WHERE A VISITANT SEES MORE THAN A RESIDENT
When in the company of a citizen, I am reviewing my place of early residence, while he obviously knows the town well, yet I see all that he does and recollection faithful to its office supplies me with an image of the past which he does not perceive. He gets no glimpse of the panorama that is passing in review before me. In looking over an illustrated volume of the place there are two pictures on each page. There is the one I now see, and to my inner sight there is just above it the one I remember. It is a case of what philosophers call Compound Perception. The absence of the object is contrasted with its presence. You imagine it gone, and perceive the blank it would leave. You observe the object, you also consider it as a negative quantity, for a moment thinking it away. There is the depot. I do not need to have it pointed out. Beside this building I instantly see the picture of another station unobserved by the present generation, which was connected with a different route. Before the Rock Island and before the Central of Iowa, we had the underground R. R. In Grinnell that came first. It did a good business. It had a through line. Its chief station still exists. The glamor of the past is upon it. I knew the station master. I am on intimate terms with one of its conductors. When its train was made up any one could compute its horse-power. The place had public spirit enough for a half dozen average towns. There is the church where the college diplomas were awarded. How plainly I also saw the church where I was, at its completion, an habitual hearer of the Word, that stood on the same noble corner. I never could understand how any mortal could be hired to tear down the earlier sacred edifice. It must have been done by aliens. No one could have bribed me to do it. There isn't money enough. I would as soon have lifted my hand against her who gave me being. The fate of Uzza, whom the Lord smote for a smaller impiety, would have given me alarm.
A Sort of Homesickness
All religious annals will be searched in vain for a better example of the community church. Everybody attended it. All our pleasures were connected with it. Anyone could get the key to hold a meeting. There was always something doing. It had a part in everything that interested the people. When in the Civil War there were victories, the farmers came in, and there sang Praise God, etc., and when we had reverses there was a meeting to appoint a fast. Far away down the gallery of memory hangs a picture. It is a church scene. The figures are the deacons and others, in colors that are fresh and glowing to this hour. The artist that could portray them on canvas would be immortalized in that one act. Extremely fastidious critics would call them old fashioned, but they have at least this merit, they are life-like. It would be becoming in us to honor them as they, in their day, honored the community. I recollect nearly every family that sat under the benign ministry of that church, and could come near to designating each pew they occupied. There was a kind of exaltation about the place, which held the fire, in the old days, on God's altars, and the quaint bare building became as the temple on Mount Zion. Never in the splendid temples, seen in after life, where the wealth of princes had been lavished, to decorate the world famous cathedrals, where stained windows shed an impressive light over the solemn courts, and where the ponderous organ rolls its deep thunders on the ear, have I seemed to be so near the Holy of Holies, as on one or two occasions when my heart was lifted up in that unadorned place of worship. Once the clergyman had pronounced the blessing and the congregation were dispersing when I lingered behind to make a single vow. Tear down that church! I could not have stood it to be present. To some meeting houses they attach a card giving, in plain letters, the church's name and age.
Recollections of Other Years
If, as a boy, I had been asked to prepare a tablet to place on that heaven-blessed house of prayer, I should have put up the sign, "The Lord lives here." There was a solemnity, in its very simplicity, and an impressiveness not artificial, which to a religious fanatic might easily seem supernatural.
The large plain room was pervaded, in the evening, by a dim religious light that proceeded from a few reeking kerosene lamps. Any kind of a meeting was opened with prayer and much decorum and orderliness were observed by the citizens, old and young. The church took everything hard that concerned its own folks. The building was our cradle of liberty. Both men and boys rocked that cradle. A large sweetly toned bell, joyously rung by lads at day break on Independence Day, was finer music to our juvenile ears than would be the combined bands of the world. In the capitol at Richmond, a painting is exhibited, representing the Earl of Chatham pointing to a little flame on the altar of liberty. At that flame how many torches have been lighted. Some have held that the church must be opened only to old age, but that was not the view then and there held. I loved the church. I never saw it surpassed. All its ideals are mine today. I have labored and sacrificed to exhibit them and realize them in other places. If the older present resident members were to visit the people that once had their church home with them there, they would find no trouble in recognizing the leaven which had been carried away from that sanctuary. Temperaments were different, all were unlike and individual, with unequal education, with diverse talents, not able to see with each other's spectacles, yet all learned from each other and all united on the big things. I feel myself indebted to those with whom I associated there, some of whom afterward obtained high and merited distinction. Some of them, God has made princes in the earth. There is the place where they grew up and there they had their vision of service. My warmest prayers have always been for their success. A throng of recollections which I can not repress starts from every corner of the old church and attends my walks about the streets.
