Chapter 10

upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations." "I think that to have known one good old man," George William Curtis says, "one man who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm branch, waving all discords into peace--helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other more than many sermons." "He that would pass the declining years of his life with honor and comfort," says Addison, with fine opposition, "should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young." On the principle that blessings brighten as they take their flight we come to love the sunshine and the birds and all God's glorious works just as we grow old.

"IF WE NEVER CARED FOR LITTLE CHILDREN BEFORE"

says Lord Lytton, "we delight to see them roll on the grass over which we hobble. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, care-worn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn, and feel most delight in the returning spring." "Winter," says Richter, "which strips the leaves from around us, makes us see the distant regions they formerly concealed; so does old age rob us of our enjoyments, only to enlarge the prospect of eternity before us." Seneca says that there is nothing more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to produce as a proof that he has lived long except his years. I love Longfellow's picture of

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH,

the mighty man. It has been set to one of the best musical accompaniments that I have ever heard. When the verses below are reached, the key is changed to one where the sadness intensifies, until the honest old heart hears the "mother's voice singing in Paradise:"

He goes on Sunday to the church; And sits among his boys; He hears the parson pray and preach, He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise; He needs must think of her once more, How in the grave she lies; And with his hard, rough hand he wipes A tear out of his eyes.

I wish, instead of merely printing these simple words, I could breathe them out to you, as some great tenor or baritone like Sims Reeves or Santley sings them--there is such a world of human life and feeling hidden there, ready to spring forth with the touch of sympathetic sounds!

NOTHING BECOMES A YOUNG MAN SO MUCH

as a respectful demeanor toward a reverend man. Nothing lowers a man so much as flippant speech concerning his elders. The young man with the most dignity has the most deference for age. He takes sincere delight in bowing before ripe years and wisdom. Alas! how sad that ever age should come to one who is not fitted for its honors!

I have known a son to thwart every dream of his father. I have seen the parent, struggling with adversity, yet succeed in opening before the child a career of honor and comfort; and I have seen the son clutch those opportunities as a highwayman seizes upon the wayfarer, and throttle them in the dust and ashes of failure and disgrace. How sad the picture!

A BRIGHTER VIEW.

I have seen a parent toil for years, carrying to his cottage the wages which should support his son in seven long years of careful education. I have watched that son in his ceaseless studies and found he thought only of gladdening his father's heart. I have seen him graduate second in a class of one hundred and fifteen, and then after two years of additional study, first in a body of eighty young men, each of whom was a scholar. The best men of a great city have given that young man encouragement. Their homes and their wives and their daughters have smiled at his approach, and his course has been upward without a fall, and with few pauses for rest. Has he forgotten his poor father? No. He still lives in the cottage, and will make the small house with a great man in it more hospitable and more honorable than a wide door that swings open to a narrow soul. How pleasant the picture!

MOTHER.

A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.--Coleridge.

Not learned save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In angel instincts, breathing Paradise.

Who looked all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, And girdled her with music. Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood.--Tennyson.

So high and holy a title as mother cannot fall too reverently from man's lips. That he might live the mother has gone down into the valley of the shadow of death; that he might thrive she has fed him with willingness from her own weak body, and grown spectre-like as he grew strong and importunate; that he might go among his fellows on an equal footing, she has toiled with his small weak brain teaching him the beginning of his education and tilling "a rank unweeded garden;" that he might have everlasting life, she has instilled into his mind that saving fear of God, which, though he think himself an atheist, will claim the mastery when Death grins by his couch, and grant him a stay of the awful judgment till he may make his peace with a Creator whose mercy endureth forever. Everything a man is he can owe but to his mother; everything he may be in future life has possibly come from her fond intercession, her gentle admonitions. "Unhappy is the man for whom his own mother has not made all other mothers venerable," says Richter. "The future destiny of the child,"

SAYS NAPOLEON,

"is always the work of the mother," and it is certain that he had ample reason in his own remarkable career for making this important admission. He inherited from his mother all those attributes which made him great, and owed his sudden downfall to none of her teachings. She was noted for her sagacity and prudence, but possibly it required more than human sagacity and prudence to balance the mighty impulses which moved Napoleon Bonaparte. "A father may turn his back on his child," says Washington Irving, "brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still

SHE REMEMBERS THE INFANT SMILES

that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy." "There is in all this cold and hollow world," says Mrs. Hemans, "no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother's heart." "Even He that died for us upon the cross," says Longfellow, "in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought--the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven." Who ever saw

A MOTHER ROMPING WITH HER THREE-YEAR-OLD

that did not look upon her as one of the happiest, therefore, necessarily, one of the best of God's creatures? O, in that peek-a-boo, that capturing of that last squealing "pig," the little toe, that paddy-cake opera, is there not the one great bliss of life, to be happy in making others happy? And how the laughter rings through the house! And then the toil and self-denial for the stocking and the tree

AT CHRISTMAS!

