The absence of the giver makes the gift more dear. I do not call this idolatry. A German doctor of divinity has expressed the common feeling in an exaggerated form, by saying that he loved God, in his mother and in his wife and children. He saw God-likeness in them and they commended the love of God to him. Certainly next to pleasing God the desire to honor the memory of my father and mother has been my highest incentive in life. One of these motives does not leave off when the other begins. It is a kind of piety which is natural to me. It is spontaneous and seems divinely implanted. Reverence toward Godly people is at least a schooling in piety. I mean of course God's church and God's Book when I speak of my mother's church and my mother's bible. When one is given his old seat in his childhood's home, his mother seems near, and he feels like saying to her,
"I've passed through many a changing scene
Since thus I sat by thee;
O, let me look into thine eyes;
Their meek, soft, loving light
Falls like a gleam of holiness
Upon my heart tonight."
That great truth which Gray tells us he discovered for himself, and which very few people learn, till they find it by experience, went to my heart, that in this world a human being never can have more than one mother.
It is a peculiar expression that people use when they say that they "keep" Lent, or "keep" Sunday, or "keep" Christmas, or "keep" a birthday. They mean that they observe it, and by thus marking it they get something out of it which is pleasant and suggestive. We all have our little festivals, life's private anniversaries, these jubilees of the heart which we love to celebrate. That day is a high day, when the old homestead becomes an inspiration point. Stores, long ago laid by in the memory, come forth from their hiding places. In unexpected exaltation of spirit, one is lifted above himself.
Strikes a Chord Unconsciously
He gets out of himself and lives for the hour a sort of sublime life. It was worth the trip to obtain such a revelation of my own mind. Of all the works of the Creator's power and wisdom the mind bears most plainly the private mark of the invisible God. Things have almost a miraculous power to visualize persons. This is true to an extent that will not be believed. And here is a perplexity. Shall I insist upon the point? The incredible part is the particular thing I want to emphasize. The trundle bed, the hair-covered trunk, the stairs, the door, the window become active factors, and the faculties awaking out of long heavy slumber become vocal. Faces and tones are at once recalled and intensely vivid remembrances take shape, hue and voice. Spirits of father and mother, are ye here, entering into the high communion of this hour? The suggestiveness of the environment was such that somehow and suddenly, I was a boy again. This is such a day as that in which our parents blessed us, and such a day as that in which our mother fulfilled both of those relations to us. Her love was like spikenard, perfuming the house. Two good friends I there summoned to go with me, memory and resolution. One of these friends reinforces the work of the other. When I vividly remember, I want to make a consecration. I want to do some sacrificial act, and to do it distinctively for mother's sake. Now, henceforth, "No day without something learned: no day without something done." I took some live coals off the home altar to start new fires. Our ancestors had, what they styled "living" money and "dead" money. In emergencies they sought to convert dead resources into currency. My legacy is a memory and the old battered trunk which was a little world in itself.
Old Home Looks Young Again
In the days of my top and kite-hood, the trunk had constantly to be opened because something had been forgotten. How small a thing it was to contain as much as I thought there was in it. I showed my regard for it by the things I entrusted to it. The germ of every home I ever had was in it. Its contents I have almost idolized. I speak advisedly, I would rather lose the house than what, reserved from it, has come down with me through the years, taken with their setting. A boy likes a place to keep his things. A boy accumulates. That's his nature. An associate has just said that his first memory was a suit that had pockets. There is something in a boy's constitution that gives him a large use for pockets. To empty them is not a convenience, merely, but a necessity, as in his use of them they project like two bay-windows. His nature necessitates a trunk. There must be a secret spot around which can rally the sentiments that a home awakens and conserves. A mother loves to get a Bible into this trunk, which is to be the center-point to his heart and home. Mother's sentiment was well chosen. This book will keep you from sin and sin will keep you from this book. They do not go together. They do not keep company. This Bible had about it what it calls "a sweet smelling savor." A new pocket book, a gift from my grandfather, was also quite redolent but the odor of these was different.