CHAPTER XI.
A SUNDAY IN DUBUQUE.
A very pleasant room at the Julien House afforded a welcome retreat on the Sabbath. It was intensely hot; the burning rays of the sun were reflected from the towering bluffs that shield the town from the west wind. A walk of a mile and a half through the main street led them to the Methodist church, where the services were very animating and delightful.
A cordial greeting from the minister, who had known Mrs. Lester in the East, was followed by a kind invitation to the parsonage, next door to the church. There was a beautiful bunch of flowers on the table, gathered on the prairies the day before. One, the moccasin flower, a large yellow flower, with a sort of pouch like a gigantic calceolaria, Norman had never seen before, and he was very much pleased when a number of them were given to him.
Several churches to which Mrs. Lester went in the afternoon were closed, so she continued her walk to the same church, where she heard a very good sermon from the Presbyterian minister, to whose congregation the use of the Methodist church was given while their own was being repaired.
The street she took on her return home led her nearer to the bluff, up which people were creeping to get some cool air in the oppressive stillness of that summer afternoon. Every door was open, and quiet pleasant interiors were revealed to the passer-by; family groups, seated on the porch or in the parlor, reading or taking their tea.
Toward evening, as he was sitting on the window, Norman saw a number of people flocking to the Levee, and he asked his mother’s permission to follow them, and ascertain what had happened. He soon returned, looking very grave and downcast. He had been in the presence of death. A young man of nineteen had been drowned the evening before, seized with sudden cramps while bathing, and they had just found his body. There it lay, floating on the water, the head downward, the limbs drawn up; and in the solemn presence of death light and careless words had been spoken that shocked Norman, touched as he was by the unfamiliar sight. The drowned lad was French, an orphan and a stranger in the land, with no one to miss him or mourn for him, save one loving heart, that of a sister, left alone without kindred or friends. Later in the evening the vehicle containing the body stopped at a confectioner’s, on the opposite side of the street, and the young man was carried in to the room he had left the evening before, in the fullness of life and health.
Well is it in this life of uncertainty, when the happiest moments may be darkened by the presence of this grim visitor, to be prepared for his coming; to have our fear of him taken away; to be able to look upon him as the messenger sent to call us to our Father’s house.
“In the midst of life we are in death: to whom then, O Lord, can we turn but unto thee!”