Did you ever go berrying? With a tin pail swinging from your wrist and your oldest gown upon your back, have you climbed the hill, jumped the fences and sought the side-hill pasture where the blackberries grew purple in the shade? Can you recall much, in all the years that thread between that happy time and this, which can transcend the pleasure of those wildwood tramps? Even now I seem to fix my eyes upon a clump of bushes by the old rail fence. They are domed high with verdure and show dusky hollows underneath, where, my skilled eye tells me, lurk spoils fit for Bacchus and all his nymphs. I part the leaves, a snowy moth flutters out of the green dusk and wavers like a snowflake in the warm, sweet air. I carefully reach my hand away inside the fairy bower of crumpled leaf and twisted vine and draw it forth purple with the juice of overripe berries that dissolve at a touch. With these I fill my pail, and all too often, I blush to own it, my mouth also, until twilight sends me home saturated with sunshine, late clover blooms and berry juice.
Ah, my dear, all this was fun while it lasted, but there is a more exciting quest than hunting eggs or finding berries, in which we all of us engage as the years of our mortal pilgrimage go hurrying by. It is the search for happiness—a search we never give up nor grow too old to maintain. Forgetting the disappointments and the satieties of the dead years, we look forward to the new as the hidden nestfull of unchipped shells of fresh experience and untried delights. God bless us all, and prosper us to find the eggs and the berries before we die. Perhaps the service of love we do others shall prove the bush that bears the sweetest and the ripest clusters, and the nestfull that shall develop the whitest store of all life's opportunities.
A genuine mother could no more raise a bad boy into a bad man than a robin could raise a hawk. When I say "genuine mother" I mean something more than a mother who prays with her boy, and teaches him Bible texts, and sends him to Sunday-school. All those things are good and indispensable as far as they go, but there is a lot more to do to train a boy besides praying with him, just as there are things necessary to the cultivation of a garden besides reading a manual. To succeed with roses and corn one must prune, weed and hoe a great deal. To make a boy into a pure man, a mother must do more than pray. She must live with him in the sense of comrade and closest friend. She must stand by him in time of temptation as the pilot sticks to the wheel when rapids are ahead. She must never desert him to go off to superintend outside duties any more than the engineer deserts his post and goes into the baggage car to read up on engineering, when his train is pounding across the country at forty miles an hour.
A LITTLE GOLDENHEAD.
Where shall we go to find the fit symbol of Easter? To the encyclopedia that we may post ourselves as to word derivations and root meanings? As well send a child to a botanist to find the meaning of a rose! To fitly understand the true significance of Easter time, find some slope in early April that the sun has found a few short days before you. Lay your ear close to the ground that you may hear the fine, soft stir within the bosom of the warm earth. Note how the mold is filling with its new birth of flowers. There is not a covert in all the awakening woods that has not a little nestling head hidden behind the dead leaves. The breath of a sleeping child is not more peaceful than the sway of the wind flower upon its downy stem. The flush on a baby's cheek is not more delicate than the tint of each gossamer petal. To what shall we liken the grass blades already springing up along the loosened water ways? To fairy bowmen, led by Robin Hood's ghost through winding ways from forest on to the sparkling sea. To what shall we liken the violet buds spread thick beneath the country children's feet? To constant thoughts of God that bloom even in the grave's dark dust. To what shall we liken the twinkling leaves that shine in the dim depths of the woods? To lights at sea, that tell some fleet is sailing into port. To what shall we liken the shy unfolding of the lilac buds? To the poise of a slender maiden who leans from out her lattice to hearken to a lover's song. To what shall we liken the cowslip's valiant gold? To the shining of a contented spirit with a humble home. To what shall we liken the brooding sky and the warmth of the all-loving sun? To the potency of a gentle nature intent on doing good, and the yearning of a tender heart to bless and save. Is there a nook so dark and forbidding that the beautiful Easter sunshine cannot enter and woo forth a flower? Is there a rock so impervious that the April wind may not find lodgment for a seed in some crevice, and there uplift a bannered blossom? Is there a cold, resentful bank wherein the late snow lingers that shall not finally cast off its disdainful ice and flash into verdure in response to the patient shining of the sun? Is there a grave in all the land so new and desolate that Easter time cannot find a violet among its clods and paint a rainbow within the tears that rain above it? To nature's lovers, then, as to the truly Christian heart, the significance of Easter is found in the reviving garden and in the awakening woods. It means resurrection after death, blossom time after the bareness of woe, the cuckoo's cry after the silence of songless days, and the smile of a pitying All-Father after the orphan time of the soul's bereavement and seeming desertion.
Another blessed thought to be gained in the contemplation of nature's sure awakening from the long lethargy of her winter's sleep is that, however fearful we may be that death's reign shall be eternal, as constant as day dawn after midnight, or shining after storm, shall be the Easter of the soul. We do not need to pray for April; it comes. Nor do we need to pray for release from the first dark dominion of fear and dread when our beloved are snatched from our arms. Such experience is only the transient reign of winter in the heart, while yet the soft wing of April stirs upon the horizon's misty verge and the promise of violets is in the lingering darkness of the air. Remember this: The same power that sends us November is planning an April to follow, and out of the snowfall evolves the whiteness of the annunciation lily.