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Show H ji LONG, LONG AGO H i I ! By It. W. S. Hi Is it not that healthiest of writers, Oliver Wen- H I dell Holmes, who speaks of the quickening of our H j senses to long forgotten events by the merest H trilles, when associated with memories of child- H hood's days? In the Autocrat at the Breakfast H Table he refers, I believe, to the effect of specific m sounds upon his senses. He shows that the varied, B ,1 bulging and pressing events, the tribulations, HV) i cares, elations, hopes, fears, joys and tears of all HI' )! the years intervening between the earliest hours HR of memory and the well stored mind of a ripened H I age, often fail to efface the impressions a moment R J makes upon the plastic mind of childhood. That H ' this is true, all may, I believe, agree. I have H known a deep mourner, at the newly made grave ' HI of one dearly beloved, to the amazement and HK" horror of all present, burst into wild laughter, H because of the peculiar antics of a dog, which, H despite the- profound sorrow that flooded the H heart, recalled to the grief-saddened mind (which H ' had presumably lost the power of active thought H because of the numbness of pain) some occur- H rence of days long passed, and which, at the hour H of happening, had, likely enough, provoked un Hi controllable mirth. Hi Whenever I hear some sounds caused by a HI wagon, my mind is involuntarily carried back Hi forty years ago, and I see a little urchin peering HK ji anxiously along a winding road, hedged in on H either side by blossoming hawthorne (with ferns H j and flowers beneath) who listens almost breath-Qfj breath-Qfj i lessly for the sound that comes from the free play B i j of the axles in the wide hubs of a primitive cart 1 K and who watches intently for its coming bo-Hi bo-Hi ', cause he will bo lifted to the high seat and be Hr ' given a short, but .happy, ride, by the side of one BI j who loved him well and whose body has long H since resolved back to the dust whence it came. H The very perfume of the flowers that gladdened H those days, when there was neither care nor the H fear of sorrow, embraces the heart with the same H purity and clearness as then, though hallowed by H the soul's deep yearning for such another hour H 3 with its profound oblivion to pain and its fear-Hj fear-Hj lessness t. a past that for most of us is chfefly M remembered by regrets. f i Another, and even more lasting impression HI has been with mo during the waste of years that Hi lie between my childhood and the present hours. HI Associated with my every thought of the ocean 1 had been the memory of an odor that nothing else m recalled or even suggested. Between the time 1 Hi ? left my native land and the day I re-visited it, H' twenty-five years elapsed. But the singular rec- H ollection remained in undimmed freshness. When H I knew I was to see the ocean again, after the H. interval of a quarter of a century, the memory Hjh! of that odor was the first vivid impression of my Hi mind; and I looked forward to its Inhaling with Bj a longing and an intensity almost childish in their S pleasurable excitement. No sooner had I reached the ocean than I hastened to its side only to be H! v disappointed. No odor of my childhood greeted me there. I hungered for it as I sailed up the English channel, and my heart grew heavy when I sought it in vain at the docks on the Mersey river, Liverpool. Surely, surely, I felt, as we sailed up the Clyde to Greenock, if I find it at all I will find it here. Yet again I was doomed to disappointment. disap-pointment. Could the cherished memory of years be naught but an hallucination? Then I sailed to Belfast. If long cherished hopes had not been made wanton of by some unheard of sport of fate, I felt assured it would greet me here here, where the waves of the North Sea lapped the green-fringed shores of my native land. Have you known what it is to feel the hopes, the confidences grown strong in years the assurances assur-ances upon which you have built with all the iaith of your nature crumble to dust? Deeply, but not so strongly, not with such poignant grief, perhaps, did the disappointment flood my being when I failed again to detect the long sought, the long hoped for odor, here at Belfast. Subdued and saddened I took the train for the home of my grandfather. Reaching there I wandered down a winding glen that yielded and conformed to the meanderings of a little brook that sought its way to the embraces of tne wide sea. Then, at an abrupt turn in the path, and as my eyes rested upon the wide sweep of the grand old oecan, the hoped for odor was wafted to my aching senses on the twilight breeze and I sank in thanks upon the thick grass, and grateful tears gushed to my eyes. Only the odor of sea weed, case upon the shore, paying its debt to nature by decay. Nothing more. But with the association and recollection of years entwined around it, so much to a sad heart. Then, mingled with a longing long-ing for those beloved of my soul, (far from me) far beyond the line of light that played "along the smooth wave toward the burning West," came the memory of childhood's hour, and the heart was fllled well-nigh to bursting. There are joys like unto anguish there are sorrows akin to joy. My feelings seemed to partake of both but I have learned much since that night and suffered much God knows how much! So I sing with an unknown: Could I but feel as I felt in my youth Long, long ago Long, long ago 7hen life seemed an Eden of beauty and truth Long, long ago Long, long ago. When the bliss-breathing moments sped noiselessly noise-lessly by, No care In my bosom, no cloud in my sky, And the heart's gushing joy brought the tears to my eye Long, long ago Long, long ago. Could I but feel as with thee I felt Long, long ago Long, long ago When at thy side in the moonlight I knelt, Long, long ago sweet, long ago. Could I meet thee at eve by the stream in the glen, And drink of thine eyes living sunshine again I might tell thee the tales I told to thee then, Long, long ago Long, long ago. But the fancies and feelings of boyhood are o'er, Long, long ago how long ago If I think of them now it is but to deplore Long, long ago Long, long ago. And I am and must be in this wide world alone, For the freshness of feeling forever has gone, And the sap was wrung out of a soul not its own, Long, long ago Long, long ago. |