Connecticut western news., 1896-05-28

children of the household that lived have grown up, and they are all Chris tians, the father and mother leading the way and the children following. What care the mother took of wardrobe and education, character and mannersi How hard she sometimes worked! When the head of the household was unfortunate in business, she sewed until her fingers were numb and bleeding at the tips. And what close calculation of economies and what ingenuity in refitting the gar ments of the elder children for the younger, and only God kept account of that mothers sideaches and headaches and heartaches and the tremulous pray CTS by the side of the sick child's cradle and by the couch of this one fully grown. The neighbors often noticed how tired she looked, and old acquaint- ances hardly knew her in the street. But without complaint she waited and toil ed and endured and accomplished all these years. The children are out in the world-an honor to themselves and their parents After awhile the mothers last sickness comes. Children and grandchil- dren, summoned from afar, come softly into the room one by one, for she is too weak to see more than one at time. She runs her dying fingers lovingly through their hair and tells them not to cry, and that she is going now, but they will meet again in little while in better world, and then kisses them goodby and says to each, God bless and keep you, my dear child" The day of the obsequies comes, and the off1ciat- ing clergyman tells the story of wifely and motherly endurance, and many hearts on earth and in heaven echo the sentiment, and as she is carried off the stage of this mortal life there are cries of Faithful unto death" "She hath done what she could" while overpow- ering all the voices of earth and heaven is the plaudit of the God who watched her from first to last, saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy LordP'
 The Choice.
 But what became of the father of that household? He started as young man in business and had a small income, and having got little ahead sickness in the family swept it all away. He went through all the business psnics of 40 years, met many losses, and suffered many betrayals, but kept right on trust ing in God, whether business was good or poor, setting his children @ good ex- ample, and giving them the best of counsel, and never a prayer did he offer for all those years but they were men, tioned in it. He is old now and realizes it cannot be long before he must quit all these scenes But he is going to leave his children an inheritance of prayer and Christian principles which all the defalcations of earth can never touch, and as he goes out of the world the church of God blesses him and the poor ring his doorbell to see if he Is any better. and his grave is surrounded by 8 multitude who went on foot and stood there before the procession of carriages came up, and some say, "There will be no one to take his place" and others say, "Who will pity me now?" and oth- CTS remark, He shall be held in ever lasting reuembrance. And as the drama of his life closes, all the vocifer- ation and braves and encores that ever shook the amphitheaters of earthly spec tacle were tame and feeble compared with the long, loud thunders of approval that shall break from the cloud of wit nesses in the piled up gallery of the heavens Choose ye between the life that shall close by being missed of the stage and the life that shall close amid &C., clamations supernal and archangelic.
 Oh, men and women on the stage of life, many of you in the first act of the drama, and others in the second, and some of you in the third, and few in the fourth, and here and there one in the fifth, but all of you between en- trance and exit, quote to you as the peroration of this sermon the most sug- gestive passage that Shakespeare ever wrote, although you never heard it re- cited. The author has often been claimed as infdel and atheistic, so the quotation shall be not only religiously helpful to ourselves, but grandly vindi- catory of the great dramatist. I quote from his last will and testament:
 "In the name of God, Amen. I, Will liam Shakespeare of Stratford- -upon- Avon, in the county of Warwick, gen. tleman, in perfect health and memory God be praised), do make this my last will and testament, in manner and form following: First. I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hop ing and assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ. my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlast- ing"