The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1894-08-08
Fro il this Side.
From the Greenuillc Ne,Us.

moved in endless, ceaseless procession
through the impeL etrable black mist
between this life ard what there is
just beyond its final scene. Yet it is
not beaten way. There are no land.
marks or guide posts. Each of us
must tread it alone, must find AMI fol-
low his own path into the mist always
lying close upon the ever rolling river
must in silence and in solitude
20 where so many have gone and
are going but where there are no foot
prints
Have any of those who have gone
hence beyond the mystery so familiar
but so impenetrable been permitted to
return? Do the dead come back 2 Is
it given to them to return from the
infinite hereafter to the finite life, to
wander impalpable and invisible among
the scenes and people once fondly
loved and intimately known
a man lost and alone in the far re-
gions of frozen seas and everlasting
SHOWS, where thereis never living OF
moving thing to disturb the bleak
stiffness or break the vast silence-a
man plodding upon desert sands with
only the burning earth meeting the
burning sky and no voice or token Of
life-would not be so desolate as the
man returning to familiar places and
friends after a few years Of death.
The oblivion of death is in its terror.
The obliteration Of. death is its path
os, it's glory and its testimony. The
man may know well what will be said
of him when he is dead He may un-
derstand from his own experience that
the living life is too large and expan-
sive to be compressed within the mar
row compass of any grave, that thought
and feeling and purpose are too busy
and too virile to be bound very long to
any dead. He may be able to predict
word for word, gesture for gesture the
expressions which will be evoked by
the announcement of his own death.
We should all know these things. All
Of US have heard the casual, formal
statements of regret, the ordinations
of genuine sorrow. We have seen the
temporary gloom that may follow
death when it means deprivation or
the separation Of intimate connection
or when the circumstances have been
shocking. We have noted, too, how
soon other thoughts and considera-
tions crowd out sorrows, how y
quickly the dead man is forgotten,
how very soon the.countenances drawn
into the aspect of solemnity are re-
laxed. That is as it should be. The
mist lies heavy between life and death
and forbids the. two from mingling.
The tinkling music and the dancing
light, the harmonies and happiness,
the cares and struggles of this world, /,
need not be, should not be, cannot be,
blended with the sound Of the wild
river rushing forever beneath the un-
moving, unchanging black mist. The
desolation-the unutterable desolation
and loneliness there would be in an
invisible return to the scenes apd peo-
pie of this life after a few years OF
death We may imagine a returned
spirit wandering, wandering sadly
amid hearts and homes where it was
once familiar, waiting, yearning wist-
fully for one token, one evidence thatit
has not been forgotten, and waiting in
vain. The years going by bedeck the
graves in hearts as they do the mounds
in the church yards and bestow beau.
ty and fragrance upon the scars OF old
sorrows as flowers spring about the
headstones; and as the turfed mounds
sink gradually to the common level, the
memories of those gone before fade
gradually, softly, gently almost to for
getfulness. So the returned spirit
might wander long in desolation mex
pressible, finding no recognition, no
remembrance, deprived Of the power OF
demanding either, however intense its
longing.
There could be no worse punish
ment for the dead than to send them
back to wander where they were once
alive, to know the long, slow torture
Of being forgotten, to find themselves
strangers in familiar places, to see
their memories fading from hearts
which they once filled as the mounds
above their mortal bodies sink imper'
ceptibly to be presently lost.
Can it be chat men are created, and
works are done and lives are lived tc
be forgotten, obliterated +? When the
life goes out into the mist, behind the
curtain which no hand can raise, nc
eye can penetrate, and when the body
has been placed in the earth and Gov
cred that the grass and flowers may
presently grow above it's that all
can it be all I? There is no Immortality
this side because no man is long re-
membered. The works Of many men
large and little, evil and good, live at
ter them, and some names live long
but the men thcmselves-the knowl
edge and memories of the breathing,
living, real men as they were-fade
and are lost. They cannot be perpet
uated in bronze or with paint or by
written words. We cannot linger OF
live here; the hearts in which there
may be recollection Of us must after
while 90 hence in their turn. Are
we t. live nowhere Does the lonely
journey through the shadowed waters
and the brooding mist end it all save
the memories we leave here, fad
ing year by year, vanishing as the
lights upon an harbor 60 out ono
by one as we sail away from them
into the night (? Are the hopes and
Iabors and loves and struggles, the
longings of the heart, the strivings
and sorrows and aspirations-are all
to go QUITO vanish utterly-with i
nothing beyond us and nothing LETT
here ? ;.
We must die. That is the condi
tion and the penalty Of life. We
must be forgotten. That is the pen
alty and condition of death. In the
facts of life and going away and leav'
| ing oblivion behind us there is Sc
quence of assurance that there must
:oe yet another life, that life and love
end hope and works are not created to
,oe wasted and all spent on the little
Ghey may do here, that on the other
side of the curtain there is light and