The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1895-06-20
A VISIT
To ChildhOOd'S Home and
Old Scenes.
"reminiscences or BY GONE DAYS,
How Memory Recalls Incidents and
Events and we Live Childhood
Over Again.

Have you ever visited in the spring OF
the year your old home, your childhood's
| home, which perhaps you have not seen
for many years? and walked over the
familiar grounds and drank from the old
well and rambled about the woods, climbed
the fences and paused to think of yourself
as you stood on that very spot many years
ago? Did it ever strike You how much
smaller the buildings appear to be- how
contracted the yard is, and how low the
fences are, surely the entire place has
shrunken. You are quite positive that
the limb from the old oak used 10 be much
higher from the ground than it now is
bat you have no time for settling these
questions-for every glance brings some>
thing before you recalling memories of the
past until your thoughts fairly crowd one
another. You stand and gaze at the old
stable and barn where many happy hours
were spent on rainy days. 1t recalls to
your mind how Bob cut his fingers off in
the feed cutter and the time when Tom
fell through the hole from the loft to the
barn floor breaking his collar.bone, and
as your eye rests on the stop in the barn
yard, you see yourself getting from the
ground with stars dancing before you,
after an unsuccessful effort to ride a calf
and SO it goes, each spot brings before you
some incident in your early life until you
find yourself lost to all else except this
panorama Of your pas. life which is being
uniolded so wildly and with so much real
ity before your eyes that for the moment
you are transported as it we're back into
childhood. it is with reluctance you turn
from these scenes and move off,
sf'sn pass thrSagh the village, stopping
a moment at the village school house,
where you spent many happy days, and
sometimes laborious hours with the blue
back speller in hand, trying to FIX in
your mind the difficult spelling of words
that are found in the same column with
Baker. Lady, Shady, etc., etc The ole
school house looks just the same, excep
that all the faces now seen there are strange
to you and on inquiry you learn that many
OF them are the children OF your old schoo
mates. Now as you stand in the doorw ay
you perceive that particular school bool
odor that is found only in school room!
and is ever present there. 1t watts memo
ries through the portals of your brar
never to be forgotten. Around the schoo
house are many familiar objects that almos
make you weep over the loss OF your schoo
days.
The old town ball ground, which game
lias been superseded by the more scientific
game of base ball, but to yonr mind there
is.ho game so deeply interesting as town
ball and bull pen. Probably these games
will never again come into fashion and
yet good town ball player was considered
as skillful as modern base ball batter OF
pitcher, and it required just as perfect
physical development for one as the other
There were no paid, or professional town
ball players in old times.
The same marble ground is before you
"a clean white spot under the COO
spreading branches Of an oak. The bows
are there, too, just as of yore, disputine
over Whose 90 it is" or whether Tom
killed Ned" or John Judged, or settling
the numerous knotty questions that usually
arise in this game.
Just over yonder is group OF smaller
children under the shade OF another tree
diligently at work building mud houses
and moss palaces with bits of broken
china and stick dolls. Who has not seen
the little maids thrown into the deepest
distress as the hands of some rude boy
whose willful destruction of these works
of art has caused many tear to tall on
the ruin, little hearts whose grievances
seemed just as real as do real sorrows Of
ripper years.
You pass on following the path down
. the hill and stop a moment for a draught
from the well remembered spring You
hang the goUrd where you find it, and
where it has always hung on the forked
stick over the spring, and move on toward
the old graveyard just across the branch,
fastening in the direction of single
mound catching u glimpse as yol 90 of
4 one and another tomb stone marking the
resting place OF relatives friends, young
and old, here school mate, whose voice
was once heard on yonder hill long since
silent are sleeping quietly in this almost
forgotten place. There a babe, whom
had lie been spared it would have been a
gray bearded man by this time There q
sold Ter whose life blood was split in the