Overhead floats the dear old flag, thank God! but countless are the homes where the music of "the holidays" has forever died out; where sorrow will clasp its hands over an aching heart, or sit down by a solitary hearth, with a pictured face it can scarce see for the tears that are falling on it. There seems nothing left now. The country is safe, the war has ended; that rifled heart is glad of that; but oh! what shall make its terrible desolation on these festival days even endurable? That's the thought that can't be choked down even by patriotism. It comes up all over the house, at every step. It meets you in parlor, and chamber, and entry. It points where the coat and hat used to hang; it whispers from the leaves of some chance book you listlessly open, where are his pencil-marks. Even the dish on the table you loved to prepare for him is turned to poison. The sun seems merciless in its brightness; the music and dancing in unrifled homes is almost heartless. What can you do with this spectre grief, that has taken a chair by your fireside, and, change position as you may, insists on keeping you torturing company? You may walk, but it is there when you return. You may read, but you feel its stony eyes on you the while; you may talk, but you keep listening for the answer you will never hear. Oh, what shall you do with it? Face it! Move your chair up as closely to it as you can. Say—I see you; I know you are here, and I know too that you will never, never leave me. I am so weary trying to elude you. Let us sit down then together, and recognize each other as inseparable. Between me and happiness is that gulf—I know it. I will no longer try to bridge it over with cobwebs. It is there. As you say this, a little voice pipes out—mother, when is Christmas? Ah!—you thought you could do it; but that question from that little mouth, of all others! Oh, how can you be thankful?
Poor heart, look in that little sunny face, and be thankful for that. Hasn't it a right to its share of life's sunshine, and are you not God-appointed to make it? There's work for you to do—up-hill, weary work, for quivering lips to frame a smile—I grant, but there's no dodging it. That child will have to take up its own burthen by and by, as you are now bearing yours; but for the present don't drop your pall over its golden sunshine. Speak cheerily to it; smile lovingly on it; help it to catch the floating motes that seem to it so bright and shining. Let it have its youth with all its bright dreams, one after the other, as you did. They may not all fade away; and if they should, there's the blessed memory of which even you would not be rid, with all the pain that comes with it. Now would you?
So, little one—Christmas is coming! and coming for you. There's to be turkey and pie, and you shall stuff your apron full. There's to be blind-man's buff, and hunt the slipper, and puss in the corner, and there shall be flowers strewn for your feet, you little dear, though we all wince at the thorns.
But for our soldiers' homes where death has literally taken all; where the barrel of meal and cruse of oil too has failed; let a glad country on festival days, of all others, bear its widows and orphans in grateful remembrance.
Speaking of "Unwritten History," reminds me of some curious written chapters of it that I saw the other day.
I begin now to think that an "All-Wise Providence" spent more time finishing off human beings than was at all necessary. I arrived at this sapient conclusion, the other evening, while looking at some hundreds of specimens of the handwriting of our disabled soldiers. Before this I had always supposed that hands and arms were necessary preliminaries to chirography, and right hands and above all arms. And there I was, brought up all standing, with the legible, fair proofs to the contrary before my very face. Positively there was one specimen written with the soldier's mouth, both hands being useless. It was enough to make an able-bodied man or woman blush to think of cowering for one moment before the darkest cloud of fate. As a moral lesson I would have had every boy and girl in the land, taken there to see the power of the mind over the body. The potency of that one little phrase, "I will try." The impotency of that cowardly plea, "I can't." I wished, as I examined these interesting and characteristic papers, with the signatures and photographs of the writers annexed, that all our schools in order, should be taken there, to learn a lesson that all their books might never teach so impressively. I wished that every man in the nation, whose patriotism needed quickening, (alas that there should be any!) might see that these men who have fought for the peace we are now enjoying, who have languished long months in wretched prisons for us, and through all have but just escaped, maimed and disabled, to reach their homes, are yet self-helpful and courageous, fearing nothing, hoping all things, since they have helped save the nation. Is it safe? That is a question I shall not meddle with here. Meantime I, for one, feel proud as an American loyal woman that this collection of manuscripts has been made. I believe it to be purely an American idea. I am not aware that in any other country such a novelty exists. I think it as highly creditable to the head and heart of the originator, as to the skill and patience of our soldiers. I felt as though it should have, like a great national picture, its appropriate framing and setting in the most conspicuous spot in the Capitol. How often I think of these "privates," as they are called, when grand "receptions" and "balls" are in progress for some great "General" in our midst. All honor to him; but meantime what of these brave maimed "privates?"
Therefore I was rejoiced when John Smith and Thomas Jones had succeeded in "making their mark" on paper as well as in battle. I was glad that they had placed it on record that an American soldier is still wide awake and hopeful, though he may be so hacked and hewed to pieces that not half his original proportions remain. I wanted to sing "Hail Columbia," and "The Star Spangled Banner," and "John Brown," and "Yankee Doodle," and more than all, I wanted those people who are sticking pins through curious sprawling bugs, and paying fabulous sums for shells, and taking their Bible oaths over some questionable pictures "by the old masters," would just turn their attention to something not only veritable and unique, but honorable and worthy as a legacy to every American child that shall be born to the end of time, or—the end of our Republic, which is one and the same thing.