Dina

Dina By Alfred Lambourne "As a woman thinketh so is She.*9 In its tranquility and peace her face was like the psalm. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters." One could imagine her lips repeating the words. In the depths of her clear and steady eyes, were shown a gentleness, a resigna- tion, and yet they revealed as well an introspection in the soul. One realized that in the life of the possessor of that face there had been an experience that was both sacred and untold. In her heart there was raised an altar where the soul could worship, upon which could burn the holy flame of love, to all the world unknown. Books have souls; one learns to know them as he reads. The book-soul is a portion of the soul of its author. A book holds fast to that life of its own, a life that is dead to change. He who puts life into those words, a soul, may pass on, even retro- grade, but the book remains the same. Books are soul-chil- dren, mile-stones on the road of soul development. They are records and a portion of the ego. There is often a meeting of souls through books. There the soul of the author is met by the soul of the reader. Why should not such a one as she find her soul-mate through the soul of a book? In an ivory casket inlaid with gold, Dina kept the treasures which made her memorial of love. There was the book in which she had first read his name. There were his letters, his portrait, a lock of his hair, and lastly a few withered flowers, relics which had been gathered and sent by a friend, from his unseen grave. Can souls so meet and love? They can and did. Never in life did she look upon him; never was she seen by his mortal eyes, and yet to them love became the undying passion of life. Once they were so near to each other that they all but met, and still they did not care to see each other in the flesh. In her room — her world, it was as if she were in a nunnery cell; to him the world was a home. She lived within the most narrow bounds ; to him the Orient and the Occident were as one. While she listened each year to the spring note of the same robin upon the lawn. He heard the music of the chang, the Hebrew cym- bals, or the voluptuous clicking of the castanets. While her small circle of friends remained the same, he made new ones as he inhaled the incense of the Koslym and the Narghileh with

DINA 433 the Persian, the Turk, the Arab, or smoked the peace-pipe, the calumet, with savages in their native wilds. As her sphere of life narrowed toward that one sanctuary, the stillness of her room, his broadened to the Seven Seas. But the farther apart their lives, the nearer was soul to soul. Truly like seeks like, and yet it may be in a very antithesis of being. We will not forget the Little White Lady who once loved the Lord of Newstead, nor the sweetheart of the aged Goethe. Perhaps the soul to which she was drawn might have revelled in the sensuous beauties of the earth, as she in the ecstacy of the spirit. Such a soul meeting was independent of space and time, and such a love is religion. How dear to a woman's soul is a gift from romance. And dearer still it becomes if, in the romance of their love, there is a touch of the mysterious, of the supernatural. Above all would it be dear to such a nature as that Dina of whom we write. To her how priceless some token from the unknown to set a seal of divine sanction upon her love. To her such a gift was of greater worth than all earthly riches, or of earthly pleasures. It built for her a palace of the soul. Too lengthy a prelude, and the event how small. Yet ex- plain that event who may? A wedding ring, and yet not mar- riage. That word "marriage" had never been written in one of those letters. A wedding ring, and from where? Not found in any letter; not received from any hand. That room had been inviolate, and yet the ring was there. Death had put the final period to their correspondence; the letters whose envelopes bore the postmarks of so many lands, and then came from only one, at last would come no more. The man whom she had learned to love, who had traveled so far, was now at rest, his wanderings ended, by the shore of a distant sea. But the ring? It had not come as a reminder of that which might have been on earth; it had not been found among the possessions of the man who was dead. It did not come with the sacred flowers, that had been gathered and sent from that unseen grave. Then, whence had it come? Was it a token from the dead? It came, it appeared, from out the infinite and returned into the un- known. There it lay upon her dresser, a plain, shining band of purest gold. For one short hour she had worn that ring upon the marriage finger of her hand. Then she had placed it away among the other sacred relics in the ivory casket, inlaid with gold. Her room, we have said, was inviolate, none had en- tered there, the key of the casket was ever with her, and yet, when she looked again, the ring was gone. Gone! And where? Never did Dina know. But she might believe. Yes, that emblem had come from out the infinite, and returned from whence it

434 IMPROVEMENT ERA came. And the one who wore the ring for one short hour yet awaits the end; for the time when shall come the perfect mar- riage of soul to soul, not here but in some realm beyond. Dying Day Into the west sinks the day, Rosy-hued day, Out of the east comes the night; Sunset is fading to gray, Fading away, Dark stealing after the light. So fails the day of the brave, Bravest of brave; Worn by the toil and the strife, Monarch and minion and slave Sink to the grave — Death closing down upon life. But say, does the day ever die Out of the sky? Does the day ever yield to the night? Or is somewhere the sun ever high In the valleys that lie Beyond the horizons of sight? 0 close on the heels of the day, Fire-bright day, May follow the wings of the night, Dark never conquers the day On its west-wending way In the valleys ahead of the night! There is ever a new day begun With the swift-setting sun In the far western valleys of Earth ; And the soul of a life that is done Is a soul that has gone To a new and more beautiful birth. Vernon, Utah Rulon P. Bennion