The Wildfire Club - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

ADDRE88 TO TllE WILDPlRE8. 7
true thyseH; thou'lt live to prove it, and even in the
shadow of the world's hard thoughts, with gloomy shroud
of superstitious fear upon thee; thou art enshrined too
in my heart's dear love; regarded there as angel teachers,
ministers of flame, with Pentecostal tongues shaking
the house of death, and marking with living light the
characters of Life Immortal on that world made up of
grains as small as the atoms of theRe our revelations.
Then bear thy brand a while, my !nrniog lamp I
The day shall come when all shan know thee as thou
art; and though the glimmering lights of this poor
"Wildfire Club" shine with no greater force than firefly
sparkles, they have their part in making up the rays of
that eternal Slm - TBB INFINITY OF TRUTH - that lives
forever. And so will these tiny sparks; ay, when the
pages which now record them are tumed to dust, and
when every letter, binding, cover, all, are lost in the
mau80Jeums of the viewless winds, the ages then will
do my " Wildfires" justice, know and call them by their
proper namel, - a club of" teaching spirits," -luring
no more, but; lighting on man's way to that untrodd_cn
boum in which they're shining - the waming and the
beacon. But patience, Wildfires! " This will be when
thought is free," when truth ceases to be ground down
to the standard of ignorance, when calf binding and
shecp-8kin covers cease to be thE: only measures of
knowledge, and the only garments in which science
deigns to array herself; when printer's ink is washed by
the perpetuaJ. tlow of the waters of inspiration, then,
and not till then, will this little club of life pictures. be
truly known, and the epithet of "the Wildfires" perish
with the things that are not.
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