THE OLD CLERGYMAN'S FAREWELL.
The speaker was about to bid farewell, he said, to all those kind friends. (Sensation.) He would leave them, and be soon forgotten. (Cries of "No, no! never!" from old and young. Job smites his wooden leg, and exclaims, with enthusiasm, "Not that, by a long thread!")
"Well," continues Father Brighthopes, with suffused features, "I thank you. I hope you will remember me, as I shall remember you. God has been very good to me, in giving me friends, all my life long."
"You deserve them, if anybody does," whispers Job, loud enough to be heard by the entire audience.
He rubs his hands as if he meant it.
"Let me give you a little hint about getting and keeping friends," adds the clergyman, smiling around upon the old people in the chairs, and the young people on the grass or standing up. "I thank Brother Job for suggesting the thought."
"Hear, hear!" says Mr. Royden, pulling Willie away from the speaker's legs, and silencing Georgie, who is inclined to blow his grass "squawker."
"My friends have generally been of the right kind," proceeds the old man. "If you wish to have your friends of the right kind,"—glancing at the younger portion of the audience,—"I'll tell you how to go to work.
"Be always ready to lend a helping hand to those who need assistance. Do so with a hearty good will, not feeling as though you were throwing something away; for, although you get no material return,—which should be the last thing to expect,—you will find in the end that you have been exercising your own capacities for happiness, which grow with their use. Do good for the sake of good, and you will see that the bread thus cast upon the waters comes right back to feed your own hungry souls.
"Be ready to sacrifice all externals to friendship, but maintain your integrity. Give the glittering bubbles of the stream and the current will still be yours, clear and strong as ever. What I mean is, abandon circumstances and outside comforts for the sake of those you love, but never desert a principle to follow any man or set of men. If you do, few friends will be obtained, and they will not be firmly attached; while many who would soon have come round to you will be lost forever. But plant yourself on the rock of principle; and, however men may shun it at first, it shall in the end prove a magnet to draw all true souls to your standard. Royal hearts shall then be yours. They can rely on you, and you on them; so there will be no falling off, when the wind shifts to the northeast. Truth is the sun which holds friends in their orbits, like revolving planets, by the power of its magnetism. If the sun forsake its place in the heavens, and go chasing after the bright tail of some gay comet, what will become of the planets? Let the sun be true to itself, and even the comet comes around in time."
The old man looks at Chester with a smile which asks, "Is it not so?"
"Your philosophy is excellent for men of courage, like yourself," says Chester. "But few can bear to be hated all their lives by the mass of their fellow-men, as many have been, for the sake of the truth."
"Those men who do bear that cross are martyrs of the noblest sort," returns Father Brighthopes. "They are not only men of true courage, but men of fortitude, which is a sort of enduring and perpetual courage. To them the truth, and the few who see and love that truth,—if only a handful of poor fishermen and three or four pious women,—will be more precious than all the kingdoms of the earth. If the devil of ambition whispers that by forsaking the former the latter may be gained, they can resist the temptation; for they know the value of internal convictions of right, and the worthlessness of external shows and shadows and happiness.
"Great truths, when first revealed to mankind, need such martyrs. Opposition assists in the development of principles, as alternate frosts and heats in spring heave and loosen the soil. New truths, like sheaves of grain, must be well threshed by the flail of persecution, and winnowed by the wind of criticism, to separate the pure wheat from the straw and chaff.
"But to none of us, I am confident, will be given the crown of martyrdom. Mankind is too enlightened to make many martyrs now-a-days. We gravitate to truth, and we crucify no more the prophet who reveals it to our sight. This is an age in which principles may be demonstrated, and will always be respected. Then let us embrace them, and have that ballast to steady us in the stormy voyage of life."
"Men of principle, even to-day," Chester replies, "are accused of fickleness and inconsistency, and all sorts of unworthy motives, by those who do not understand them."
"Very well; I can bear to be misunderstood for a little while," says the old man. "Those who are not established on the same ground of truth imagine that I waver, while it is themselves who are continually shifting. It took the earth a great while to learn that the sun and stars did not revolve around it every twenty-four hours. What cared the eternal sun? A ledge upreared in the midst of a swift river seems to be swimming up-stream; but it is only the water moving. Look up at the moon on a windy night when a storm is breaking away, and she appears to be flying wildly across the floor of heaven. It is the clouds that hurry, and the moon feels nothing of the optical delusion. Let us take example of the stars, the sun, the moon and the planets, in order that the true astronomers of the heart may know how to measure our distances and compute our orbits."
"That's my idea, well expressed," says Job, who rubs his hands, feeling that the right kind of friends have finally come around to him; "and that's what I've always told my good woman."
The old man pats Job on the shoulder, and says some pleasant word, which makes everybody laugh. He then proceeds with his speech. He goes from the great principle of integrity to the exercise of the minor domestic virtues. He dwells upon the happiness of the home in which love and contentment dwell, contrasting it with the raw atmosphere which pervades houses of the opposite stamp. How plainly his philosophy demonstrates the necessity of an even temper and a sweet disposition!
"You can keep house without silver spoons, but not without these," he says. "Charity and kindness are the soft music which regulates the march of life, and cheers the hearts of the soldiers."
This allusion to his old profession reminds Job of his wooden leg, which he pats affectionately whistling Yankee Doodle very softly.
The old clergyman goes on. He has a good deal to say to the young folks about the active life upon which they are just entering,—its perils and temptations. He warns them against selfishness, and tells them how it narrows and shrivels the soul. But his favorite theme is LOVE; and he dwells much upon the beauty of its offspring, kindness, contentment, cheerfulness. His language is so simple that even Willie can understand all he says.
"Well," he remarks, in conclusion, "I am talking too long."
"Not a bit of it! I defy you!" cries Job Bowen.
"Go on! go on!" exclaim a dozen voices.
"I must take leave of you soon; and we can spend the little time that remains to us more pleasantly than in speechifying, or listening to a speech. It is doubtful if I ever meet you again. I am growing old," says Father Brighthopes, with a serene smile. "I have but a little while to stay here on earth. I am going home. Our Father has given me my work to do, and it is almost done. Oh, would I could tell you how joyfully I shall put off corruption for incorruption, and exchange mortality for immortality!
"But I shall see you all again, even though we meet here no more. Let us hope so. Let us so live that it shall be so. The Saviour's loving arms are outstretched to receive us all in his embrace."
A pause; silence and tears. Mrs. Royden endeavors to conceal emotion by arranging Hepsy's cape. Others resort to their handkerchiefs. The speaker's voice is choked, and there are shining drops gliding down his aged cheeks. To fill up the pause, he lifts Willie in his arms, as that young gentleman is tying long grass around his feet, and murmuring something about keeping him always; kisses him, and presses him to his heart.
"What are you crying for?" asks the boy, breaking the silence.
With his little brown hand he touches a straw to one of the crystal drops on the old man's face, and strings it off upon it like a bead.
"Thus may all our tears become bright gems!" says Father Brighthopes, smiling tenderly upon the child. "But you cannot realize this, my darling. You teach us a lesson quite unconsciously to your young heart. You show us how hope is born of affliction, and how joy springs from the dark soil of distress. My friends, let us look up. Never look down. Remember what an eternity opens above us, beyond all the clouds of this life. And may the good God bless you all!"