A Little Girl of Long Ago by Amanda Minnie Douglas (e reader txt) ๐
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Vigilance Committee, and mayor of a town; and at last, when all is serene and prosperous, a great wave of homesickness overtakes him.
It is twenty years since he went away, though he has been home once in the time. He is spare, and has a weather-beaten look, and is old for his years. Is the money worth all the sacrifice?
He will build a house on their part of the old farm at Yonkers, where his heart has turned in many a weary hour; but Uncle Faid and Aunt Crete are dead. Barton Finch and Retty are living in town, and Barton is a thriving manufacturer. Yonkers has stretched out; and the suburbs are in that ugly transition state of new unworked streets and dingy cottages, for property has been cut up and lots sold cheaply. Father Underhill is offered a great price for his, and sells it. It is no longer George's ideal home.
Mrs. Eustis begs him to come up to Tarrytown. All the other Morgans are gone, and she is left alone. The place shall belong to George if he will give her a home her few remaining years.
He will not listen to this, but buys it, and builds on a new part. Then he marries a nice girl whose youth is past, and who is delighted with her kindly, indulgent husband. They have no children; but the nieces and nephews flock hither for rest and recreation, and are always fascinated with Uncle George's adventures.
Delia is at middle life when she writes her book, but then it is no young girl's story with an imperious Rochester-like hero, that we used to shiver over and adore. It is a serious, inspiriting woman's book, and carries weight in spite of the flood of new literature.
Charles Reed has followed a manly, pure, and high-minded Christian course, and left an impress on the hurrying world. Josie has grown broader and more intelligent, and made a delightful household mother. There have been children enough to satisfy Grandmamma Reed.
These old friends meet now and then, and talk as people will when they begin to go down the decline on the other side of the hill that they climbed with such a light step and high heart. How simple life was then compared with the ramifications of to-day!
The old songs, the old poets, the old novelists are gone. "Jane Eyre" no longer holds us spell-bound, though the three sisters in the bleak old Haworth Rectory will never be forgotten; nor that strange "Rosemary," and Huntingdon's "Lady Alice," thought to be so unsettling to the faith. We read "Robert Elsmere," and "John Ward, Preacher," and go our way tranquilly. Education has become almost a synonym for genius.
The gold of the Pacific Coast, the oil wells, the rich spoils of the earth, have been touched with the wand of industry and science. Railroads run to and fro; vessels dot the ocean; we cross it now in less than a week. Cables bring us hour-old news from everywhere. We go abroad for seasons and touch elbows with royalty, and are not abashed. We gather the beauty and wisdom of the old world. We build palaces, and spend on an evening's entertainment what would have been a fortune fifty years ago. We have private palace-cars, and luxurious yachts for pleasure, and others for speed, so swift that the "America's Cup" has remained in our keeping all these years.
Will we presently utter the old cry of the wise man who "gat him everything," "that all is vanity"?
When the children are asleep the little grandmother goes down to her son's study. He is not ambitious for show or wealth, but he has a rather luxurious side. The rugs are soft; the chairs are easy, the library is filled with choice books. Sometimes she sits and reads, and brave old Thackeray is one of her favourites. It is as her lover said,--it takes years and experience to see all the tender, hidden mysteries of his best speech.
Then she puts aside her book, and he his work, and they talk. "What your father said" and "your father thought this way," always has a charm for him, and he misses his father more than any one can imagine. He knows about the trip to Germany, and the visit to grandfather, with Paris at its highest estate and the beautiful Empress Eugenie. And London with its Queen, who has reigned sixty years, and who, like his mother, has made part of the pilgrimage with a great sorrow buried in her heart. Some day he is going over it all; but he will not see the handsome, golden-haired empress, who is but a pale, sorrowful ghost, and perhaps not the Queen. He would go to-morrow, if he could take the little mother.
They talk, too, of the future. There have been fifty magical years when you look back,--years of discovery, of perfection in art and invention, of nations making rapid strides, of Africa illumined by explorers, of Japan coming to the front when hardly fifty years have elapsed since she first opened her gates to strangers.
And of the great City that has gathered the little towns of children who went out from her again in her arms,--will she be beautiful and grand and wise, and a power among men and cities? She has gathered heroes, living and dead, in her bosom, and for the greatest of all reared a marble temple. Oh, what will she be in fifty more years?
"You may live to see it," the little mother says, and smiles.
For herself there is the other country, and the loves she holds most dear. And because they go, when the worst sorrow is spent, one knows they will be found again, and that immortality is no myth, but the crown and seal of God's love to human love.
