University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
IN WHICH I SAY GOOD-NIGHT TO MY FRIENDS AND THE PAST
AND GOOD-MORROW TO MY WORK AND THE FUTURE.

Thus I have lived over the old life, or, rather, the young life
which lies with all its vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, and all
its lessons and inspirations, embalmed in my memory; and here,
alas! I must re-write the words with which I began. “They
were all here then—father, mother, brothers and sisters; and
the family life was at its fullest. Now they are all gone, and
I am alone. I have wife and children and troops of friends,
yet still I am alone.” No later relation can remove the sense
of loneliness that comes to him whose first home has forever
vanished from the earth.

As I sit in my library, recording this last chapter of my little
history, I look back through the ceaseless round of business
and care, and, as upon a panorama unrolling before me, I see
through tears the events which have blotted out, one after another,
the old relations, and transferred the lives I loved to
another sphere.

I see a sun-lit room, where my aged father lies propped
among his pillows, and tells me feebly, but with a strange light
in his eyes, that it is so much better for him to go before my
mother! She can do better without him than he can without
her! It is sweet to learn that she who had always been regarded
by her family and friends as a care and a burden to him,
had been his rest and reward; that there had always been
something in his love for her which had atoned for his hard lot,
and that, without her, his life would be undesirable.

I read to him the psalms of assurance and consolation:
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil.” I repeat the words of the tried and patient
patriarch: “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” I join with
the family in singing the inspiring lines which he had never undertaken
to read aloud without being crushed into sobbing
silence:

I press his hand, and hear him say: “It is all well. Take
care of your mother.”

We all bend and kiss him; a few quick breaths, and the
dear old heart is still—a heart so true, so tender, so pure, so
faithful, so trusting, that no man could know it without recognizing
the Christian grace that made it what it was, or finding
in it infallible evidence of the divinity of the religion by whose
moulding hand it was shaped, and from whose inspirations it
had drawn its life. Then we lay him to rest among the June
roses, with birds singing around us, and all nature robed in the
glowing garb of summer, feeling that there are wings near us
which we do not see, that songs are breathed which we do not
hear, and that somewhere, beyond the confines of mortal pain
and decay, he has found a summer that will be perennial.

The picture moves along, and I am in the same room again;
and she who all her life, through fear of death, had been subject
to bondage, has come to her final hour. She has reached
the door of the sepulchre from a long distance, questioning
painfully at every step: “Who shall roll away the stone?” and
now that she is arrived, she finds, to her unspeakable joy and
peace, that the stone is rolled away. Benignant nature, which
has given her so strong a love of life, overcomes in its own
tender way the fear of death that had been generated in her
melancholic temperament, and by stealing her senses one by
one, makes his coming not only dreadless, but desirable. She
finds the angels too, one at the head, the other at the foot
where death has lain, with white hands pointing upward. I
weep, but I am grateful that the life of fear is past, and that
she can never live it again,—grateful, too, that she is reunited
to him who has been waiting to introduce her to her new being
and relations. We lay her by the side of the true husband
whose life she has shared, and whose children she has borne
and reared, and then go back to a home which death has left
without a head—to a home that is a home no longer.

The picture moves on, and this time I witness a scene full
of tender interest to me in my own house. A holy spell of
waiting is upon us all. Aunt Flick comes in, day after day,
with little services which only she can render to her tenderly
beloved niece, and with little garments in her hands that wait
the coming of a stranger. It is night, and there is hurrying to
and fro in the house. I sit in my room, wrapped in pity and
feverish with anxiety, with no utterance save that of whispered
prayers for the safety of one dearer to me than life. I hear
at last the feeble wail of a new being which God has intrusted
to her hands and mine. Some one comes and tells me that
all is well, and then, after a weary hour, I am summoned to
the chamber where the great mystery of birth has been enacted.
I kneel at the bedside of my precious wife. I cover her hands
and her face with kisses. I call her my darling, my angel,
while my first-born nestles upon her arm, wrapped in the atmosphere

of mother-love which her overflowing heart breathes
out upon it. I watch her day by day, and night by night,
through all her weakness and danger, and now she sits in her
room with her baby on her breast, looking out upon the sky and
the flowers and the busy world.

