Charley, and Alice! oh! the dust is very deep on her head,—the dust that shall at last lay over all our heads. And Louis! Bright blue eyes there may be to-day, old Time, but none truer and tenderer than his. But long ago, oh! long ago, the dust covered you—the dust that is older than the pyramids, old, and yet new; for on some mysterious breeze it was wafted to you, it drifted down, and covered the blue eyes and the brown eyes, hid the bright faces forever.
And the years have sprinkled down into Charley's grave business head tiresome dust of dividends and railway shares. Kate and Janet, and Will and Helen and Harry—where are you all to-day, I wonder? But though I do not know that, I do know this,—that Time has not stood still with any of you. The years have moved you along, hustled you forward, as they swept by. You have had to move along, and let other bright faces stand in front of you.
You are all buildin' houses to-day that you think are more endurin'. But what you build to-day—hopes built upon worldly wealth, worldly fame, household affection, political success—ah I will they not pass away like the green moss houses down in the woods back of the old schoolhouse?
Yes, they, too, will pass away, so utterly that only their dust will remain. But God grant that we may all meet, happy children again, young with the new life of the immortals, on some happy playground of the heavenly life!
But poor little houses of moss and cedar boughs, you are broken down years and years ago, trampled down into dust, and the dust blown away by the rushin' years. Blown away, but gathered up agin by careful old Nature, nourishin' with it a newer, fresher growth.
I don't s'pose any of us really hanker after growin' old; sometimes I kinder hate to; and so I told Josiah one day.
And he says, “Why, we hain't the only ones that is growin' old. Why, everybody is as old as we be, that wuz born, at the same time; and lots of folks are older. Why, there is uncle Nate Gowdey, and aunt Seeny: they are as old agin, almost.”