Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1915-02-22
the LONG NIGH.

1t was long. long night. Pain and
sleeplessness multiply the minutes
without shortening them. The mind
runs faster as the hours move slower.
1t is an age alone from dark to day
light.
What Journeys the mind makes, how
far it flies in an instant. Like the
sweep of a giant searchlight it filings
back to childhood and uncovers things
hidden in the dark of forgetfulness 10
these many, many years. Faces spring
out clear and distinct, forgotten places
flash into new being, it travels along
lanes that have been closed and blotted
by plows for half century, opens
doors that have not turned on their
hinges for half lifetime. tunes again
voices long lost 10 earth and brings the
Tilt of songs that nobody sings. Back
and forth, back and forth it goes weav-
ing anew old patterns and old times
and faces and forms once familiar
weddings and births and deaths and
burials, a film of life and death as swift
and plain as any the pictured screen
reflects, the cinema of lifetime.
There's the old schoolhouse and the
bridge nearby just as it was an isn't
any more. See the shady road that led
to the mill dam, and the stumps far
on. from the quarry ledge which was
the goal OF all boy swimmers and
marked the graduation from novice TO
member of the aquatic guild. There's
the old log where the bullheads always
bit and the thicket where the yellow
pouches of the mandrake ripened first
and
The reel breaks to jump forward.
There's the old house where you stood
sheeplshly waiting TO he taken into
mothers room to see Your new little
sister" The scent ot llacs is in the
room heavy and sweet from the great
lilac bush in bloom before the front
window" How beautiful she was and
how mother smiled-and then the scene
changes and you are looking down at
mother in that same room smiling still
from that silence that shall not be
broken here on earth: the film changes
and again you see little child in the
arms of a pale. smiling mother and
know the marvel and mystery of
fatherhood and so the .iashlight swings
and the film changes.
Back and forth, how fast it swings.
how swiftly the faces change and dis
appear. Old schooimates and friends
mingled with chance acquaiutances and
in many cities Wild places and prair-
les where you went atield with dog and
gun. Strips of road passed over but
that you met afar and with whom YOU
passed the time Of day who have no
real place in remembrance. Back and
forth, shutting without order or reason
they pass like the phantamasgoria of
dream All true, however. They
lived and YOU knew and saw them. But
why do they come back on this long
night?
And so the vast procession passes
hour after hour, a strange, motley,
panorama of loves and disappoint-
ments, of happiness and tears of laugh
ter and sorrow. On an on intermin-
ably thru the interminable night and
| thru other and interminable nights in
| terminably trooping past with car
esses, curses and praise and blame, ever
changing, but always Photographic and
part of the film of the past that we
have all left behind us to keep US
company in the long nights when pain
and sleeplessness are our mosters and
turn the wheel Of that most marvellous
| of all the cinema shows-memory.