Still, as the canvas moves, come other memorable nights,
with varying fortunes of pain and pleasure, till my home is resonant
with little feet, and musical with the voices of children.
They climb my knees when I return from the fatigues of the
day; I walk in my garden with their little hands clinging to
mine; I listen to their prayers at their mother's knee; I watch
over them in sickness; I settle their petty disputes; I find in
them and in their mother all the solace and satisfaction that I
desire and need. Clubs cannot win me from their society;
fame, honor, place, have no charms that crowd them from my
heart. My home is my rest, my amusement, my consolation,
my treasure-house, my earthly heaven.

And here stoops down a shadow. I stand in a darkened
room before a little casket that holds the silent form of my
first-born. My arm is around the wife and mother who weeps
over the lost treasure, and cannot, till tears have had their way,
be comforted. I had not thought that my child could die—that
my child could die. I knew that other children had died, but
I felt safe. We lay the little fellow close by his grandfather at
last; we strew his grave with flowers, and then return to our
saddened home with hearts united in sorrow as they had never
been united in joy, and with sympathies forever opened toward
all who are called to a kindred grief. I wonder where he is
to-day, in what mature angelhood he stands, how he will look
when I meet him, how he will make himself known to me,
who has been his teacher! He was like me: will his grandfather
know him? I never can cease thinking of him as cared
for and led by the same hand to which my own youthful fingers
clung, and as hearing from the fond lips of my own father, the
story of his father's eventful life. I feel how wonderful to me
has been the ministry of my children—how much more I have

learned from them than they have ever learned from me—
how by holding my own strong life in sweet subordination to
their helplessness, they have taught me patience, self-sacrifice,
self-control, truthfulness, faith, simplicity and purity.

Ah! this taking to one's arms a little group of souls, fresh
from the hand of God, and living with them in loving companionship
through all their stainless years, is, or ought to be, like
living in heaven, for of such is the heavenly Kingdom. To no
one of these am I more indebted than to the boy who went
away from me before the world had touched him with a stain.
The key that shut him in the tomb was the only key that could
unlock my heart, and let in among its sympathies the world of
sorrowing men and women, who mourn because their little
ones are not.

The little graves, alas! how many they are! The mourners
above them, how vast the multitude! Brothers, sisters, I am
one with you. I press your hands, I weep with you, I trust
with you, I belong to you. Those waxen, folded hands, that
still breast so often pressed warm to our own, those sleep-bound
eyes which have been so full of love and life, that sweet,
unmoving, alabaster face—ah! we have all looked upon them,
and they have made us one and made us better. There is no
fountain which the angel of healing troubles with his restless
and life-giving wings so constantly as the fountain of tears, and
only those too lame and bruised to bathe miss the blessed
influence.

The picture moves along, and now sweeps into view The
Mansion on the hill—my old home—the home of my friend
and sister. I go in and out as the years hurry by, and little
feet have learned to run and greet me at the door, and young
lips have been taught to call me “uncle.” It is a door from
which no beggar is ever turned away unfed, a door to which
the feeble, the despairing, the sorrowing, the perplexed have
come for years, and been admitted to the counsels, encouragements,
and self-denying helpfulness of the strongest and noblest
man I know. The ancient mistress of the establishment is

quite forgotten by the new generation, and the house which,
for so many years, was shut to the great world by the selfish
recluse who owned it, is now the warmest social center of the
town. Its windows blaze with light through many a long evening,
while old age and youth mingle in pleasant converse; and
forth from its ample resources go food and clothing for the
poor, and help for the needy, and money for those who bear
the Good Tidings to the border. Familiar names are multiplied
in the house. First there comes a little Claire, then an
Arthur Bonnicastle, then a Ruth, and last a Minnie; and Claire,
so like her mother in person and temper, grows up to be a
helpful woman. I visit my old room, now the chamber of
little Arthur Bonnicastle, but no regrets oppress me. I am
glad of the change, and glad that the older Arthur has no selfish
part or lot in the house.

