Revisiting the Earth Part 7

_A Lesson that Will Last a Lifetime_

It enhances our interest as we return to breathe again the air that made us ourselves as distinguished from others. We have known well our own standards, our ideals, our resolves, but how came we with what we find ourselves possessed. It adds interest to the old temples to visit the quarries which furnish them forth. In revisiting the earth it thrills us to look at the rock whence we were hewn. Our temptations were those peculiar to that locality. What I know about temptation is entirely different from what a remote stranger would guess. Our struggles were such as that environment occasioned and are not appreciated by persons in a different zone. Each soul has its own climate. Even man's sight responds to his environment. On watch, day in, day out, on a sailing vessel, scanning the distant horizon, the eye, becoming adapted to it, is far-sighted. It can hardly read fine print held close to the person.

Even children brought up at the seaside and accustomed to far sights have to patiently await a readjustment of their vision. I can now trace, in my being, some reflex effect of each set of surroundings, in which for a term of years, I was placed. My experience in a new environment amounted to a re-birth. One educator considers the proximity of a mountain, worth at least to the student, one endowed professorship. "Let no one say he has written my life," said Walpole. "He has not the needful information. He never knew the crowd of little things which went to make my individual being and career. No one knows them but myself."

One's interruptions and trials and crises and providences come with such surroundings as he then has and it is a striking experience, when revisiting the earth, to discover for one's self the agencies and influences by which he was moulded.

CHAPTER XI

A RETURN TO ONE'S HOLY LAND

It is said that at Florence there is a circular hall, faced with separate mirrors. In the center is a statue of exquisite beauty. Each of these mirrors reflects the image of the statue at different angles, and consequently exhibits some particular point more prominently and accurately than any of the others. Artists study the statue through these mirrors, and thus can estimate the beauty of each separate part, and form a better judgment of the perfection of the whole. Let me show you, gentle reader, how you will get the truest conception of yourself.

If you please, stand for a moment in this hall. In each mirror you will see yourself in the most impressionable period in your life. There is a reflection at the moment your destiny beckoned you, when you were in the act of getting hold of yourself and without ceremony began your career, seeming to yourself to be like Saul, who "went to seek his father's a.s.ses and found a kingdom."

As in water face answers to face so, in one angle of a mirror you recognize a first-rate likeness of yourself as you sat for the first time under your own vine and fig tree, remembering this long after as though you had seen a great sight. Like St. John you turned to see the voice that spake to you. Its last cadence may die in the air but it leaves an impression that will never fade.

_Casting a Reflection Means Nothing Bad_

These looking-gla.s.ses show your figure, life-sized, standing on a corner. Emergency met you. It really proved a providential interposition, and now these fortunate interventions mark the period in your life more than the days and months and years, and they were accompanied by an interior guidance, more distinctly discerned now, than it was felt at the time. There is none so homely but loves a looking-gla.s.s; however little or much a man is favored in looks he notices reflections made of himself, particularly if question is raised touching his appearance as viewed by his critics. In his autobiography Mr. Seward records that no matter what care and diligence we exercise and whatever be a man's ability or inclination, the mysterious factor is a vital force in the world and has to be reckoned with. Judicial preferment was the aim of his ambition. He meant to be a lawyer, and he wished to be a judge. His early bias in this direction was caused by his observation of the deference paid to his father as a justice of the peace.

"One day," said President Lincoln, "an emigrant stopped at my store, and asked me to buy a barrel of odds and ends, of little value, for which he had no room in his wagon. I found in it a two-volume copy of Blackstone's Commentaries. I devoured them. I never read anything which so interested and thrilled me. Soon after I began the study of law, and that is how I came to be a lawyer."

_The Glory of Supremacy_

Old soldiers cannot be made to keep their seats as an excursion train pulls into Gettysburg. "There is where I was wounded. There is where we met the charge." It is touching to witness the comraderie, their sympathy. As they from the car windows come into sight of their struggles and victories they cannot avoid exclaiming "There we made our stand. There we advanced."

"There a man with forty-eight wounds was left for dead, and yet revived and lived beyond all expectations." One thing would be Spangler Springs from which, one night both sides drank. There the First Maryland, a Confederate regiment, clashed with the Second Maryland and two brothers, named Clark, were brought face to face, one being in each regiment and hence on each side of the fight. The b.l.o.o.d.y Angle is a sort of Holy of Holies. You stand and read from an open book "The High Water Mark." Up to this point of ground, thus indicated, things seemed outwardly to be going one way. Turning points in history have a location on the earth.

On a spot so exactly known as to bear the legend, cut in stone, "High Water Mark," the fortunes of war so abruptly turn that General Lee himself said, "This is the beginning of the end." Napoleon wanted Hougoumont, for as Hugo says, "This bit of earth, could he have taken it, would perhaps have given him the earth." On a piece of very common ground near Luz Jacob received an uninvited angel visitation. The stone on which he rested his head was only one of thousands. But with the morning what a change! It came like a beautiful vision

"That loves to come at night, To make you wonder in the morn, What made the earth so bright."

His pillow became a pillar and he said, "This is the gate of heaven. The heart sanctifies the place." Like any boy, egged on by curiosity I have stood just inside the door and seen the Israelites shuffling about with their hats on and the Rabbi reading the evening service, all being in motion, in imitation probably of the forty years' travel to Canaan. The command of a prophet to the people was distinctly "Take off thy shoes for this is holy ground." There was no command to take off the hat. They were to respect their contact with the location. It is the spot set apart by the deep experience that becomes hallowed. If a struggle, be it physical or moral, is victorious the place is consecrated by it forever.

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 inst.i.tutions.

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 grat.i.tude 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. Repet.i.tion 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d and his mother. An appeal is made to reverence, which is a very much needed address. I wish we could learn from Europe the n.o.ble 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.