Is it any wonder that the child is so easily deceived, and credits all his joys to unseen ministers? It would not be hard to convince the philosopher himself of the dual earthly character of the mother, visibly a woman, invisibly but not the less really to her child, an ethereal spirit of mercy and goodness! What gnaws her cheek and cheats Death into the belief a flag of truce summons him to the final parley? Has not her babe, her hope, been fevered and in pain, and should she sleep lest it should leave her on this world behind, that then would need her not? "Canst bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?" No more can her anxiety be

FETTERED INTO SLEEP;

no more can her quick ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, the marvel, there is no further marvel. Given life, the scientists say, there is no other problem on this narrow world. And thus the marvel and the mystery never grow less.

MAN ENTERS THE WORLD,

of all animals the most pitiable and weakly. Left to himself he would immediately perish. Extinguish the mother's love and he would at once perish. His growth is by far the slowest of that of all animals, therefore the wisdom of God in so lengthening the tenure of the mother's solicitude. The mighty man who wields the iron halberd which no two people can lift was still a helpless infant, unable to put his own chubby fist into his own mouth! The autocrat who sweeps whole communities into Siberia with a stroke of his pen was ill when his mother was alarmed, was in agony when she was indiscreet with her food! She cannot forget this. It is but yesterday she dried his flesh to keep it sound. It is but yesterday she let him bite his aching gum upon her finger, wishing the ache might go from him to her--hoping that if he gave her pain he would have less. One can well pardon the vanity that would lead a son to insist that his mother should accompany him to

THE EXECUTIVE MANSION OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC,

that she might behold him enter upon the Chief Magistracy of fifty millions of freemen, gained by the first choice of a majority of those freemen, yea, by the unanimous first and second choice, for none so ready to fight for his right to rule as he who yesterday voted for an honored opponent--the very summit of true political ambition--the apex of the mother's boldest hope! "The mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to old age," says Bovee; "and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of

THE BEST FRIEND

that God ever gives us!" I knew an aged woman, who interested me very greatly in tales of "her boy"--that good son who had so often proven his gratitude for her long love. One day, chancing to consider her great number of years, I inquired how old "her boy" was, and found that he had been a grandfather for twenty-three years, and had lately had the satisfaction of holding a great grandson in his arms. Still he was her curly haired-boy--she could remember him in no other condition of life with so much satisfaction.

"I WOULD DESIRE FOR A FRIEND,"

says Lacretelle, "the son who never resisted the tears of his mother." "Love droops, youth fades, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all," sings Oliver Wendell Holmes. "At first," says Beecher, "babies feed on the mother's bosom, but always on her heart." "Stories first heard at a mother's knee," affirms Ruffini, "are never wholly forgotten--a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years."

"AN OUNCE OF MOTHER,"

says the Spanish proverb, "is a pound of clergy." "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom," says another writer. "Men are what their mothers made them," says Emerson, in study of Napoleon's idea; "you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber." "It is generally admitted," says Theodore Hook, "and frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers." "It is well for us," says Bishop Hare, "that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with

A CONCEIT OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE

which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it." Perhaps the praises of our mothers tarry in our brains too long anyway. It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-class ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of her love.

"SHE WHO HAS LOST AN INFANT,"

says Leigh Hunt, "is never, as it were, without an infant child. Her other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence." The mother teaches us the one grand lesson of

UNALTERABLE FIDELITY.

"Nothing is more noble," says Cicero, "nothing more venerable." One of the most beautiful tributes to an aged mother was written by Lamartine. "The loss of a mother," he says "is always severely felt. Even though her health may incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand endeavors to please, concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends."

THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS

their mothers have upon them. Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice. As old Dr. South says, "the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one that you will find that

HE ALSO DIES SO.

The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders." Be glad, if you are ungrateful, that a wise man has given you so good counsel to pray--and pray as you do when you think yourself in extreme peril!

IF YOUR MOTHER IS YET YOUNG,

you have many years of her great friendship before you. Try and pattern after her boundless affection. Let it melt into your heart and make it warmer. If "age has snowed white hairs" upon her head, treasure her the more fondly during the few swift years she will be left to you. Soon she will go to her reward, and you will be without the only friend of man whose love seems to be inalienable--whose esteem he cannot barter away, either in greed or in vice.

