The Golden Censer | Page 8

two, three, and often four hours of your rest, leaving you, in the bankruptcy of after-life a trembling alarmist, subject to the replevins of rheumatic muscles and the reprisals of revengeful nerves. Remember that age comes upon us like a snowstorm in the night, and that the mill will never grind with the water that has passed. Time is the stern corrector of fools; "Wisdom walks before it, Opportunity with it, and Temperance behind it. He that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends."
[Illustration]

HOME.
'Tis sweet to hear the honest watchdog's bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know that there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come.--Byron.
An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural, quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.--Thomson.
'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. --J.H. Payne, in the Opera of "Clari."

No word in the English language approaches in sweetness the sound of this group of letters. Out of this grand syllable rush memories and emotions always chaste, and always noble. The murderer in his cell, his heart black with crime, hears this word, and his crimes have not yet been committed; his heart is yet pure and free; in his mind he kneels at his mother's side and lisps his prayers to God that he, by a life of dignity and honor, may gladden that mother's heart; and then he weeps, and for a while is not a murderer. The Judge upon his bench deals out the dreaded justice to the scourged, and has no look of gentleness. But breathe this word into his ear, his thoughts fly to his fireside; his heart relents; he is no longer Justice, but weak and tender Mercy.
What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great rough man? Why, 'tis from Home--from Home, that spot to which his heart is tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles which hold it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring little for it at the time. Perhaps harsh necessity drove him from its tender roof to lie beneath
THE THATCH OF AVARICE.
It does not matter. As the great river broadens in the Spring, so do his feelings swell and overflow his nature now. Why does he tremble,--that rough, weather-beaten man? Because there is but one place on the great earth where "an eye will mark his coming and grow brighter." If that beacon still burns for him, he can continue his voyage. If it has gone out, if anything has happened to it, his way is dark; nothing but the abiding hand of the Great Father can steady his helm and hold him to his desolate course.
[Illustration: CHILDHOOD.
"Childhood is the bough where slumbered Birds and blossoms many-numbered; Age, that bough with snows encumbered."]
The man who wandered "mid pleasures and palaces," had no Home, and when he died he died on the bleak shores of Northern Africa, and was buried where he died, at the city of Tunis, where he held the office of United States Consul. "To Adam," says Bishop Hare, "Paradise was Home. To the good among his descendants,
HOME IS PARADISE."
"Are you not surprised," writes Dr. James Hamilton, "to find how independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if love be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace." "To be happy at home," writes Dr. Johnson in the Rambler, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution." In the mind of the good there gather about the old Home
HALO UPON HALO OF FOND THOUGHT,
of nearly idolatrous memory. Upon this very green, the joyous march of youth went on. Here the glad days whirled round like wheels. At morn the laugh was loud; at eve the laughter rang. To-day, perhaps the most joyous of the flock lies in the earth. Perhaps the chief spirit of the wildest gambols is bent with sharp affliction; the one that loved his mother best is in a foreign land; the one that doubled her small cares with dolls goes every week to gaze at little gravestones, and the one that would not stay in bed upon the sun's bright rise now sits in awful blindness. You cannot rob these hearts of their sweet memories. The mystic keyword unlocks the gates. The peaceful waters flow;