Good-bye, St. Peter, keeper of the gate of Heaven, with a smile upon your face as if it were all a joke, this locking and unlocking of the abode of bliss. You didn’t look as if you would keep a poor Jewish lad out of Heaven.
Good-bye, blessed Virgin Mary, standing upon a crescent moon and a pillar of cloud. You beautiful Jewish mother of the Son of God!
The women in the omnibus said: “Oh! Virgin Mary, intercede for us!” For some reason, the Virgin never appealed to me until in riper years I saw the Sistine in the Dresden gallery. I think I now understand why the women adore her.
Good-bye, faithful old priest; you always looked like a Sphinx to me. Your face was like that of a Cæsar and not of the Christ. You were a Roman and not a Jew. Yet they loved you and you were on your way to make some one’s dying easier. I never liked your acolytes—they were always cruel to me, and I ran whenever I saw one. They told me once when they were piled on top of me, that I crucified the Christ and that they beat me “for the love of God.”
What a black eye—the first black eye I ever had—I got for “the love of God”! It hurt, though, just as much as if I had got it because of their love for the devil.
Good-bye, you Jewish dead, who lie by the dusty road. My buoyant spirits flagged as I passed the thorn hedge, beyond which they lay in dire confusion.
Good-bye, old teacher, whom they drew out of the muddy river. They put you closest to the gate and your grave is level with the roadway. It was terrible to lose the love of your wife and have her unfaithful to you. I know now why you despaired. I have read Hosea since, and I understand your grief. It was not because the child was “Lo ami”—not my people—that you despaired; but because the people were harlots and did not understand your “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” It isn’t easy to have faith at such a time, old teacher, and yet Hosea, in his grief, said: “Come let us return unto the Lord. For He hath torn and He will heal us. He hath smitten and He will bind us up.” Too bad we couldn’t have read Hosea together.
Good-bye, Adèle, whose grief I shared. Love—I understand it now. Love and not wrath is a consuming fire. All those who love, suffer, especially when love tries to break the barriers of class or race.
Good-bye, old Jewish soldier, you three-quarters of a man, who showed me “Old Glory” and interpreted to me the riddle of the Stars and Stripes. Thanks, many thanks for the patron saint under whose care you put me—“Honest Abe!” The church calendar may not mark his name; but what is a church calendar compared with the record made by those whose chains he broke, or in whose hearts he inspired the hope that chains can be broken?
Good-bye, my father, whom my eyes never saw and my fingers never touched. I could not weep at your grave. How can we miss what we never had? Now, with children of my own, I understand how hard your dying was; how brave your life. Not because you fought for your country, most men are too cowardly to be cowards in time of war; but you went alone where “the pestilence walketh in darkness.” You were not afraid of the “terror by night.” You may even have been afraid of those guns—I fear them and my children after me. I do not believe you ever killed a Prussian. They may have called you coward, but you were not afraid of the cholera. You comforted the sick and buried the dead, when strong men fled and mere brute strength was unavailing.