The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1883-11-15
BACK HOME.
WHAT ONE MEETS AFTER AN ABsEN
0r uorsr,V- NrrABG

OF FORTY YEARS.
The old houses you so well knew
when boy are here-all in their old
place5-but not the people of long
years ago. They are gone, and their
houses are empty shells tenanted for
YOU only with memories.
In that eternity of youth, say from
six to sixteen. when the years were so
long. those families seemed to YOU as
enduring rs the everlasting hills. Then
the deacons. the trustees. the doctors,
the lawyers and all the more or less
prominent men of your native village
seemed TO you as people to endure for
all time. They had existed before you
were born. You could not then realize
their evanescence.
That was forty years ago. That gen
Grafton has nearly disappeared. Two
or three are left-old stumps -decayed,
twisted, storm beatcn-amid a younger
aud more vigorous growth-the ''sur-
yival of the fittestn -and . mockery
after all of the ''fittest."
Not only have the heads Of families
disappeared, but in many cases the
families themselves. There are certain
old houses you sec-large, Old-fashiOued,
roomy houses; double houses; two
stories and half, with big garrets,
cavernous cellars, long ranges of
kitchen and wash-hOuse in the rear; n
double door and q brass knOcker;
houses presenting full important fronts
TO the street; no tilagree work nor
mansard roof nor Queen Anne STYLES,
but plain, very plain and substantial
and always painted white, and in front
an old-fashioned garden with box
lined straight walk leading up to the
front door, and on either side holly
hooks, pinks, marigolds and sweet
william.
That house when the world was COM
mencing for YOU, when everything in it
was quite new, when creation was newly
furnished for You, and its paint was
hardly dry and none of its veneer and
varnish had been scratched or worn off;
that house was full of sturdy sons and
bright-eyed, red-cheeked daughters
Some were older than you, some young
er, some of your own age. You went
with them to the village school, one of
the boys belonged TO your own partic-
ular set, you played with him, YOU
visited his barn to inspect his rabbits
and pigeons, he visited your barn for n
similar purpose; those barns which by
the aid of a saw, hammer and nails and
a vast amount of clumsy saving and
hammering and banging you kept in a
unrepair- in a word the Village boys
barn.
The barn is still there an old, rusty,
moss-grown, implanted barn, whose
gray shingles hang loosely by the rusty
nails and are all but rotted to finder.
In one end there are still seen that row
of most unevenly-cut pigeon holes cut
after the fashion of boys first effort
with a key-hole saw-cut by guess as to
uniform level, and therefore cut on a
very irregular basis-but by your
crony's hand forty years agO-when the
world was new to you and me.
The family name no longer exists IN
the village. The old folks have gone
the way decreed by nature; the girls
married oil and out of the place; the
boys went away, some in this direction,
some in that-one TO California; one to
the war, who never returned; one stajd
mt home and died; one by one the limbs
of this family tree have dropped of
through decay or have been wrenched
off by the storm, while the stumpS have
rottcd down To the earth and the turf
has grown over them.
Strangers inhabit the old homestead
people from abroad, not of the old
village strangers cold. dead and
indifferent to all this host of memory
and association now Juggling nj your
heart strings as YOU look at the old front
door, on which still hangs the iron
knockcr. and underneath that same
doorstep which the feet of the departed
still in remembrance so near YOU have
helped to wear away.
A boy comes out of the old house
front door, whOoping and yelling rs did
your crony of forty years ago. 1t is the
same sound in the same place. Only
another boy. To that-boy the world is
as new, the pillars of society about him.
the cold men" seem as enduring as did
the dead and gone cold mem of your
youth. As his glance momentarily falls
upon you he lives over in YOU what YOU
did with the .'old men of your youth,
and you are but living over in him what
some cold man. Of your time may very
likely have done rs he looked upon that
very housA tenanted with the memories
Of his youth.
Yet the sunshine of to-day is just as
warm and cheering rs il was then; the
hues Of the pink and holyhock while in
their prime are not one whit less beauti
full than the decayed flower of forty
years ago. In he spring-time the new
ness of bursting bud and leaf is as new
and full of life now as then and so j,
the world to eyes newly openedupon it,
THE VILLAGE GRAVEYARD.
Ii is an October morn i'm all its beauty
and brightness and bracing freshness
The crickets still chirp in the grass, tn,
katvdid is still heard in the trees and
the birds are not vet silent These are
the only sounds heard in the street
the street of the cemetery in the village
outskirts these and your football ant
the stir of the breeze in the tree tops
But quiet as is the place externally
there is stir and commotion and bustl,
enough within that mysterious mechan
ism of yours YOU call memory, thai
name for that mystery which So indus
triously goes on storing up sights anC
scenes and events and preserving ever
the tones of voices once familiar 10 YOU
and not heard by mortal these thirty o.
forty years
Voices, the dust of whose lips lie il
the soil beneath you voices which one'
made your heart beat quicker; voice
once potent i'm the village toWn-meet
inc: voices of turbulent, quarrelsOm,
and nevcr-to -bc-s0tisiied men, and soft
er voices which babe YOU farewell il
the now long ago, which you littl'