Wichita eagle., 1889-03-05
A VACANT CHAIR AND IFS DRAPERY OF
GRAPE.

How strangely unscrutable are the mu-
tations of all human concerns, and yet,
how kind the mystery which obscures the
fulfillment of the expectations Of succeed
ing days, the hopes of feeting moments.
Once, it was years ago, the Rev. Jno.
Kirby, his face aglow with the pleasure of
a memory of the happy effects of Father
Bliss many hearty 'tamens" said to US.
i care not where, under the itinerant
economy of my church, may be thrown,
when old Father Bliss dies want to come
back to Wichita and preach his funeral. :"
And will write his obituary." we re-
piled. As successive years swept on
through their swift cycles and dropped
into the unreclaimable past the dropping
form of Dr.. Bliss with its kindly face went
in and out before our people, ever
without reproach, ever with love that
was paternal. His church secured for him
great easy chair and placed it before the
alter railing, right beneath the shadow Of
its sacred desk, where sinking down into
its containing depths, with his white head
sunk low between his bent shoulders, he
placidly slept the hour away. Often have
we sat and contemplated his wasted and
venerable form and thought that at the
close of some service Father Bliss would
fail to rise for the benediction, that on
some bright Sabbath morning his trusting
spirit would exhale and On the wings of
an assuring song be silently waited away
from that hallowed retreat to join the
chorus of an unending song mid the
perennial realms and diuturnal
joys of paradise. When, at
last the summons came, Kirby who was
to preach and we were to write were sep
arated as far from each other and from
the scene of that life's closing, as the
complaining waters of the two oceans
would permit. But on yesterday we went
to the church and 10, standing inside the
chancel railing was Father Bliss vacant
chair draped with the symbol Of mortal
ity. If, indeed, our old friend was there,
there to bless the congregating multitude
and to inspire its preacher, as of yore, the
unseen veil that limits our sensuous vision
hid him, as were hidden the emblematic
white bow beneath that sonbre Grape
where his head had SO often rested Yet,
as the notes of the final doxology swelled
out from Threats of the great pipes and all
the people stood up with one accord, that
ribbon and Grape stirred with motion
so gentle as if by breath of incense from
al unseen sensor and as if swung by the
now exhalted hand of our departed friend.
And all this reminds US that only last
week on our return from the east, Mrs. E.
w. Brewer, mother of Mrs. G. w Glenn
ent, in whose fathers house DR.. Bliss
fonnd the home of his youth, sent US a
brief biographical sketch of him of whose
vacant chair we write. But wherefore
should we publish the details of an earthly
existence whose mission is finished? What
are mere words, what the proudest
achievements of the noblest life, what
any or all of the accomplishments of
mere lifetime when compared to even our
lame conceptions of the glories and
the triumphs of that infinite
existence so lately inherited by
our kind old friend. They are but as the
passing sigh of an idle and complaining
wind Sermons are dumb. obituaries dross
while marble itself disinterpates and falls
to dust, but the sentiment which placed
and draped that empty chair, linked as it
is with the lives that he knew and loved,
constitutes an homage so pure that beside
it the polished shaft of marble becomes as
evanescent as the dew drop Graded on the
breast of the morning violet.