The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1885-12-24

pousal was the guide of that household.
Days of sunshine were followed by days of
shadow. Did you ever know home that
for fifty years had no vicissitude? The
young woman who left her fathers house
for her young husbands home started out
with parental benediction and good add
vice she will never forget. Her mother
| said to her the day before the marriage:
Snow, my child, you are going away from
us. OF course as long as your father and
live you will feel that you can come to
us at any time. But your home will be
| elsewhere. From long experience find it
best to serve God. 1t is very bright with
| you now, my child, and you may think
you can get along without religion, but the
days will come when you will want God,
and my advice is to establish family
altar, and, if need be, conduct the worship
yourself" The counsel was taken and
that young wife consecrated every room in
the house to God.
Years passed on and there were in that
home hilarities, but they were good and
healthful, and sorrows, but they were COM
forted. Marriages as bright as orange
| blossoms could make them and burials in
which all hearts were riven. They have a
family lot in the cemetery, but all the place
is Illuminated with stories of resurrection
and reunion. The children of the house
hold that lived have grown up, and they
are all Christians, the father and mother
leading the way and the children followed
What care the mother took of wardrobe
and education and character and manners!
How hard she sometimes workedl When
the head of the household was unfortunate
in business she sewed until her fingers
were numb and bleeding at the tips. And
what close calculation of economies, and
| what ingenuity in refitting the
garments of the elder children for
the younger, and only God kept account of
that mothers sideaches and head
aches and heartaches, and the tremulous
prayers by the side. of the sick
child's cradle and by the couch of this one
fully grown. The neighbors often noticed
how tired she looked, and old acquaint-
ances hardly knew her in the street, but
without complaint she waited and toiled
and endured and accomplished all these
years.
The children are out in the world, an
honor to themselves and their parents.
After while the mothers last illness
comes. Children and grandchildren, sum-
moned from afar, come softly into the
room one by one, for she is too weak to see
more than one at time. She runs her
dying fingers lovingly through their hair,
and tells them not to cry and that she is
| going now, but they will all meet again in
a little while in better world, and then
kisses them good-by and '.'Good bless and
keep you, my dear child" The day of the
| obsequies comes, and the officiating clergy
man tells the story of wifely and motherly
endurance, and many hearts on earth
and in Heaven echo the sentiment,
and as she is carried off the stage
of this mortal life there are cries
of faithful unto death, she hath
| done what she could, while overpowering
all the voices of earth and Heaven is the
plaudit of the God who watched her from
| first to last, saying: "Well, done, good
and faithful servant; thoa hast been faith
| full over few things, ] will make thee
ruler over many things. Enter thou into
| the joy of thy Lord"
| But what became of the father of this
| household? He started out as young
and having got little ahead, sickness in
| the family swept it all away. He went
| through all the business panics of forty
| years, met many losses and suffered many
| betrayals, but kept on trusting in God,
whether business was good or poor, setting
| his children good example, giving them
! the best Of counsel, and never q prayer did
| he offer for all those years but they were
| mentioned in it. He is old now and real
| ICES it can not be long before he must quit
| all these scenes; but he is going to leave
his children an inheritance OF prayer and
| Christian principles which all the defalca-
tions of earth can never touch, and, as he
| goes out of this world, the Church
| of God blesses him, and the poor ring his
door-bell to see if he is any better. And
his grave is surrounded by multitude
/ who went on foot and stood there before
! the procession of carriages came up, as
some say there will be no one to take his
| place, and others say, "Who will pity me
| now" and others remark, "He shall be
held in everlasting remembrance" And
as the drama of his life closes, ell the vo-
| alterations, and braves and encores that
ever shook the amphitheaters, AMI the
| Drury Lanes, and the Covent Gardens, and
the Haymarkets, and the Coliseums of
earthly spectacle, were feeble and tame
compared with the long, loud thunders OF
approval that shall break from the cloud
of witnesses in the piledup gallery of the
heavens. Choose ye between the life that
shall close by being Missed off the stage,
and the life that shall close amid the accla-
nations supernal and arehangelic.
o men and women on the stage of life
/ many of you in the first act of the drama,
and others in the. Second, and some
of you in the third, and a few in
/ the fourth, and here and there one
in the fifth, but all of you between
| entrance and exit, and quote to you as
the peroration of this sermon, the most
suggestive passage that Shakespeare ever
wrote, although you never heard it recited.
The author isas often been claimed as an
infidel and atheist, SO the quotation shall
be not only religiously helpful to ourselves,
but grandly vindica,ory of the great
! dramatist:
"In the name of God, amen. l, William
Shakespeare, of Stratford-upon Avon, in
! the County of Warwick, gentleman, in per-