_A Legacy of Pleasant Memories_

A mother in heaven can be brought to view and a heavenly childhood reinstated when visiting the spot where sacred dust is buried. This is the place that faithful fantasy most frequently portrays.

"Oft, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken!"

I hold the sentiment of him who said, "My heart melts with compa.s.sion for the motherless affectionate lonesome boy who suffers for the want of intelligent sympathy, for someone who marks his little sorrows, binds up his wounds, wipes off his tears, and kisses him as he goes to bed." Our deepest feelings require a foothold on the earth. Like Antaeus they get strength by touching the soil. There must be certain spots around which patriotic feeling and family feeling and religious feeling can rally, like Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord and Appomattox and Yorktown and Independence Hall and the old home and the old church. Where feeling is wide-spread it needs certain locations and community centers to give it points of contact with the solid, visible, tangible earth. The influence of a family would be deplorably weakened if once for all it should be detached from any specific habitation that it could claim as a home. Home, home, there is no place like it. "A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there."

At Torwood two ministers met and spent a day in high spiritual communion. Later one of them, Mr. Kidd, of Queen's Ferry parish, having sore trial and depression of spirits, sent a note to his friend, the minister at Culross, informing him of his troubles and dejection of spirits and desiring a visit. "I cannot go," was the reply, "but tell Mr. Kidd to remember Torwood." The answer was effective. That was a place. It had its atmosphere that could be recalled. The Pilgrim in his progress believes in what he sees from the mountain. When on low ground he cannot quite discern the celestial city, he keeps his course, staking everything upon the experience at an earlier well-remembered place.

_The World Teaches an Attentive Mind_

When revisiting the earth surprise was expressed that we carried so much feeling into the pilgrimage. Said a business man, "You have very many old residenters where you live. They have some beautiful graveyards in Boston. When any one dies here, why he's dead. He's just dead. We mustn't expect anything more from him because the man is dead. We try to get someone to take his place. That poor fellow is dead." Marshall Field is dead in Chicago; Phillips Brooks, in Boston; Edward Payson, in Portland; and Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore; Peter Cooper, in New York, yet in their cities they are an active force and even in their ashes live their wonted fires. Meade and Howard and Sickles and Pickett and Longstreet and Lee live evermore. A visit to the best marked monumental field in the world makes you feel afresh the grandeur of their achievement.

"Death may rob us of the painter But his works to us belong, He may steal from us the singer, But he cannot seize the song.

And, though he may take the lives that Mean our share of joy, yet he May not rob us of the treasure Of a single memory!"

"If you wound the tree in its youth," we read in the story of an African farm, "the bark will cover over the gash, but when the tree is very old, peeling the bark off and looking carefully you will see the scar there still. All that is buried is not dead." And that is a fact too. I bow my head now and grieve over certain acts or rebukes or injustices or humiliations or wounds. They all come in review, they are all there; I come upon them on occasion. Someone has told us that the pearls of life and of home, like the pearls of the deep sea, grow around wounds and are the costly burials of pain.

_Where New Chapters Begin_

Returning from voluntary exile, to my father's house, not as a prodigal son, to make confession of sins, or of wasted patrimony or of wasted life, but to gain impressions from early places, where any boy gets the most important part of his education, seeing that it is in our youth that we lay the foundation of whatever character, position, or usefulness we later attain, I was most deeply stirred at those places that directly touch my interior life. "There is a story lodged in a room here," said Bushnell in speaking of Yale College, "that I pray G.o.d his recording angel may never suffer to be effaced." I removed my hat and bowed alone in silence standing before a place hallowed by a neighbor.

He had everybody's sympathy on account of his bereavements. Adjacent to our garden was his barn, which he used as a devotional closet and like Daniel, as we infer, prayed aloud. When his voice broke the silence with spontaneous, vital prayer and grew tremulous with emotion and earnestness, there was a power and pathos in it, that penetrated the center of my soul and woke to life all the slumbering feeling of my better nature. A sense of awe took entire possession of me. My deference would have been less if I had been bowed, and with him, hearing the several pet.i.tions. But as it was I was conscious only of his communion and thought all the time of the two persons concerned in it.

_Nothing Insignificant, Nothing_

It is the early life that makes the after life. As every little brook, rivulet, and stream give depth and volume to the broad after current so in sailing up a river. As we make a journey to a birthplace we keep meeting the rills and tributaries to which we are so much indebted. One of them is named Example, a gentle effective teacher, who, it is said, lays his hand on your shoulder and remarks, This is the way to do it. In revisiting the earth by a singular discovery we find we are closely drawn where we took the hard lessons taught by Experience. This is the teacher that is said to throw us into the deep pool, exclaiming briskly: Now, swim. Human existence is rarely a great prairie stretching monotonously onward to the great river. Blessings and misfortunes meet us in disguise. Just as in the world's history, and in the history of invention, and in our political annals, we have our great days so we do in our personal experience, when destiny turns on a pivot. If one will give a recital of the ten most memorable days of his life the rest of it would be a matter of easy inference by his hearers. The time between them, and all its events, seem compressed into the narrowest s.p.a.ce, verily a hand's breadth. Hidden forces have been at work, progress has been made with painstaking, untold influences meanwhile have not been idle, and upon a day all unforeseen springs of action are touched, concentrated power is let loose and a resistless energy awakes to action.

_Halcyon Days_

Our great days are the fruit of past toil. To count time only by sunrises and sunsets omits, in the reckoning, the human equation. Where daily wages and yearly dividends are concerned, it is a very convenient system, but it is no measure of our real life. Noah's ark answered to float lazily and safely on the old flood, but steam and electricity are internal powers. These forces enable a navigator to steer right out into the teeth of a storm.