OCR Text |
Show NELLIE'S GRAVE. A lady correspondent of the Burlington (Iowa) Hawkeye, in a late letter from Nevada, has the following beautiful paragraphs: Riding the other day I came upon an old burying ground, whence all of the graves have not been removed. There is one surrounded by a fence, but the stone has fallen backwards, revealing the simple inscription, "Nellie-died yesterday." Died yesterday, so and so, every day it is written. Every day a flower is plucked from some sunny home; a breach made in some happy circle, a jewel taken from some treasury of love. <br><br> Perhaps it was a gentle babe, whose laugh was like the gush of summer rills loitering in the green wood-whose little life was a perpetual litany of May-time crowned with the passion flowers that never fade. <br><br> Perhaps it was a youth, hopeful and generous, reaching forth with earnest struggle for the guerdon in the distance; or perhaps it was a mother called to rest, loth to leave behind her the tender cares of wifehood and motherhood; or perhaps it was an aged man, bowed with years and burdens, and even as he looked out upon the hills for the coming of the angel host, he sank into a dreamless slumber, and on his doorpost next day was written, "Died yesterday." <br><br> And there seemed to me a most pathetic thought in this inscription on the lonely grave. It will still be as yesterday to the hearts of the sorrowing, loving friends, on whom the blow of affliction fell. And in the one word "Nellie" there is infinite trust, that those who trust Him here, He then will not deny, that with Him, an angel fair, still lives Nellie, and that "amid the world's assembled race, they shall know her little face." <br><br> Prudence and I in our evening talks together have woven a tender little story out of the baby's grave on the bleak hillside. But I must tell you who Prudence is and that is best done in telling what she does. For the four years since the opening of the school she has faithfully managed its musical department. She is full of music, written and unwritten, and it is always bubbling over in carol or song, hymn or anthem, or cheerful smiles and hopeful words. <br><br> She has a Sunday-school class of half a dozen boys, whom she is trying to train for the ministry, but (sub rosa, if you please, I do not believe she will succeed). She spends a good part of her leisure time looking after those boys, and how large a fraction of what she earns during the other half, I will not venture to say. You see she is prudent for the hereafter, "laying up treasures in heaven." hence her name. And how does she look? That is a hard question to answer in words. Think of all the fretfulness, complainings, discontent, selfishness, narrowness and ugliness you ever saw in faces-then think that the face of this friend of mine is as far from any of these as freedom is from bondage. But say good-bye to Prudence, now, until you greet her in the pages of my novel. <br><br> I know of a man (by sight) who would make a first-class villain. He may be perfectly honest, but his hair grows low on his forehead, his gray eyes gleam with a steady, cruel glare, under bushy, beetling, sandy eyebrows. I know to-day two women who are base and treacherous as if the very blood of Judas Iscariot filled their veins, and they both look child like and innocent, but it is an innocence born of cunning. I pity them, for their lives are sordid, narrow, bitter and soulless. It is an odd thing how very much franker a manner some types of hypocrites wear than a really frank person ever has. <br><br> I know a man who can, on occasion, tell cowardly lies with as steady a gaze of his light blue eyes-sunny, clear, unflinching blue eyes-into your face as an honest man could give, but, even as he speaks, his lips blanch and the trembling chin betrays the coward. <br><br> But, thank God, there are tender, brave, loyal and true lives all about us. There are those, everyone knows them who inspire one with the belief that this is a glad and glorious world; there are those from whom familiar words come to us fraught with a new meaning, for their faith, high, clear and sweet, spiritualizes every thought; there are powerful souls, so dauntless, that with brave cheer they rise above the veriest tempest of sorrow in this sorrowing world; there are those, steadfast and helpful, whose tones haunt the memory like a sweet unknown voice heard in the still night weaving a song familiar and filled with some undying joy of our far-off days. <br><br> Oh, yes, the materials of our web are all about us, just as the weeds and flowers are, just as passions and loves and hates are everywhere-just as there are little sins and big sines, holy aspirations and sordid aims, grandeur and meanness, splendor and squalor everywhere, and always where men and women gather together and scheme and strive and push and struggle and live and die. |