We owe to those old people more than we suppose. To their self-restraint, their guileless walk, their frugal ways, we owe our own hale bodies and strict consciences. Consider what misery a strain of tainted blood brings into a family—a strain of blood that carries vicious propensities with it. Well, if we have good in us, if we are scrupulous, honest, truthful, self-controlled, it comes to us in a large measure along with our pure blood from honest ancestry.
How can we sit in the beautiful halls and panelled boudoirs of the old people, and not be thankful to them for having made them so charming? How can we walk in the avenues they planted, pick the flowering shrubs they grouped and bedded, and not be grateful to them?
To plant a tree is a most unselfish work, for very few men live to see the trees they have planted reach such a size as to give pleasure to themselves. Men plant for their sons and grandsons; and their sons and grandsons who enjoy these trees should think for a moment of those to whose forethought they owe them. I confess I like, when I have enjoyed the beauty of some avenue, or clump of stately trees, to look at the picture of the planter of them, and say, "Thank you, dear old man, for the pleasure you have given to me, and will give to my children after me."
We have something yet to learn from the Chinese. The only religion of the Celestials is the worship of their ancestors. Every race probably inherits some truth that it can and is destined to impart to the world. The Chinese lack the deeper vision which can look up to the great Father of spirits above, but yet from them we may acquire thought of and love for our forebears.
"They are all gone into a world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here!
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts does clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove;