Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1883-12-20
Christmas rs We Grow Old.

As we grow older, let us be more
thankful that the circle of our Christ
mas associations and of the lessons that
they bring expands! Let us welcome
every one of them and summon them
TO lake their places by the Christmas
! hearth
We come, old aspirations, glitte ring
creatures of an ardent fancy, to your
! places underneath the holly! We know
you, and have not outlived you vet.
Welcome, old projects and old loves.
however tieeting, to your hooks among
the steadier lights that burn around us.
Welcome, all that was ever real to orr
hearts; and for the earnestness that
made you real thanks to heaven Do
we build no Christmas castles in the
clouds now? Let our thoughts, fut-
terlng like butterflies among these
flowers of children, bear witness.
Before the boy there stretches out a
future higher than we ever looked on in
our romantic time, but bright with
honor and with truth. Around this
little head, on which the sunny curls
lie heaped, the graces sport as prettily,
as airily as when there was no scythe
within the reach of Time to shear away
the curls of our first love. Upon
another girls face near it-placider
but smiling bright-a quiet but con-
tented little face, we see home fairly
written.
Shining from the word as rays shine
from a star, we see how, when our
graves are old, other hopes than ours
are young; other hearts than ours
moved; how other waves are smothered;
how other happiness blooms, ripens
and decays-no, not decays, for other
homes and other hands of children not
yet IN being, nor for ages yet to be,
arise and bloom and ripen to the end
of all.
Welcome everything Welcome alike
what has been and what never was and
what we hope may be to your shelter
underneath the holly, to your places
round the Christmas fire, where what
is sits open-heartedl In yonder shadow
do we see, obtruding furtively upon the
blaze, an enemy's face! BY Christmas
day, we do forgive him! If the injury
he has done us may admit of such COM
panionship, let him come here and take
his place If otherwise, unhappily, let
him go home, assured that we will never
injure or accuse him.
The winter sun goes down over town
and village; on the sea it makes a rosy
path, as if the sacred tread were fresh
upon the water. A few more moments
and it sinks and night comes on, and
light begins to sparkle in the prospect.
On the hillside beyond the shapelessly
difused town, and the quiet keeping of
the trees that girdle the village steeple,
remembrances are cut IN stone, planted
In common flowers, growing in grass,
entwined in lowly brambles around
many mound OF earth.
In towns and villages there are doors
and windows closed against the weather,
there are flaming logs heaped high,
there are joyful faces, there is healthy
music of voices Be all ungentleness
and harm excluded from the temples
Of the household gods, but be those re-
membranes admitted with tender en-
couragement. They are of the time
and all its comforting and peaceful re-
assurances, and of history that reunit-
ed even upon the earth the living and
the dead; and of the broad beneficence
and goodness that too many men have
tried to tear to narrow shreds. Charles
/ Dickens