The Call at Evening
Jessie Ward
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, Aug. 19, 2012)
Foreword More earnest than the quest for happiness, more intent than the search for knowledge, and more far-reaching than delving for gold, is mans eternal stretching forth toward the goal of Eternal Truth. Bits of that Truth drifting downward in particles of flame have been grasped by man and have become the golden ladder by which he climbed to its radiant fullness. Yet it has always been that Seeming Truth has drifted by its side, and the masses grasping it have rested content until the thing has tarnished in their hands or crumbled with their weight, when they would use it, upward bound. Yet, there are some who with keener vision have sensed the difference they could not see and have refused to grasp the Truth that Seemed, but waited, watching for the unfolding of the Real. Some there are in whose breasts this hope has died, and in despair they have lifted their faces and said, There is no Truth. Yet as they spoke the clouds of doubt have scattered and the long-hoped-for has burst upon their view, and the Sun of Eternal Knowledge of the Here and Now and Yet to Come has burst upon them. Of such were Bill Lakeman and Stanley and many others of whom they are but a type. There are others yet, whose lives are enshrouded with great, black clouds of care, and who must of necessity forego the search, but in whose hearts bums the unquestioning assurance that just beyond their reach and beyond the clouds of despair which envelop them, truth reigns supreme, could they but drop their work to search. Yet Duty holds them, and at the moment when they least think, like a shaft of flame dancing across the blackness of their sky thp Fires of the Real and Always burn, and as they grasp it, remain and gleam to light their sphere of action,,until the clouds in shame retreat into the false from whence they came. Of such are Mary Bennett and the widowed mother of Cynthia Brown (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)