And now another shadow droops. Ah! why should it
come? The good Lord knows, and He loves us all.

In her room, wasting day by day with consumption, my sister
sits and sees the world glide away from her, with all its industries
and loves, and social and home delights. The strong man
at her side, loaded with cares which she so long has lightened,
comes to her from his wearying labor, and spends with her
every precious flying hour that he can call his own. He almost
tires her with tender ministry. He lifts her to her bed; he lifts
her to her chair; he reads to her; he talks calmly with her of the
great change that approaches; he sustains her sinking courage;
he calls around her every help; he tries in every way to stay
the hand of the fell destroyer, but it is all in vain. The long-dreaded
day comes at last, and The Mansion—nay, all Bradford
—is in mourning. A pure woman, a devoted wife, a tender
mother, a Christian friend, sleeps; and a pastor, whose life is
deepened and broadened and enriched by a grief so great and
lasting that no future companionship of woman can even be
thought of, goes to his work with a new devotion and the unction
of a new power. There is still a Claire to guide the

house, and the memory and influence of a saint to hallow all
its walls, and chasten all its associations.

The picture sweeps along, and presents to my imagination
a resistless river, calm in its beginnings, but torn and turbulent
as it proceeds, till it plunges in a cataract and passes from my
sight. Along its passage are little barks, each bearing a member
of my family—my brothers and sisters—separated from me
and from each other by miles of distance, but every one moving
toward the abyss that swallows them one by one. The disease
that takes my sister Claire takes them all. Each arriving at
her age passes away. Each reaching the lip of the cataract,
lets go the oars, tosses up helpless hands, makes the fatal
plunge, and the sob surge and of the waters, wind-borne to my
shrinking ears, is all that is left to me. Not all, for even now
a rainbow spans the chasm, to promise me that floods shall
never overwhelm them again, and to prove to me that tears
may be informed with the same heavenly light that shines in living
flowers, and paints the clouds of sunrise.

The noise of the cataract dies away in the distance, the
river dissolves, and I sit inside a new and beautiful church.
The old one has been torn down to make way for a larger and
better one. It is communion-day, and behind the table on
which is spread the Christian feast of commemoration sits my
boyhood's companion, my college friend, my brother and pastor,
Henry Sanderson. The years have strewn silver over his temples
and graven furrows upon his face, but earnestness, strength,
and benignity are the breath and burden of his presence. An
event is about to take place of great interest to him, to the
church, and to a large circle of business men. Mr. Bradford,
for the first time, publicly takes his stand among the Christian
family. He is old now, and the cane which he used to carry for
company, and as a habit, has become a necessity. He takes
his place in the aisle, and by his side my own dear wife, who from
her childhood has stood loyally by him and refused to unite
with a church until he could do so. The creed has been revised.
The refinements and elaborate definitions and non-essential

dogmas have been swept away, and the simple old Apostle's
Creed, in which millions of disciples and saints have lived
and died in the retiring centuries, is all that is read to him, and
all to which he is called upon to respond.

Home at last! Received into the fold where he has always
belonged! A patriarch, seated at the table of the Lord
from which he has been shut away by children in experience,
wisdom, and piety! He is my father now, the grandfather of
my children, and the little wife who has trusted him and believed
in him all her life has at last the supreme happiness of communing
with him and her daughter in the holy festival.

