Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1883-05-18
TIE OLD HOME.
LCT6ette'S Visit TO the Town of His Birth
After TIirty-six Yolrs Absence.
i-i' TOUCiIIS;: TEyETTE TOHI
MOTHERS MEMORY,

Ills TotCHlN;: TEIHTTE TO HIS
MOTHERS MEMORY.
Robert J. Burdette, tho Burling-
ton HatCteye humorist. is now on q
lecture tour through the East. He
recently visited the town of his birth
and delivered a lecture there. and the
following is a letter to the Hamkeye,
full OF brilliant thoughts, choice hui
NOR and sentiment, as he speaks of
the place of his birth, eand pays a
tender tribute to the memory of his
mother:
Il fail to recognize many of tho
old lard marks in Greene county.
Perhaps the fact that 1 was only
about two years old when l followed
the star Of empire as far as Cincin.
cinnati, may have something to do
with it. Bu. before | had talked to
my Wavnesburg audience ten min.
utes. | recognized some Of my cous-
ms from Greensboro by their un-
mistakable family features. And if
there was nothing else familiar, the
names of the good people l met,
certainly were, for they were names
as familiar as my own. And it was
indeed pleasure to talk half the
night TO my old neighbors who knew
me thirty six years ago, when
couldn't talk a bit, and now met me
once moro when l can't do anything
else.
Stormy times in Green county.
The next day l drove down with
cousin Dave and his wife to Greens
boro. Rain7 1t poured down every
furlong of the twenty-one miles.
There is only one railroad and 1000
democratic majority in Greene
county. and people travel over my
native heath just as they travelled
when l left them. And how the
waters did inst wander over the land
as wa drove down to my birth place.
Every run was torrent: every creek
was river. and old Ten Mile was as
broad as the Monongahela and twice
as thick.
A man does love to go back and
view the scenes among which he
made his start, even thongh he may
not remember much about them.
There, SEQ there! That is the house
your great grandfather built" 1t
was swell house in those days evi-
IDENTIFY, Two stories; square hewed
logs. a porch all along the front.
And the hands that built it, the
voices that laughed and sang in it.
the merry feet that danced on It's
oaken floors. Down through the
broken roof and in the chinks of the
tottering walls the sun shines TO day
in great bars of gold, Just for al in
stan:. and then the clouds shut out
the sunlight and tho pitiless rain
beats down upon the old log house.
The skies are gray, the trees are leaf
less, the hills are bare, and the rising
wind moans and sighs. Drip, drip,
drip the water falls from the broken
caves, like the monotonous tick of
a clock that tells tho lives of four
generations. But for the moaning
wind and the weeping water. how
still, how quiet it all is. My great.
grandfather built it then?" 1 wonder
If | waited here until the day is gone
and the evening is gray and full of
shadows. if he will come to tho dis
mantled old door and with ghostly
silence and oldtime courtesy, bid
his great grandson welcome to the
acres and tho manor of his ancestors.
And that orchard on the bill,
Robert. your grandfather planted.
And he built the brick house on the
other side of the road"
There is the orchard still. Year
after year the fragrant blooms and
the robins come together, but the
boy who planted the trees? The
orchard bloom and the withered leaf
of November are alike to him. and
the sony of the robin does not reach
my car.
Your mother was born in that
house"
AN, my mother? She was little
girl here. then. All these hills are
sacred with the touch of her patter
ing feet; down this winding glen she
has plucked the wood violets and
ancmones; and the birds in the sway
ing branches above her head have
sung in wild joyousness to hear her
laugh She was a school girl here;
my mother. And how pretty she was
then, with the tender curve of her
lips and the full orbed eyes of brown,
soft and deep as the shadows of these
hills: ah. she was beautiful when she
was school girl.
And that night. stand in my Ia
tive village. and look at the stars
that come out in the blue sky. and
listen to the low voiced Monongahela
singing at my foet and in the stars l
see the soft light of my mothers eyes,
and listening to the sorg of the
river, 1 know where her dear voice
caught the low, mellow music that IN
the long ago lulled with tho old
time cradle songs. her little ones to
sleep
"A SORT o. EXPECTIN' LOOK"