The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1912-02-09
A FATHERS LOVE
(By c. H. B. Floyd, in Pensacola
Evening NeWs.l

OF college, and having been expelled,
my last night in Athens, after the play
1T was "The Old Homestead"
the first time and the last time, there
in the sacred parlor, at midnight, (the
dim room preserved for me by the an
gels of memory, kissed her good
bye. Not since then have seen her.
1t was in 1896. The memory of that
exaltation does not grow stronger. But
the memory of one other kiss does
grow stronger. A man kissed me-my
father. Now he is what We call dead.
was going away to school. 1t was
after dark. The river steamboat had
blown her last whistle. They were
about to pull in the gang-plank. Off
to one side in the dark he drew me
and kissed me. God! that memory
grows stronger and stronger as I, be-
coming more lonely and misunder-
stood, grow to deeper knowledge of
how lonely and misunderstood he was
and how he loved me. He had no 9th.
er son. Who cannot fathom the singu-
lar love of a father for his son. 1t is as
inscrutable as the relation of Jesus to
the Divine Father. This terrible un-
expressed love imprisoned in our
hearts in solitary confinement by the
iron law of society that We shall re-
CT &c hno ifYxI
a naked sword or the consuming insa-
tiate cleaning love of a pure and spir-
itual nun for the invisible Christ.
After all, we are nearly as dumb as
dumb brutes. And this is why we love
Keats and Byron and the Bible. How
can l tell you how fine River Burford
is? l can't. | must refer you to some
essay by Emerson on a page of the
Ulysses by Stephen Phillips. How
can a barren woman tell of her abys-
NAL emptiness, her epic failures. She
can't, so she writes with fame letters
in her secret self the splendor of the
lives in "Paola and Francesca"
"Oh, to go down barren to the gravel
My vain milk like acid in me eats
| am become a danger and a menace,
A disappointed force, wandering
fire
Do you hear Giovanni? l envy
The mother her last sob when gravel
falls.
That pang is rich!"
Those majestic lines will outliVe
England and the Earth itself; they are
eternal as the immortal soul.
And the love of my father l trif1ed
away, not knowing its value. l assert
that the love of father for his son is
fiercer and nobler than the love of a
woman for her only child. l had that
love, and not knowing it's value, | tri-
fled it away And so the recollection
of that strong embrace and that beard
ed kiss grows stronger and more holy.
For sixty days, | love to believe, al
though invisible, his spirit stood by
me in Tallahassee, an arm around my
shoulders. He, too, had been a repre-
sentative of Franklin county, and he
and l knew that here was honor, and
dignity, and power, and opportunity to
serve the great-hearted, deep-souled
being, the people, who pay you with
love and applause and fame-and he
and knew that for these sixty days I
had waited thirty years. To many of
the seventy in the railing the service
was an unpleasant jury duty; but we
knew, my father and /, that for me it
was the hour of fate. And so during
the sixty seconds of that hour it was
as though l were Cicero and here, the
Senators, and yonder Catalina, inso-
lent, contemptuous with the scorn of
the untamed, superb.
Very few calculations of the mystic
mind of man are more profound and
ennobling than the speculation trans
mitted to us by Emerson on the life of
you and me-
"On marble seats sit the circle of
interested gods. In the center is the
young athlete now to plunge into the
dream of life. He puts the brim of
the gold chalice to his lips and drinks
the dark. strong wine. At once the IL
fusion fastens him. We believe he is
q child in arms, a boy at play, a youth
in love. a husband, solemn with duties.
Lear. Napoleon, Lee, Ulysses, Prone
theus, Cain. He struggles. He cries
out loud He crouches and reddens
his knife and through imaginary
moonlight escapes into the nightmare
of forest, is pursued by ghosts of
blood-hounds and sheriffs, and captur-
ed and hung by the neck until he is
dead. and 10, he awakens-around
him on marble seats still sit the gods
the dream of life is past"
did not see the gods, but l kept a
stubborn faith that they were there.