The Garden of Prayer

The Garden of PrayerStairway to ParadiseSpirit of Christmas
floor, black-shawled and -dressed, the New Syllabus on her lap as always, she flapped at me her thrice-weekly peanut-butter sandwich and crooned, "Come, Billy! Come, love! Come!"
Anxious as I was for my Nikolayan cellmate, I laid my head in her lap, pretended to hunger for the ritual food, and chewed the pages of antique wisdom she tore out for me, though they tasted sourly of much thumbing.
"Now then, love, let me see. . ." She adjusted her spectacles, brightly licked her forefingertip, and opened the book to a dogeared page. "People ought to use bookmarks!" she fussed. "And there's a verse marked, too. Peopleshouldn't mark in library-books." Her tone softened. "Oh, but look what it is, Billikins: I'mso proud of the things you write!"
Such was her gentle madness, she thought me at once Billy Bocksfuss in the hemlock-grove, the baby GILES she'd Bellied -- and, alas, the long-Commencèd Enos Enoch.
"Passèd are the flunked,"she read, very formally. "My, but that's a nice thought. Don't you think?"
I didn't answer, not alone because my tongue was peanut-buttered, but because those dark and famous words from the Seminar-on-the-Hill brought me