Revisiting the Earth

by James Langdon Hill

The entire planet is redeemed by such a dedication of the many revered localities in it.

Silent Sentinels of the Silent Years

There is the rock of all rocks in the western world. It has done the most for our ideals, for the tone and character of our institutions. Poets, like Mrs. Hemans, and orators like Webster and Choate have glorified it and cannot stay their praise. It is ever new, it is ever old. Its hold is upon one's imagination. In its undivided influence, yet in its already cloven form, ever perfect in its detached pieces it is ever living in its broken body. Many representatives from many states were once gathered at Plymouth Rock to put forth their Burial Hill confession. "Standing by the ..." they say. The place is an inspiration. It is tonic. It gives an uplift. It lends elevation. "We do now declare our adherence ... we declare that the experience...." It has stood the test. It has worked. All honor for well-located facts. They are well grounded. In this is their solidity.

A visit is not required of us, yet most of us have taken part in so pious a duty. America's foremost shrine is Mt. Vernon. With more vividness than by any other method we can almost see the form of him twice elected unanimously to the Presidency, whose character is America's greatest gift to the world. Plymouth is a close second, as a Mecca for willing pilgrim feet. Baptized into the Puritan spirit and versed in Pilgrim lore, in no other way can a lover of their annals so clearly discern the real Pilgrims as by inhabiting for a brief period their haunts. One of the patriarchs built "there" an altar because "there" he had an affecting experience. In all statements of the deeper life specific use is made of the adverb of place, making the plain implication that the location is immortalized. It has entered for keeps into his life.

Sunny Silent Homes

Each of us stands in a peculiar relation to a holy land. It includes a shrine. "We have just the right morning light in which to see it. Well, now look, my dear, the curtain is up. Before us are the white houses set in emerald green. Is not that a pretty picture?" There is a sepulchre in this garden. Adjacent to the town, in the burial ground, where the esteemed forefathers of the hamlets sleep, is the early grave of my angel mother. Our hearts glow with a burning gratitude to the local authorities for their affectionate, guardian care over that sacred enclosure. What varied pages have been written in history and in the book of life by the sleepers here. It is a spot further removed from perdition and nearer to paradise than any other in all the world. "My mother, mother, mother." The meaning of the word deepens just in proportion as one's nature is developed. Repetition is a form of emphasis. And such a mother! Her affection was her diadem. In her excess of tenderness she caused her hand to rest upon my head in blessing as she taught me to say after her, sentence by sentence, the Lord's prayer, the most precious item of instruction in the religious history of our race.

"Oh for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still."

I stand in life's Holy of Holies. There are hours which the heart would still leave in silence. They have given me an emotion of indescribable tenderness towards her. I will tell you a tale of tears. Before the iron had entered into my soul, before my memory had a tomb in it, before it became the cemetery, the Greenwood, the Mt. Auburn of the soul, my first grief here set me out alone, like one set apart by sorrow. The scene one can no more leave behind him than he can leave his own soul. My spirit is joined with her spirit. Feeling that I had visited the place to honor her and do reverence to the spot I felt like speaking, "Mother, we are here." The incense from her dear heart has perfumed my existence. The odor of the ointment that once filled the house now fills the little world in which she moved. Is this praising my mother? I do not wish to praise her but to describe her.

Heart Histories Laid Open

I give a deep interpretation to a custom used in many countries at funerals where a violin is played at the head of the coffin, and questions are addressed to the deceased in the course of which it is customary to ask pardon for having injured or offended the departed one during life. My questions are all framed and have been, lo these many years. The dead past has not buried its dead. Memory makes the present sacred with a light, like that of the stars which has been many years on its way. Nothing that ever enters into the field of experience is left unrecorded. There the record lies and I am testifying touching the place and the hour at which it is blazoned forth. It is at the spot where you point and say "There the mortal put on immortality." Her spirit hovers near us, to awaken in us, a motive to reflect back certain qualities in a remote degree upon her, in respect and blessing. In pictures we often see a pilgrim, home from his wanderings, leaning upon a staff, at such a grave. As I write of it and think of the occasion my heart swells in gratitude for receiving the impulse to revisit the earth. It is well-worthwhile for one to travel far to sit for a few moments in his early home with only God and his mother. An appeal is made to reverence, which is a very much needed address. I wish we could learn from Europe the noble and beautiful use it makes of those who have gone down to their windowless homes by keeping their graves and memories green and imperishable and particularly by transferring their virtues into the daily life of the community. The ancient Egyptians blended with the actual present, current, daily life a galaxy of characters whose influence they would not willingly let die. The ancient Romans made their daily paths, near just such memorial places, as we can show with pride, in a garden of graves. So many monuments are scattered through these busy years of a laborious life, that I cannot enter each sanctuary of sorrow nor pause to read each inscription. The statues, those calm and majestic intelligences, make up an impressive congregation of the silent, and exert a magic influence upon the soul.