The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1877-10-18
AutunlnaI.

lHb carly AutuhH - uF~N 49,
The year is growing old, and is Civ
ing evidence Of decay. The leaves
Of the trees have matured, and some
Of them have left, and others are
leaving, the parent stem to mingle
with the dust of the earth. The
flowers fade also. The golden corn
is almost ready to be gathered into
gamers, and soon winter, with all its
rigor, will come. We do not know
how it is with others, but with us
our feelings in regard to Autumn
have changed materially. Once, as
we looked forth at the decay Of ma
ture, we we're reminded of the decay
of man, we thought of the matur-
ed and ripened old age, and somehow
in associating the two, we forgot
that "leayes only have their time to
fall" Now, we remember that very
few Of mankind are spared to meas
ure out the three-score years and ten,
but that long before the harvest
time the sheayes are gathered in,
and when the time comes for the
reaper Death to thrust in his sickle
to gather the fully-aged man, how
astonishing to find they have been
gathered and garnored years before.
1t is not well to dwell too much in
the past, but, somehow the mind
will sometimes wander backward;
and very often, at night, when sleep
should have possession Of our powers
and senses, we find ourselves gazing
on the pictures that hang on the
walls of memory, and, in these gaz-
ings, we discover the faces of those
dear friends of ours who were not
permitted to live out the time allot-
ed to man, but were called back to
the spirit land long before we felt
ready or willing to yield them to the
Giver. And which Of US has not
pictures and scenes on memory's
walls, for which we would not take
in exchange the gold of ophir2 In
early childhood it may be weremem-
Der the brightness and beauty of an
infant sisteror brother, around whom
the chords of love were SO bound that
to separate them was like yielding
up our own LIES blood, but after a
few short months the reaper came
and claimed the little darling, and
that death scene Of an infant on a
sainted mothers knee makes one of
the saddest pictures crowded on that
wall of memory. A brother next,
perhaps, ere yet a wrinkle had in
truded on his marble brow, or a sill
yer thread appeared among the CLOS
sy waves of hair that adorned his
manly head. While life for him was
yet bright and full Of promise, the
death angel came to summon him,
and, away from home and friends,
he yielded to the inevitable. And
there are few of us who cannot recall
the period when dear friend, not
brother, perhaps, nor sister, but
friend, who was inexpressibly dear,
to whom we have often confded the
secrets of the soul, and found a ready
response to our joys and our woes,
was called to prepare to leave the
things Of time, and enter on that
nobler work beyond the grave, Ali
when we recall scenes like this one,
we live over again the poignant
grief that we felt then, and though
bitter may be the remembrance of it
we linger long over the picture, and
pass reluctantly to the next. A
mother or a father we may have lost
in early childhood, when the heart
was young and tender, and all the
tenderness of life seemed measured
out to us in that one scene.
These pictures it may be are so
long in the past that the outer world
has forgotten them, but to us they
are bright and vivid as the occuren-
ces of yesterday, and may not be for
gotten here nor hereafter,
1t is a sweet reflection that there
is no death, but that real life breaks
on the soul at the ending of time,
and that the freed and disenthralled
spirit revels, and bathcs, and exists
in the glories of eternal existence,
and that we may all, if we will it,
meet again whore no storms ever
beat, but where bliss reigns porpetu-
olly How wondnrf,Il nrn tho nnvnrs