Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1910-10-28
ON LIES JOURNEY
MASTERPIECE is THIS ESSAY BY
ROBERT G. INGERSoLL.
Great Agnostic Moved to Heights OF
Real Eloquence on the Occasion
of the Birth of First
Grandchild.

Born of love and hope, of ecstacy
and pain, OF agony and fear, of tears
and joy, lowered with the wealth of
two united hearts-held in happy
arms, with lips upon life's drifted
1ont, blu a-veined and fair, where per.
lect peace finds perfect form-rocked
by willing feet and wooed to shadowy
SHORES OF sleep by siren mother, sing.
Ing soft and low-looking with won
der's wide and startled eyes at COM
mon things of life and day-taught by
want and wish and contact with the
things that touch the dimpled flesh
of babes-lured by light and flame,
and charmed by color's wondrous
robes-learning the use of hands and
feet, and by the love of mimicry be-
gulled to utter speech-releasing pris-
oned thoughts from Grabbed and curl
GUS marks on sOiled and tattered
leaves-puzzling the brain with
crooked numbers and their changing,
tangled wOrth-and so through years
of alternating day and night, until the
captive grows familiar with the chains
and walls and limitations of a life.
And time runs on in sun and shade
until the one of all the world is wooed
and won, and all the lore of love is
taught and learned again. Again
home is built, with the fair chamber
wherein faint dreams, like cool and
shadowy wales, divide the beloved
hours of love Again the miracle of
birth-the pain and JOY the kiss Of
welcome and the cradle song drowning
the drowsy prattle of babe.
And then the sense of obligation
and of wrong-pity for those who toll
and weep-tears for the imprisoned
and despised-love for the generous
dead and in the heart the rapture of
high resolve.
And then ambition with its lust of
pelf and place and power, longing to
put upon it's breast distinctions worth
less badge. Then keener thoughts OF
men, and eyes that see behind the
smiling mask of craft-fattered no
more by the obsequiOus cringe OF gain
and greed-knowing the uselessness
of boarded gold, or honor bought from
those who charge the usury of self
respect, of power that only bends a
towards knees and forces from the
lips of fear the lies Of praise. Know
ing at last the unstudied gesture of es-
TEEN, the reverent eyes made rich
with honest thought, and holding high
above all other things-high as hopes
great throbbing star above the dark
ness of the dead-the love of wife and
child and friend.
Then locks Of gray and growing
love of other days and half remem-
bered things-holding the withered
hands of those who first held his.
while over dim and loving eyes death
softly presses down the lids of rest.
And so, locking in marriage vows
his childrens hands and crossing 9TH
ers on the breasts of peace, with
daughters babes upon his knees, the
white hair mingling with the gold, he
Journeys on from day to day to that
horizon where the dusk is waiting for
the night At last, sitting by the holy
hearth of home as evenings embers,
change from red to gray, he falls
asleep within the arms of her he wor-
SHIPPED and adored, feeling upon his
pallid lips loves last and hottest kiss.
Robert G. Ingersolrs Essay on Life
written after the birth of his grand
child.