The Savannah morning news., 1904-01-03
THINGS OF WHICH
TIME CANNOT ROB US.


what can time do. says a writer in
.he New York Evening Post, to rob
&c of the reality of the things which
wade us happy children? Can all the
years of a long life dim the beauty
~ your mothers face and touch and
yoYe? Do you lose, through length of
davs. the thrill of the first sense of
mower and prominence, the first reali-
cation that you. the individual man,
had a special place to fill in the world
and that you could do it well?
Does the old woman find that this
eraybeard with IBIS sickle can lay low
the beautiful things which group them
selves about the days of her courtship?
can he take away the sound of the
voice that said in her happy listening
ear: II love you?" Can her old hand,
en- marred by the worlds use, since
white and unwrinkled it lay in the
strong clasp of her lover, nver lose the
memory of those firm fingers which
while they caressed held with the
grasp of the victor?
can q century take from a mother
the 10y of her first born? Oh, it is a
marvel that we so seldom try to real
lie how many things there are bound
IN in the sheaf" of our lives, which
God holds tight for US, and that re-
main to us imperishable. There seems
an unused proof of the greater value
Of things spiritual and unseen over
those that we can weigh in scale and
buy for a price, when we turn our
thoughts back into these channels and
can be defiant toward time and loss.
The roof may no longer be ours, the
land be trodden by other mothers, but
the harvests we gathered are locked in
our hearts behind bars into which no
robber can break, and neither moth
nor rust" can mar their strength or
their beauty.
The glory of the sea, the majesty of
the snow-crowned peak. the immen-
sjtv of some almost limitless vision of
earth's beauty, as we saw each in those
first days, when they were new to us,
are they not ours forever? Tonight in
some commonplace room of a common
place dwelling, are they not here, vivid,
beautiful, wonderful?
The mother whose nest is empty,
whose babies are scattered in their
homes and i'll their graves, has she
not held in her heart of bearts that
which neither life nor death can harm
What woman who has lived a strange,
faithful, devoted life can honestly say:
II have nothing left?"
And there are all those myriad things
which being emalgamated and absorb
ed into ourselves, are really the stuff
of which we are made. Beaten to-
gether, pressed into new forms, ment-
ally digested they have ceased to be
Cxtraneous, but have become integral,
Of OlITu ixif
ing force of our brains, the sources by
which we love and live. Who can
say that the years can carry these
away?
There is something infinitely pathetic
in that phase of mental decadence
which leaves an aged person only the
past. Things Of yesterday, even of to-
day, are lost. The grandfather can
not recall whether his grandson left
Yale last year or this, but he gives
you the date of his own graduation
unerringly. and can tell you how love-
ly his sweetheart looked as she sat lis
tening to his grafton.
The gentle old woman knitting by the
evening lamp hesitates about the events
of last month, but can amuse you with
endless accurate details of her we'd
ding and her first housekeeping. There
Is doubt in her mind as to the name
OIL Tue DOCK mat she lald DOWN last
evening, but she can recite. in her
sweet old-time fashion, all the favorite
4 poems of her sentimental girlhood.
Psychologists and they who with eager
scrutiny search into the mysteries of
our brains, may have even clear de-
fnitions for these perplexing vagaries
of our memories, but to those who only
guess, and use feeling and comparison
TO guide their wonder. it seems as if
the most unalloyed delight, the truest
and deepest, happiness of life, had left
the lasting impressions that were too
deep to perish with the using"