The Bossier banner., 1894-12-20

awhile separate. Your grave will be
in one place, mine in another We look
each other full in the face for the last
time. We will be sitting together some
evening, or walking together some day,
and nothing will be unusual in our APP
pearance our conversation; but God
knows that it is the last time, and mes
sengers from eternity, on their errand
to take US away, know it is the last
time; and in Heaven, where they make
ready for our departing spirits, they
know it Is the last time.
Oh, the long agony of earthly separa-
ton! 1t is awful to stand in your nur-
sery fighting death back from the
couch of your child, and try to hold
fast the little one, and see all the time
that he is getting weaker, and the
breath is shorter, and make outcry to
God to help us, and to the doctors to
save him, and see it is of no avail, and
then to know that his spirit is gone
and that you have nothing left but
the casRet that held the jewel, and
that in two or three days you must even
put that away, and walk around about
the house and find it desolate, some
times feeling rebellious, and then to
resolve to feel differently, and to re-
solve on self-control, and just as you
have come to what you think is perfect
self-control, to suddenly come upon
some little coat or picture, or shoe
half worn out, and how all the floods
of the soul burst in one wild wall Of
agony! Oh, my God, how hard it is to
part, to close the eyes that never can
look merry at our coming, to kiss the
hand that will never again do us a
kindness l know religion gives great
consolation in such an hour, and we
ought to be comforted but anyhow
and anyway you make it, it is awful.
On steamboat wharf and at rail-car
window we may smile when we say
farewell; but these good-byes at the
death-bed, they take hold of the heart
with iron pincers, and tear out by the
roots until all the fibers quiver and
curl in the torture and drop thick
blood. These separations are wine
presses in which our hearts, like red
clusters, are thrown, and then trouble
turns the windlass round and round
until we are utterly crushed and no
more capacity to suffer, and we stop
crying because we have wept all our
tears.
On every street, at every doorstep,
by every couch, there have been part
ings. But once past the heavenly por-
tails, and you are through with such
scenes forever. In that land there are
many hand-claspings and embracings,
but only in recognition. That great
| home-circle never breaks. Once find
your comrades there, and you have
| them forever. No Grape floats from
the door of that blissful residence.
No cleft hillside where the dead
sleep. All awake, wide awake, and
forever. No pushing out of emigrant
bell as the funeral passes. Whole
generations of glory. Hand to hand,
heart to heart, Joy to joy. No creep
ing up the limbs of the death chill, the
feet cold until hot fiannels can not
warm them. No rattle of sepulchral
| gates. No parting, no pain.
Further, the heavenly city will have
no pain of body. The race is pierced
with sharp distresses. The surgeons
knife must cut. The dentists pincers
must pull. Pain is fought with pain
| The world is a hospital. Scores Of
diseases like vultures contending for a
carcass, struggle as to which shall
have it. Our natures are infinitely
susceptible to suffering. The eye, the
foot, the hand, with immense capacity
of anguish.
The little child meets at the entrance
of life manifold diseases You hear
the shrill cry of infancy as the lancet
strikes into the swollen gum. Yor
see it's head toss in consuming fevers
that take more than half of them int
the dust. Old age passes, dizzy ani
weak ands short-breathed and dim
sighted. On every northeast wine
come down pleurisies and pneumonias
War lifts its sword and hacks away the
life of whole generations. The hospi
tails of the earth groan into the ear o
God their complaint. Asiatic cholera
and ship fevers and typhoids and Lon
don plaques make the worlds knees
knock together.
Pain has gone through every stree
and up every ladder and down ever,
shaft. 1t is on the wave, on the mast
on the beach. Wounds from clip o
eleghant's tusk and adder's sting, ant
crocodile's tooth, and horses hoof
and wheels revolution. We gathe
| up the infrmities of cur parents AM
transmit to our children the inheritanc
augmented by our own sickness, an,
they add them to their own disorders
to pass the inheritance to other gen
erations. In A. ID. 262 the plague il
Rome smote into the dust five thou
sand citizens daily. In 54i, in Con
stantinople, a thousand grave-digger
were not enough to bury the dead. 1
1918 ophthalmia seized the whole Pru:
sian army. At times the earth ha
sweltered with suffering.
4 Count up the pains of Austerliti
where thirty thousand fell; of Fonte
, nov, where one hundred thousand fel
of Chalons, where three hundred thol
| co1d foil. Of Mayi1,c' -4irht in Ivh IN