Famous Single Poems
that she was an unbeliever and would undoubtedly be damned.
“I am not afraid of that,” Mrs. Case replied, “for there is no unbelief. The thing is unthinkable. I believe in everything that is good and beautiful and true; in God and man and nature; in love and life and joy. There is no unbelief.”
The clergyman’s rejoinder is not recorded. Probably he was vanquished by this eloquence. That night, Mrs. Case tossed upon a sleepless pillow and next morning, instead of preparing the regular weekly article which she states she was at that time contributing to the Free Press, she “dashed off the poem that had been framing in my mind all night.”
“The Free Press published it,” Mrs. Case continues, “and soon after letters came pouring in to me from all over the country thanking me for the verses and for the consolation which had been induced in many cases by them. They were copied by numberless newspapers and magazines. They were translated into many foreign languages. I heard of them being read from pulpits and quoted far and wide. Frances E. Willard and others set the verses to music. In short, the little poem which had been dashed off under the sting of a cruel word had touched a responsive chord in thousands of human hearts.”
And then she tells the story of the mythical
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