| Home Making |
Chapter 9 |
Page 2 |
On the other hand, there are memories that shed a perpetual benediction. There have been artists whose eyes looked in old age upon the pictures they had painted, finding rare pleasure in the contemplation of the lovely things they had made; and there are hearts that are picture-galleries filled with the memories of lives of sweetness, purity and unselfishness. We are each preparing for ourselves the house our souls must live in the years to come. The poet Longfellow in one of his tender poems has these lines:
“Childhood is the bough where slumbered
Birds and blossoms, many numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered.
“Gather, then, each flower that grows
When the young heart o’erflows,
To embalm that tent of snows.”
The thought is very beautiful – that youth must gather the sweet things of life, the flowers, the fragrant odors, which lie everywhere, so that old age may be clothes with gladness. We do not realize how much of the happiness of our after years will depend upon the things we are doing today. It is our own life that gives color to our skies and tone to the music that we hear in this world. The memories he makes along his years are the old man’s heritage, his very home. He may change houses or neighbors or companions or circumstances, but he cannot get away from his own past. The song or the discord that rings in his ear, – he may think it is made by other voices, but it is really the echo of his own yesterdays.
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