Whig and tribune. [volume] (Jackson, Tenn.) 1870-1877, 1873-08-23
Natural Affection.


Love, they say, is in the line of de-
scent not of notwithstanding 70
which, If a child loves a parent, 1t Is
an act of grace not of nature. But we
place tkis with all the other heresies
on the subject. 1t IS true that the
parent must regard the child as one
who shall carry on his own work to
completion, his character to perfec-
ton, through whom his name aud his
stock shall still have part in the warm
and noisy world when he himself is
silent and cold; and he accentuates
all the intrinsic dearne5s of the child
by an unconscious love of self and
love of life, while the child must cor
respondingly look at the parent as
one who has lived his day, and whose
work is doue. Yet that very thing
gives the parent new claim on the
chiId's affection: for not only is the
parent dear to him from habit Of as
ISOLATION, from ability to remember
nothing from which the parent is alb
sent. as much a part of his universe
as the stars and sky; but the fact that
the world is so sweet to youth, and
age is about to lose it, that the old
ewes are soon to close on its beauty
and gladness, and all the sunshine the
dear old form shall know Will be that
which falls upon the grave. gives
fresh emotion as strong with love and
regret as the parents emotion is
strong with love and hope; and over
and q bove all there is that mystical
tie of the flesh and blood which new
er can words explain, and seldom can
endeavor Destroy tie before which
the fidelity of the loadstar to it's pole
dWindles into nothingness.
It is this same mystical Tie that we
find in the family relation elsewhere.
Brothers and sister may be uneonge-
NAL society each to the other, even
disagreeable; may veX each other by
the nltual sight of their own worse
aitsSxaggerated into prominence by
the cheapening of their better ones
through rivalry; may meet from each
other criticism and plain-speaking
that are blistering; may choose the
merest alien for friend and confdant
in preference; may quarrel because
they love, but viii love in spite of
their quarrel; and let a question of
interest, or health, or happiness, or
safety arise, and the blood tells again
without more ado.
There is no Sdednt who has yet told
US what this mystical tie is. PhilOso-
pliers cannot illuminate it; physiolo-
gists cannot catch it. One must ana
I'VE the current of the veins as it
bounds across the heart, must seize
the intelligence that thrills along the
nerve as it leaves the brain, and then
one has not laid hold of it, The SYM
patty of mated snails for one another,
of which Poe told us, by which, tho
separated by oceans, one will respond
to the others hurt, bears trivial COM
parison with the human sympathy in
families: for the searcher into the
springs of natural affection must find
it something to be weighed only in
that fine balance where the very star
dust has been weighed, and the mag
netism of the earth measured out to
its meridians-a port of the awfnl
secrsts of creation, of the great nlyst-
cry of marriage, of the connection be-
tween heaven and earth, in the face
of which, and such as which, the fool
has said there is no God. 1t is an at
traction indeed exceeding any in the
material cosmos; for though the New
tons and Laplaces should move on
witktheir vast schemes of gravitation
andeohesion till time shall be no more,
yet there is something, the people of
the world believe, that ifthoSe NIGH
ty powers were dead and done away
with, could yet hold the world to-
gether! -Hdrper'S -Bdzar.