Through Tears of Memory
There is no other such dark day as when a boy parts with his home and his native state for good, to find a home God only knows where, and the old life that meant so much to him is over. There were our friends, there was our home, and there are our graves, my father having given commandment concerning his bones. Pardon me, gentle reader, if for the moment I speak with a personal accent. An individual cannot inherit his experience. It is my feeling that it is well to know some part of the world thoroughly. "He who is everywhere is nowhere." Neither a globe-trotter, running like a wandering Jew all over the world, nor a tramp knows the countries he travels over. Here in my early day was a place without amusements.
The hoe, the hod, the plough, the scythe, the shovel, the woodsaw, and the axe, these are all old friends of mine. It is possible that as things are now viewed our sphere had in it a trifle too much of constraint, that the soul had hardly free play enough to unbend and recreate the mind, that we settled down too early, like well broken horses, to the work of life. A little shadow passes over my mind as I think of the analogy to bitting a horse. But when at sunset all nature rings the Angelus, we all say in our hearts, God bless the town and all its people.
Unterrified Visitors
"It would be no unprofitable thing," said Increase Mather, "for you to pass over the several streets and call to mind those who lived here so many years ago." On my approach, the homes of my day, that now survive, seemed to come right out to meet me. The old citizens appeared to start forth from their portrait frames. "They come like shadows and so depart." The old time town was revivified. The dry bones were stirred and made to live. The gates opened their arms widely finding us early residents and bold enough to enter. The same bordered walk led up to the front door. Houses, Say on. You want to speak. Utter your voices. Tell your story. I know its truth. You will not startle me. Many appeared to answer me as I stood, with my greetings, before them. Our old relations are all in my heart. In my day, everybody knew his neighbor and his neighbor was everybody. As is known of ancient Athens, at its best, quoting from an oration writer, "It is impossible for a man in this city to be of good repute or otherwise without all of us knowing it."
Even the most beautiful scenery needs absence to gain its hold upon us, and to unite a new and an old revaluation into something better than either. There is an old proverb, What is ever seen, is never seen. What is always heard, is never heard. The sound of Niagara becomes inaudible to the waiters at the hotels. "To feel the same thing always and not to feel at all, come to the same thing." A man casts his shadow over "A land where all things always seem the same."
When the World was Young
As a boy goes zig-zagging along, dilatorily, of a May morning to school, in and out, among and around the byways, where anything unusual is proceeding, he actually knows a town better than many a man who has lived in it longer, and I would not barter the pleasant memories of my early home for treasures of gold. I would not exchange even the impressions made indelibly on my mind for a gift of public office. There is nothing that I care to take in exchange for my soul. Upon the side of Mt. Blanc is a little patch of verdure called Le Jardin. It is always green. In the deserts are oases. In the ocean wastes we find islands of tropical beauty, so here with nature's extreme fertility we have, enameled with flowers, what they call in Evangeline's land a Grand Pre, extending to the horizon's out-most rim.
