The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-12-12
In hear Won sav that this was the hap

| closer ana gentler sympathy; you
have found in one true and warm
heart love which was purer and
stronger than ever; your children
have shown a considerate affection
and care for you under your new
burdens, which has made you proud
aud happy; they have all tasted the
novel pleasure of foregoing personal
preferences for the sake of comforting
and aiding you; you have preserved
good name-an untarnished honor;
and should you rise again to wealth
and splendor, l am not sure but you
will always look back to this season
of trial as the one in which you
gathered the richest harvest of love
and sympathy and cheerfulness and
contentment that ever you knew.
If Hume and Voltaire, and Rous-
seau and Bentham, unmarried as they
all were-had each been the father OF
a ia nily; if they had ever gone in
person to summon the family-physi-
clan in some exigency of intense an
xiety, we should never have heard OF
those frosty and inidel PHILOSOPHERS
from their pens by which SO many
hearts have been chilled and cursed.
As you entered the family chamber,
and bent over the couch hallowed by
the great mystery of birth, and the
tears of lightweight sensibility
could not be restrained as you caught
the breath of your first born, you dis
covered all at once that new we'll had
begun to spring up in your soul, deep
and living beyond the reach of
drouth.
Sickness has come, and the time for
watching, WEAKNESS, and prayer.
That child, who had lived long
enough to be the music and the light
Of your dwelling, twining itself
around your living self, and associat-
ed with every hope and happiness of
your life, is now in fearful peril. Its
hot and hectic cheek lies against
your own, as you pace the room in
the dead of night, bearing it to and
fro in it's suffering and patience. In
those hours of suspense and pain the
seed is dropping fast for future har-
vesting-if your child should live, in
love and tenderness and sympathy;
should it die, bosom full of gentle
memories and great thoughts, too
great for words.
see in your dwelling little
coffin, and within it form exquisite
ly moulded, the ringlets parted on its
white and round forehead; an I'M
opened bud lies on its bosom, and
were it not for that marble GOODNESS,
you might take it for sleeping an
gel. And there you stand, the tears
falling down your cheeks, as the rain
drops drip from the boughs after
shower. Tell US, now, does the
thought ever occur to you to wish
that your child had never been given
yous Would you purchase exemp-
ton from all this grief at the price
of forgetfulnesss Would you, if
you could, overstep all this anguish,
and be again as you were before that
child had an existence7 Never. That
brief scene of compressed sorrow is
more fruitful in all. which belongs to
soul-harvest than score of years
passed in cold and polished prosper
ity; and from that small grave you
will reap many sheaf of blended
memories and hopes and gentle affec-
tions, every year, till you are yourself
laid by its side.
1t is said that one of the most dis
tinguished senators of our country,
who was bereaved of little child,
when his eye rested, months after
ward, on a small worsted shoe-re-
calling, as few things can more vivid
ly, the bright vision which had fled
put it into his bosom, where, as
was known, he carried it long next to
his large and manly heart. That heart
had calmer pulse, gentler SYM
patty, richer sensibility, truer
greatness, because of contact with
that small memorial of domestic
sorrow.
There is an incident in the life of
Edmund Burke, which is familiar to
all who cherish his great fame. In
the evening of public life he lost his
only son, at the age of twenty-one, of
thu rarest genius and varied accom-
plishments. The favorite horse of
this young man, after the death of
his master, was turned into the park
and treated with the utmost tender
ness. On a certain day long after
wards, when Mr.. Burke himself was
walking in the fields, this petted ami
NAL came up to the stile, and, as if in
exnreasiOn of his mute sympathy,