your heart. And you feel
the touch of time, but the touch of eternity, too. And as, in that
rock-hewn sanctuary, you whisper "/Pax vobiscum/," you say it for all
the world.
XIV
EDFU
Prayer pervades the East. Far off across the sands, when one is
traveling in the desert, one sees thin minarets rising toward the sky.
A desert city is there.
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