You Can't Paint the Sunrise
In boyhood's happy days, in the jocund season of youth, the grass grew quietly in the highways of the town, and bleating sheep and frolicsome calves sported about on the verdant savannas. In the days of which I am writing, cattle and horses were lawful commoners, and roamed at will over much of the town plat. On rising early a boy would find a group of small cattle just in the act of making up its mind that day was breaking. Some would be rising from their hard beds, some had risen and commenced to graze, others were still lying as they had reposed all night, the dew glistening on their hair. Mists were floating over the low grounds in the swales of the prairies, but the reddening east was waking all nature into newness of life, and presently, the ever-punctual sun rose up to do his circuit of the earth. It was a healthy boy's walk amid the fields of morning and he was enraptured with the delightful vision. The day began earlier then. It was long, and like a clothes-line being so extended, required a prop in the middle, hence dinner could not be deferred then until an evening hour. Noon is now becoming as extinct as the mastodon. It faded out. It seems unreal, and belongs to the past. Boys did not carry watches and became quite expert in using a north and south fence for a divider in finding that medial line that cuts the day in halves. We still have the expressions A. M. and P. M. but we make little use of the M. We have God's time, and man's time, for the sake of daylight saving, but my memory testifies that we used the daylight for about all it was worth, anyway up to our limit, at both ends of the day. People then were much more expressive than they are now. If they felt refreshed and exuberant they did not care who knew it. We used to feel with Dickens, Give us, oh give us, the man who sings at his work! He will do more in the same time, he will do it better. He will persevere longer.
"Amidst the storm the Pilgrims sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea,
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthems of the free."
Children were very much more commonly sung to sleep with a mother's foot upon the rocker of the cradle. If we could take out of our minds the fact that the hymn most widely used was for children, we all would say, How beautiful! Pious hymns and patriotic songs were the great leaders. Down through the corridors of time I can still hear the voices of both men and women who sang as they wrought. They who found that their wives did not sing when employed about the house set themselves to find the reason of the suspension and to remove it. This being done, unconsciously the house was gladdened again by impromptu song. From the fact that men worked more in solitary, quiet places, as contrasted with factories, having heavy machinery, men used to whistle. Some became very expert. When one man would say, Let's see how does that tune go? the custom was for the other to take up a few bars by whistling. When soldiers or parades or processions were passing, if the band should stop, those marching would take up some patriotic or other air and all would whistle it. This would spread to the boys on the side walk and extend through the town, and be revived the next day.
Another Relic of the Past
Men worked more hours and had more chores to do, early and late, so being physically weary, when they sat down to read there was a kind of physical preparation for it. The eye did not drop on a newspaper casually at any time. To begin to read required then a kind of personal adjustment illustrated remotely by that of a person who sits down when about to partake of a meal. Thus we used to see people take a book, and get ready to read it as you often see a person now who is about to sing in public, show what he is going to do by using a moment or two in getting himself ready for it.
It augurs well to discover more generally established what the French call the Hotel of God. The Hospital used to be in the same class with the Hospice. It was originally an outgrowth of the church, through the element of charity, very much as we find it on missionary ground in foreign lands. There was usually a chapel included in the construction.
It seemed on review to be the strong and rugged that were struck down, while the semi-invalids appeared to live to ripe old age. He who wins in the first round, does not always seem to come out, in the final test, as the best man. The battle is not to the strong. Like Romulus and Remus placed in a trough, cast adrift on the Tiber, nourished in the marshes by a wolf, some persons seem to be strengthened by the worst things to which they are exposed, while others succumb at their approach. It is hard to pass this same matter over as applied to the college without setting down outstanding illustrations. Some who were distinctly strong, like the pendulum of a dying clock soon passed away.
"A Flood of Thoughts Comes O'er Me"
It became a great trial to me that our forbears never half believed one of the most eloquent and profound statements of the inspired volume. Recognizing, in faith, these beautiful words, what a mockery is artificial light, and how unnecessary a watcher. "Surely the darkness shall cover me, the night shall be light about me, the darkness and the light are both alike." When a soul had left its body and is wearing a crown, it was then the custom, when one of our neighbors had been invited, to be a guest in heaven, for some one of us who felt tenderly and neighborly to offer to serve as a watcher. It was then counted good form for someone other than a member of the family to keep awake throughout the night and that, in no remote part of the house out of which the spiritual world had just received a tenant. It was then the rule of my life never to resist my good impulses and to me it seemed to fall to render this melancholy duty which struck into my soul with terror. My fright, I suppose would have been less if I had lived a better life. I noticed the rattling of the plastering over head.
