St. Charles City Republican intelligencer. [volume] (St. Charles City [Charles City], Iowa) 1857-1861, 1858-06-10
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THE OLD HOMESTEAD.

One long resident in prairie land,
cannot fail to be impressed with the
striking contrasts that meet the eye,
as he glides along over the Empire
State" Now, a cultivated region
smiles on either hand. Everything
gives evidences of age. The orchard
trees stretch their broad arms afar !;
the fences fairly glitter in the silver
livery of time the dwellings are old
and roomy and rambling moss is
clinging to the northern caves all
trace Of the log cabin that preceded
them has been effaced the barns are
huge and old, and like great memo
ries; the curbing round the old wells,
is worn smooth, and the battered
buckets seem to have made myriads
of journeys from the waters "undefil'
cd" to upper air. You expect to sec
age sitting upon the threshold or lean
ing upon his staff, beneath the spread
ing tree that his fathers hands hat
planted, and you are not disappointed
Venerable locks are floating in thu
summer air, and venerable forms art
tottering gateward. A very pleasant
one it is Understanding like the
going down of long, long day.
Such homes are hallowed, for how
many hearts there are that date their
living and their loving back to them,
and delight to think Of them as un-
changed, and Time indeed has dealt
very gently with them. One of the
strongest arguments we could urge in
favor of the entailment of estates, the
preservation of the old homestead in
the name of it's builders, may be found
wrapped up in this thought. How
many men we meet who have utterly
forgotten they ever were children, and
one of the principal reasons is, there
is nothing upon earth to remind them
of it. The old roof.tree is razed the
old haunts are desecrated and chang
ed the old brook has grown dim and
dumb in its channel. He must be a
marvel of man indeed, who can re-
visit the unchanged home Of his child.
hood lingcr upon the very threshold
over which he once timidly crept; pause
in the room where he was born look
out at the window where he first saw
day look up at the tree whose top
was
"Closc against the sky"
without growing human the while, and
being the better for the memory and
the pilgrimage.
But one thing you cannot fail to note
in those old cultivated regions the
absence of the young men. Of those
in middle life, and in later age, you
see many, but the elastic step of youth
has left an echo upon the threshold, as
it crossed it on its way to the West. I
Hardly household but looks away
toward the sunset, where some loved
one has gone to labor and wait. And
when, here and there, in some such old
ncighborhood as we have sketched, a
little thin mail bag is flung from the
train in its rapid transit, one cannot
help believing, there are in it treasures
for heart and treasures for hope-glad
words from far to "to the old folks at
home"
If anybody has an old homestead,
let him keep it-keep it if he can, in
its integrity if it contains a grave,
it is all the better for that Time
will deal very gently with the old
place, and memory and affection will
hallow it.
But for the contrasts, ten minutes
may whirl you from the bosom of the
old, into the midst of the new. Rude
and blackened stumps, heaps Of burn
ing brush, and the bold woods that
frown around the little clearing, look
like the first footsteps of the pioneer
upon a distant border, rather than
late beginning in the Empire
State" You may see men begrimcd
as if they had been fighting before
Sebastopol, Juggling at huge logs that
numbered the ground, the killed upon
the field of the weary conquest over
stern, sturdy, stubborn nature and
sou cannot help wondering if these
men had never heard of Prairie Land,
all ready to "laugh with the harvest ;"
with its skirtings of forest, and its
markets at hand.-CAicago Journal.