THE END
Imprint
It is twenty years since he went away, though he has been home once in the time. He is spare, and has a weather-beaten look, and is old for his years. Is the money worth all the sacrifice?
He will build a house on their part of the old farm at Yonkers, where his heart has turned in many a weary hour; but Uncle Faid and Aunt Crete are dead. Barton Finch and Retty are living in town, and Barton is a thriving manufacturer. Yonkers has stretched out; and the suburbs are in that ugly transition state of new unworked streets and dingy cottages, for property has been cut up and lots sold cheaply. Father Underhill is offered a great price for his, and sells it. It is no longer George's ideal home.
Mrs. Eustis begs him to come up to Tarrytown. All the other Morgans are gone, and she is left alone. The place shall belong to George if he will give her a home her few remaining years.
He will not listen to this, but buys it, and builds on a new part. Then he marries a nice girl whose youth is past, and who is delighted with her kindly, indulgent husband. They have no children; but the nieces and nephews flock hither for rest and recreation, and are always fascinated with Uncle George's adventures.
Delia is at middle life when she writes her book, but then it is no young girl's story with an imperious Rochester-like hero, that we used to shiver over and adore. It is a serious, inspiriting woman's book, and carries weight in spite of the flood of new literature.
Charles Reed has followed a manly, pure, and high-minded Christian course, and left an impress on the hurrying world. Josie has grown broader and more intelligent, and made a delightful household mother. There have been children enough to satisfy Grandmamma Reed.
These old friends meet now and then, and talk as people will when they begin to go down the decline on the other side of the hill that they climbed with such a light step and high heart. How simple life was then compared with the ramifications of to-day!
The old songs, the old poets, the old novelists are gone. "Jane Eyre" no longer holds us spell-bound, though the three sisters in the bleak old Haworth Rectory will never be forgotten; nor that strange "Rosemary," and Huntingdon's "Lady Alice," thought to be so unsettling to the faith. We read "Robert Elsmere," and "John Ward, Preacher," and go our way tranquilly. Education has become almost a synonym for genius.
The gold of the Pacific Coast, the oil wells, the rich spoils of the earth, have been touched with the wand of industry and science. Railroads run to and fro; vessels dot the ocean; we cross it now in less than a week. Cables bring us hour-old news from everywhere. We go abroad for seasons and touch elbows with royalty, and are not abashed. We gather the beauty and wisdom of the old world. We build palaces, and spend on an evening's entertainment what would have been a fortune fifty years ago. We have private palace-cars, and luxurious yachts for pleasure, and others for speed, so swift that the "America's Cup" has remained in our keeping all these years.
Will we presently utter the old cry of the wise man who "gat him everything," "that all is vanity"?
When the children are asleep the little grandmother goes down to her son's study. He is not ambitious for show or wealth, but he has a rather luxurious side. The rugs are soft; the chairs are easy, the library is filled with choice books. Sometimes she sits and reads, and brave old Thackeray is one of her favourites. It is as her lover said,--it takes years and experience to see all the tender, hidden mysteries of his best speech.
Then she puts aside her book, and he his work, and they talk. "What your father said" and "your father thought this way," always has a charm for him, and he misses his father more than any one can imagine. He knows about the trip to Germany, and the visit to grandfather, with Paris at its highest estate and the beautiful Empress Eugenie. And London with its Queen, who has reigned sixty years, and who, like his mother, has made part of the pilgrimage with a great sorrow buried in her heart. Some day he is going over it all; but he will not see the handsome, golden-haired empress, who is but a pale, sorrowful ghost, and perhaps not the Queen. He would go to-morrow, if he could take the little mother.
They talk, too, of the future. There have been fifty magical years when you look back,--years of discovery, of perfection in art and invention, of nations making rapid strides, of Africa illumined by explorers, of Japan coming to the front when hardly fifty years have elapsed since she first opened her gates to strangers.
And of the great City that has gathered the little towns of children who went out from her again in her arms,--will she be beautiful and grand and wise, and a power among men and cities? She has gathered heroes, living and dead, in her bosom, and for the greatest of all reared a marble temple. Oh, what will she be in fifty more years?
"You may live to see it," the little mother says, and smiles.
For herself there is the other country, and the loves she holds most dear. And because they go, when the worst sorrow is spent, one knows they will be found again, and that immortality is no myth, but the crown and seal of God's love to human love.
THE END
Imprint
Publication Date: 06-09-2010
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