Why do I still watch the unrolling canvas? The scenes that
come and pass are not painful to me, because they are all associated
with precious memories and precious hopes, but to those
who read they must be somber and saddening. Why tell of
the news that reached me one day from Hillsborough? Why
tell of that which reached me six months afterward from the
same place? They sleep well and their graves are shrines.
Why tell how Aunt Flick, from nursing one with malignant disease,
came home to die, and left undone a world of projected
work? Why tell how Mr. Bradford was at last left alone, and
came to pass the remnant of his life with me? Why tell of
another shadow that descended upon The Mansion, and how,
in its dark folds, the lovely mother of my friend disappeared?

It is the story of the world. We are born, we grow to manhood
and womanhood, we marry, we work, we die. The generations
come and go, and they come without call and go without
significance if there be not a confident hope and expectation
of something to follow, so grand and sweet and beautiful that
we can look upon it all without misgiving or pain. Faith draws
the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and
quenches the fire of every pain; and only faith can do it.
Wisdom, science, power, learning—all these are as blind and
impotent before the great problem of life as ignorance and
weakness. The feeblest girl, believing in God and a hereafter,
is an archangel by the side of the strongest man who questions

her simple faith, and mounts on wings where he stumbles in
doubt and distress, or sinks in darkness.

To those of two homes who are living, through six long and
ever-memorable evenings, I have read my book, and now they
are all with me to-night as I draw the chair to my library-table,
to write these closing paragraphs. The center of the group
is Mr. Bradford, an old, old man, though he is still strong
enough to hold my youngest upon his knee. Henry sits near
him, talking with Millie, while the young people are gathered
in a distant corner, conversing quietly among themselves about
the events I have for the first time fully unveiled to them.
Their talk does not disturb me, for my thoughts linger over
what I have written, and I feel that the task which has been
such a delight to me is soon to pass from my hands. No work
can come to me so sweet as this has been. I have lived my
life again—a life so full of interest that it seems as if I could
never tire of it, even though death should come nearer and
nearer to me, waiting for my consent to be pushed from the
verge of earthly existence.

I hear the quiet voices around me. I know where and what
I am, but I cannot resist the feeling that there are more forms
in the room than are visible to my eyes. I do not look up,
but to me my library is full. Those who are gone cannot have
lost their interest in those who remain, and those who are gone
outnumber us two to one. My own, I am sure, are close about
me, looking over my shoulder, and tracing with me these closing
words. Their arms are intertwined, they exchange their
thoughts about me all unheard by my coarse senses, and I am
thrilled by an influence which I do not understand. My sister
sits by the side of her husband unseen, and listens to the words
which he is speaking to my wife, and hears her own name pronounced
with grateful tenderness. Mr. Bradford has a companion
older than the little one who sits upon his knee and
plays with his great gold chain, but sees her not. There are

wistful, sympathetic faces among the children, and they cannot
know why they are so quiet, or what spell it is that holds them.
A severe, restless little woman watches her grandson with
greedy eyes, or looks around upon those she once had within
her power, but regards us all in impotent silence. Of them,
but apart, companions in the new life as they were in the old,
are two who come to visit their boys again—boys growing old
in labor and preparing to join them in another school, among
higher hills and purer atmospheres, or to be led by them to the
tented shores of the River of the Water of Life. The two
worlds have come so near together that they mingle, and
there are shadows around me, and whispers above me, and
the rustle of robes that tell me that life is one, and the love of
kindred and friends eternal.

To morrow, ah! golden to morrow! Thank God for the hope
of its coming, with all its duty and care, and work and ministry,
and all its appeals to manliness and manly endeavor! Thank
God, too, for the long dissipation of the dreams of selfish ease
and luxury! Life has no significance to me, save as the theater
in which my powers are developed and disciplined by use,
and made fruitful in securing my own independence and the
good of those around me, or as the scene in which I am fitted
for the work and worship of the world beyond. The little
ones and the large ones of my own flock are crowding me
along. Soon they will have my place. I do not pity, I almost
envy them. Life is so grand, so beautiful, so full of meaning,
so splendid in its opportunities for action, so hopeful in its high
results, that, despite all its sorrows, I would willingly live it over
again.

Good-night!