The Iola register., 1880-06-25
A Boys Meditation OF the Death Of q
Playmate.

| n OOy McuAt0tlOA Ou Tue Dc8tu VI
Playmate.
HEARD that Sanford H. was sick;
next that he was very sick; then that
he was dead! When the boy is well
and out every day playing with you;
flying kites, making dirt-pies, Dragging
about his father and telling those shad-
owy, puffy legends about things he
knows nothing of-something like older
people, as, for instance, that the star at
the comets head is to fall week after
next and set the earth on fire, and you
go home terribly frightened and at last
muster up sufficient courage to ask the
opinion of your parents in reference to
the matter, and they restore your con-
fidence in the eternal stability of things
by pooh pooling at such nonsense, al
belt your mother an hour ago was also
alarmed at reading in the paper the
eternal and seven-yearly recurring pre-
diction of the gloomy German astrono-
mer that the earth is circling like
moth round and round. nearer and
nearer to the sun, and is eventually to
fall into it and be shriveled up like q
bit of tissue paper, while your father,
as he absently swallows his tea, is in
ternally cogitating over the possibility
fOreshadowed by French savan that
the earth is gradually recedine from the
sun. and in the course of 100000 GEN.
turies will be cooled to globe of ice.
While all this is going on, and the boy
is merely your barefooted, everyday
playfellow, he seems near, familiar and
compassable in your thoughts. But
sickness comes; the boy disappears.
You hear talk of lung or scarlet fever.
You see his father on the street with
grave, anxious look. You behold the
vehicle which so often seems to precede
the hearse, the doctors carriage, stand
ing at the door. For days the boys
case is the subject for breakfast and
supper gossip. At night you pass the
house; there is that light in the upper
windows. You know he is there,
struggling with something dreadful;
and so many are thinking of him
nurses, friends, relatives, the doctor.
So much is being done for him; yet he
grows worse and worse. 1t is through
all this that the boy, as you think of
him, becomes something very different
from the everyday boy with whom you
have played; something sad, solemn,
Notwithstanding you may not ex-
plain, but only feel. The cloud hangs
over everything; over the house where
he lies; over his empty seat in the
school-room; over the very marbles you
won from him.
They tell you he is dead! The cloud
deepens and blackens. 1t is now the
more terrible for you to think in un-
spoken words that these grown-up
men and women, these people who
have to you seemed so powerful, who
speak with 50 much confidence and au-
thority, who, had they deemed you of
sufficient importance to come and tell
you that Sanford H. would get well,
you would have held as oracles infalli-
BILE. 1t is dreadful for you to begin to
realize how powerless they are to avert |
death! Such were my feelings through
out the sickness and at the death of
Sanford H. The infant school to which
l belonged must attend his funeral in
a body. was dressed for the occa-
sion. There was no pleasure in being
so arrayed. would rather have strayed |
in the woods by myself than have at
tended that funeral. There, 1 should
have thought great deal of the dead
boy. They would have been sad, but !
not gloomy thoughts. The funeral was
solemn, of course, with the |
rustling and shuff1ing of people as they |
came in; the long, silent pause before
the service commenced; the coffin on
the parlor table; the smell of varnish;
and above all, the awful-yes, 1 must !
say 1.-THE awful voice of the minister
as he delivered the funeral DISCOURSE
q discourse which for days after made
the sunshine black and all life dreary
passage through an endless graveyard.
Then we were told to take our last
look. 1t was the first corpse I had ever
seen. So white! And all this to 90 on
about him and he so Indifferent and mo-
save those lfeless tremblings
as the people crowded and pressed
about the coffin. All the wonder, and
dread. and mystery, and speculation of
men and women about death
are also felt by the child. Only it fears
and feels and is silent. Some boys a
little older than we acted as pall-bear-
ers. They bore the coffin on q bier to