Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-02-12

dence was the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
Bible given the bride on the day of her es- =
was the guide Of that household. |
Days of sunshine were followed. by days Of
shadow. Did you ever know a home that
Tor fifty years had no vicissitudep The
young woman who left her fathers house
for her young husbands home started out
with a parental benediction and good ad- !
vice she will never forget. Her mother
said to her the day before the marriage: !
Nov, my child, you are going away from
us. OF course as long as your father and
l live you will feel that you can come to
US at any time. But your home will be |
elsewhere. From long experience 1 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 tho !
days will come when you will want God, |
and my advice is to establish q family
altar, and, if need be, conduct the worship
yourself" The counsel was taken and
that young wife consecrated every roomin
the house to God.
Years passed on and there were in that
home hilarities, but they were good and
heaithful, 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.
Via care the mother took of wardrobe
and education and character and manners!
How hard she sometimes worked! 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 reftting 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 toiied
and endured and accomplished all these
years.
The children are out in the world, an
honor to themselves and their parents.
After a 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 a time. She runs her
dying fingers lovingly through their hair,
and tells them not to cry and that she is
going low, but they will all meet again in
a little while in a better world, and then
kisses them good-by and "Good bless and
keep you, my dear childw The day of the
obsequies comes, and the officiating clergy
man tells the story of wifely and motherly
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: "Well, done, good
and faithful servant; thou hast been faith
| full over a few things, l 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 a young
man in business and had small income,
and having got a 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 a 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-
lions 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 4 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, SHE shall be
held in everlasting remembrance" And
as the drama of his life closes, all the vo-
CllcIdUlOlS, III bIfOo LII ASOACo C1a
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, oud hunders OF
approval that shall break from the cloud
of witnesses in the piled-up gallery of the
heavens. Choose We between the life that
shall close by being Kissed off the stage
and the life that shallclose 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 i'll the third, and a few III
the fourth, and here and there one
in the fifth, but all of you between
entrance and exit, and I quote to you as
the peroration Of this sermon, the most
suggestive passage that Shakespeare eve,
wrote, although you never heard it recited
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:
SIN the name of God, amen. I, William
Shakespeare, of Stratford d Avon. il