The Georgetown news., 1856-05-22
Our Old Grandmother.

|
Dumas, and so conjures up one of the sweet
est images in the world. He was revisiting
the home of his infancy; he was retracing
the little paths around it in which he had
once walked; and strange flowers could not
eface, and rank grass could not conceal,
and cruel plows could not Obliterate his
shortest footsteps and his mothers beside
them, measured by his own.
And who needs to be told whose foot
steps they were, that thus kept time with
the feeble pattering of childhoOds little feet?
1t was no mother, behind whom Ascanius
walked with equal steps" in Virgl's line,
| but strong, stern man, who could have
borne him and not been burdened folded
him in his arms from all danger and not
been wearied; everything, indeed, he could
have done for him, but just what he needed
most, could not sympathize with him, he
could not be child again. All, rare art
is that-for, indeed it is an art, to set back
the great old clock of time, and to be boy
once more! Mans imagination can easily
see the child man; but how hard it is to
see the man child; and he who had learned
to glide back into that rosy time, when he
did not know that thorns were under the
roses, or that clouds would ever return af-
ter the rain; when he thought tear could
stain a cheek no more than drop of rain
flower; when he fancied that life had no
disguise and hope no blight at all-has
come as near as anybody can to discovering
the northwest passage to Paradise.
And it is perhaps for this reason that it
is so much easier for mother to enter the
kingdom of Heaven, than it is for the rest
of the world. She fancies she is leading the
children, when, after all, the children are
leading her, and they keep her indeed where
the river is the narroweSt, and the air is
clearest; and the beckoning of a radiant
hand is so plainly seen from the other side,
that it is no wonder she often lets go her
clasp upon the little fingers she is holding,
and goes over to the neighbors, and the
children follow like lambs to the fold, for
we think it ought somewhere to be written:
"Where the mother is, there will the chill
dren be also"
But it was not of the mother we began
to think, but of the dear, old-fashioned
| grandmother, whose thread of love, "by
| hand" on lifes little wheel, was longer and
stronger than they make it now, was wound
around about the children she saw playing
in the children's arms, in true love-knot
that nothing but the shears of Atropos
could sever: for do we not recognize the
lambs sometimes, when summer days are
over and autumn winds are blowing, as
they come bleating from the yellow fields,
by the crimson thread we wound about their
necks in April or May, and SO undo the
gate and let the wanderers in?
Blessed be the children who have an old
fashioned grandmother. AS they hope for
length of days, let them love and honor her,
for we can tell them they will never find an
other.
There is large old kitchen somewhere
in the past, and an old-fashioned fireplace
therein, with its smooth old jambs of stone
smooth with many knives that had been
sharpened there-smooth with many little
fingers that had clung there. There are
andirons, too, the old andirons, with rings
in the top, wherein many temples of fame
have been builded, with many spires and
turrets Of crimson. There is broad, worn
hearth-broad enough for three generations
to cluster on-worn by feet that have been
torn and bleeding by the way, or been made
beautiful" and walked upon tresselated
gold. There are tongs in the corner, where
with we grasped COAL and "blowing for a
little life" lighted our first candle; there is
shovel, wherewith were drawn forth the
glowing embers in which we saw our first
fancies and dreamed our first dreams the
shovel with which we stirred the sleepy logs
till the sparks rushed up the chimney, as if
forge were in blast below, and wished we
had so many lambs, or so many marbles, or
so many something's that we coveted-and
so it was we wished our first wishes
There is chair-a low, rush-bottom
chair; there is little wheel in the corner,
big wheel in the garret, loom in the
chamber. There are chests full of linen and
yarn, and quilts of rare pattern, and "sam-
piers" in frames:
And everywhere and always, the dear old
wrinkled face of her whose firm, elastic step
mocks the feeble saunter of her childrens
chlldren-the old fashioned grandmother of
twenty years ago. She, the very Provi-
dence of the old homestead-she, who loved
us all, and said she wished there were more
of us to love, and took all the children in
the Hollow for grandchildren beside. A
great, expansive heart was hers, beneath
that woolen gown, or that more stately
bombazine, or that sole heirloom of silken
texture.
We can see her to-day; those mild, blue
eyes, with more of beauty in them than
Time could touch or Death do more than
hide-those eyes that held both smiles and
tears within the faintest call of every one
of US, and soft reproof that seemed not pas
sion, but regret. A white tress has escaped
from beneath her snowy cap; she has Just
restored wandering lamb to its mother;
she heightened the tether of vine that was
straying over window, as she came in, and
and plucked four-leaved clover for Ellen.
She sits down by the little wheel-a tress