One word about the verses and songs in this book. I often find it personally helpful to try and sum up and express in verse the new lessons which I learn and the new light which I receive, thus enabling me to fix them in my memory in a form in which I can easily recall them. Possibly others also may find these verses a help in the same way. They were all written especially for this book, but most of them have also appeared in two of my other books, Unveiled Glory and The Heavenly Powers.

CHAPTER 1
Mrs. Dismal Forebodings

It was a perfect spring morning down in the Valley of Humiliation, and everything seemed to be rejoicing in the warm sunshine and the soft, fragrant air. The pastures were robed in freshest green; the fruit trees were wearing festal apparel of white and pink blossoms. In the breeze the wild flowers were dancing gaily while the asphodels, with the sun shining through their transparent white blooms, stood rank on the steep slopes above the blue lake like an army of wax torches.

In the pastures through which the river wound, the lambs frisked about their mothers and the kids played “catch-me-if-you-can” among the rocks. Birds of every size and description worked ardently at the business of nest building, and the air echoed with the sound of innumerable notes and calls and trills, while bees and crickets kept up a constant undertone of humming. Altogether it was a perfect day down there in the valley, with everything that had breath and moved out in the open to welcome spring.

In the shadow of some old, dark, twisted trees, however, standing back from the main road which ran through the village of Much-Trembling, was a garden, overgrown with weeds and sickly-looking cabbage plants. Moping in the middle of the garden was a most dilapidated cottage, the windows and doors of which were all tightly shut. Up from the chimney of this cottage rose a thin, furtive-looking spiral of smoke which crept up into the air as unostentatiously as possible, as though ashamed to show itself on such a perfect day as this. Inside the cottage, cowering over the smoky little fire, sat Mrs. Dismal Forebodings, wearing a dreary-hued dress and wrapped in a drearier grey shawl, while her face wore an expression of deepest misery and gloom.

There came a brisk rap on the door, and almost before Mrs. Dismal’s hesitating “Come in” could be heard, in marched her neighbor, Mrs. Valiant.

The contrast between the two women was as great as possible and everyone in Much-Trembling wondered at the friendship (if such a one-sided affair could be so named) which existed between them. But it dated back to their schooldays and Mrs. Valiant seemed to have a “queer notion,” as the neighbors called it, of not allowing the friendship to drop.

Mrs. Valiant marched into the room, stopped short, and uttered what sounded exactly like a little snort.