With heart never changing and brow never cold,
Live on thro’ all ills, and love on till they die.”
It is not given to us, children and grandchildren, who meet today at the old home shrine to lay our offerings, consecrated by affection, upon the family altar, to know the heart and soul yearnings of our aged parents to find some favored spot, some oasis in the desert, where they could build a home and enjoy the fruitions of peace and contentment amidst a family of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked and merry-voiced children.
In fancy’s eye we see their beautiful and vine-clad native France; we see them in the bloom and strength of youth, standing at the altar and pledging to each other unchanging fidelity in storm and shine, ready to meet the future as the day unfolded their duties, their opportunities, their tasks and trials, sustained by a faith and hope which cheered them on their pilgrimage through all their married days.
Those of us who have reached years of maturity and are here with wives and husbands and children and children’s children, may in fancy’s telescopic vision see the youthful pair leaving the old for the new world, whispering to each other with brimful eyes and quivering lips:
“Go where we will, this hand in thine,
Those eyes before me smiling thus,
Through good and ill, through storm and shine,
The world’s a world of love for us.”
And such has been the world to them. Love has been their guiding star; no cloud ever obscured it, and the darker the day of adversity the brighter shone their love which bathed their home and our home in its mellow, cheering light.