St. Landry democrat., 1885-12-05

ASSA J SS~N~
us at any time. But your home will be
elsewhere. From long experience / find il
best to serve God. It 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 ir
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
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
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 q 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
diving fingers lovingly through their hair:
and tells them not to cry and that she is
going now, but they will all meet again in
little while in a better world, and then
kisses them good-by and GOOD bless and
keep you, my dear child" The day of the
obseuuies 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 of 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: "Welf, done, good
and faithful servant; thou 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
man in business and had small income,
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 a 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, all the vo-
| alterations, and braves and encores that
ever shook the amphitheaters, and 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 piled-up gallery OF the
heavens. Choose We between the life thai
shall close by being Kissed off the stage
and the life that shall close amid the accla'
nations supernal and archangelic.
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 il
the fourth, and here and there one
in the fifth, but all of you between
entrance and exit, and quote to you az
the peroration Of this sermon, the mos
suggestive passage that Shakespeare evel
wrote, although you never heard itrecited
The author has often been claimed as al
infidel and atheist, SO the quotation shall
be not only religiously helpful to ourselves
but grandly vindicatory of the great
/ dramatist:
I'm the name Of God, amen. I, William