Are we not kings? Both night and day. From early unto late,
About our bed, about our way,
A guard of angels wait!
And so we watch and work and pray
In more than royal state.
Are we not more? Out life shall be
Immortal and divine;
The nature Mary gave to Thee,
Dear Jesus, still is Thine;
Adoring, in Thy heart I see
Such blood as beats in mine.
—A. A. Proctor.
 
Hundreds were assembled within the “Temple of Allegory,” and other hundreds, unable to effect an entrance, tarried around about it. The knell of Miriamne, the Angel of the Mount, had called the vast congregation together from Bethany, from the country round about and from the City of Jerusalem.
 
There were many signs of subdued sorrow, but the intensive expression of grief common in the East was absent; neither was there any of the paganish blackness, which sometimes characterizes Christians’ funerals, manifest. Though Miriamne was dead, her sweet, trustful, cheerful spirit still survived and still ruled.
 
[612]
 
The knights of Jerusalem, led by the Hospitaler, were present, the latter to direct the services, by request generally extended.
 
After a “grail” song by his companions, and at its last words, “I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness,” the Hospitaler began discoursing.
 
“Men and women, death, the leveler, makes us all akin; therefore all of us feel impoverished by the departure of the angel who shone upon us here from the form that lies yonder. Miriamne Woelfkin, daughter of a knight, consort of a Gospel herald, devoted friend of womankind, disciple of Jesus, was gifted with almost prophetic insight and power of alluring unsurpassed in our day. Hers was the power of a burning heart entranced of a superb ideal, and therefore was it the power of immortal influence. She will live not more truly in the life she died to give than in the lives she lived to save. She was an unique woman, but only so because of her superior womanliness. Being dead, she reaches the reward generally denied the living, full appreciation. Her career was in part a parallel of her choice exemplar’s. You have heard how the Mother of our Lord sung her ‘Magnificat’ out of a heart as free as a girl’s, yet as proud as that of a woman’s glowing in the prospect of honoring maternity. But the last note of her rapture died on her lips full soon, and she never after in this life rose to such measure of joy. God permitted her life to pass through a series of suppressions and griefs, doubtless that she might exemplify the sad side of woman’s career. The histories of women, mostly written by men, are marred by the conceits of their writers, and are at best but obscure pictures. The man with the pen lacks insight as to the[613] being, whose life is so largely an expression of heart and soul. The lordly writer clothes his heroes in the light of his fevered imagination, depicting with bold stroke the mighty deeds of stalwartness; but he sees few heroines in his horizon. Those he does see are beyond his power of analysis. He falls to actual worship of his masculine demi-gods, perhaps as a partial atonement for his failings toward the fine and noble characters whose traits are too spiritual for his thought-limits or vocabularies. The generality of those who discourse concerning women, do it in a patronizing way, and feel to praise themselves as paragons in doing justice in this, even by halves. The queenship of Mary is constantly disputed, and so her lot is more closely linked with that of her sex. As she received the royal gifts of the Magi, holding them as a sacred trust for Him to whom her life was utterly devoted, so woman, the bearer and nurse of the race, gives all that she has without stint to others. Her life is a suppression; all bestowing; her reward the joy she has in the lavishness of her bestowals. Hers is the joy of the fountain that sings because it flows.
 
“But recently ye saw the Jewish priests deposit on his mount, after a custom constant since Moses, the ashes of the red heifer. They burned their sacrifice with red wood. Red pointed to the blood that can only atone for sin. But underneath all lies a deep lesson. ’Twas the female instead of the male thus offered, and her ashes gave potency to the waters of purification. I read this hidden truth: the sacrifices of the gentler sex work out the purification of the race. As the moss in the heart of the stone, I see this truth lying in the heart of the ceremonial! As Christ’s cross[614] precedes the cleansing of regeneration, so woman’s cross is the means by which the decays of life are offset by new created beings. By the bier of the wondrous comforter of others, I may surely appeal to those who hear me and loved her to seek with quickened ardor to offer the pain-assuaging myrrhs to those grand souls who go along the way to life’s crucial glories. I’d have such justice done as would cause all women to cease pitying themselves because they are such, and go about rejoicing that God gave them the superlative privileges of womanhood.”
 
There came forth a loud cry, with moanings, from the part of the temple, called the “Mother’s Pillow,” where the honored dead lay.
 
“Miriamne, oh, Miriamne, you brought me through Gethsemane to your Calvary!”
 
A silence almost oppressive fell on the assembly. It was the silence of a pity too deep for words.
 
Then spake the Hospitaler, in words as invigorating as a herald of God’s should be, and yet as soothing as a mother’s to her child in pain:
 
“Christ, who loved the young man who was very good and yet not perfect, loves thee, for He is unchanging in His mercy. Hear me, an old man, stricken with the years that have schooled, and one who has experienced the bitterness of widowerhood after loyal, full loving. God&r............