THE MOTHER OF MOTHERS.

In almost every community there is "a mother in Israel," a mother of mothers, whose great heart is like the ocean, and claims the outpourings of every stream of life. To these grand souls of virtue and goodness let every man bow in reverence, for they are mothers to the motherless. When the Reaper came forth to reap he aimed to take the richest sheaf, but lo! the mother in Israel gathered the orphans together, and poured out her tenderness upon them.

LOVE.

Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted!--Burns.

Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those for others; deep as love. Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life! the days that are no more.--Tennyson.

Love, says Cowley, "is a great passion, and therefore I hope I have done with it." I think most people will agree with this sentiment. Love is such a tyrant, it leaves common sense so little to say, that the majority of people are heartily glad when reason returns to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been termed so by people who have looked at things merely by what they have seen. In the highly-feverish state of the brain the nerves of the whole system soon become involved, the stomach refuses to perform its functions, and physical emaciation and deep melancholia rapidly ensue. The obvious reason is the insane state of the brain. Nature has suddenly impressed that organ with the one idea that a certain fair maid is actually without the faults of her associates. She is the prize of the whole world! Had the world the information of her perfections which is lodged in this young man's secret brain, there would be a war of extermination for her possession--a second sack of Troy at the very least. Deep pity for other men with wives, who cannot marry this maiden, and pity for young men who have seemingly preferred other maidens, intermit with joy that all the world has been so blind.

CAUTIOUSLY THE YOUTH ADVANCES

toward his prey. The expedition is one of tremendous importance, therefore his exceeding amount of thought. When he is in the ineffable presence, he is there as an actor in a tragedy, or as a tenor in an opera. He has almost counted his hairs; he certainly counts the winkings of his eyelids! Can any detail be unimportant in an undertaking of such measureless risk? It is no wonder, then, that a young man who is giving as much thought as this to a young, thoughtless girl is not worth much in his business for the time being! In fact, it is a miracle to him, after

SOME DOOMFUL FROWN

from his queen, that he has survived the night and goes to his work at all! He is confident that it is base habit. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!" he cries, as his dissatisfied employer, or father, requires some reasonable action and fails to get it. In after-life this same young man is glad the "grand passion" will never come to him again. He feels that it has not heightened him in his own regard. His love may have been smooth or it may have been swallowed in the quicksands of adversity--the difference is small. It is not creditable to the human brain to be so hoodwinked and purblind as Cupid makes his victims. But

LOVE RULES THE UNIVERSE,

having its climax in God himself, and its earthly ideality in the mother's affection. We should not complain that when the potent essence is first administered to us it shakes us seriously. Without this passion, selfishness would triumph, and man would not take on the cares of wedded life. Society and religion would wither. The world would be a howling den of chaos and deep crime.

HOW HAVE THE SAGES LOOKED UPON LOVE?

I think they are inclined to praise it, as a whole--to indorse it merely as a sensation, a passing gratification. It has always, on the contrary, seemed to me like an exquisitely painful means to an exquisitely beautiful end. The warm genial love of the home--the love which is as an open grate, cheerful, and which is without those thunderstorms needful to clear the heavily charged atmosphere of youthful love--pleases and repays me for "the dangers I have passed." "The greatest pleasure of life is love," says Sir William Temple. "Love is like the hunter," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "who cares not for the game when once caught, which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless eagerness." This is true of only a minority of the hunters. I have more frequently bought additional fish than thrown away those I have caught. Why? Because the weariness and difficulty of catching two or three rock bass had impressed me with the value of a whole string of fish. You have seen

THE ANXIETY OF THE CAT

to make the captive mouse believe she is not on guard. She walks away with the utmost indifference. But let the mouse so much as move its crushed little body, she is upon it with the ferocity of the greatest members of her agile tribe. So it is with us. Let our possession escape us, our consternation is complete. Again the spring uncoils, and again we are madmen. "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid; love's night is noon," says Shakspeare. "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" sings Tennyson. "Nothing but real love," says Lord Lytton, "can repay us for the loss of freedom, the cares and fears of poverty,

THE COLD PITY OF THE WORLD

that we both despise and respect." "Love," says Sir Thomas Overbury, wittily, "is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath made." "To reveal its complacence by gifts," says Mrs. Sigourney, "is one of the native dialects of love." "Love is never so blind as when it is to spy faults," says South. "Love reckons days for years," says Dryden, "and every little absence is an age." "Where love has once obtained an influence," observes Plautus dryly, "any flavoring, I believe, will please." "That is the true reason of love," says Goethe, "when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could either have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us."

"NO CORD OR CABLE CAN DRAW