South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1916-02-01
Tea Table Talks
FLEETING BLESSINGS
BRIGHTEN.
BY May De Witt Talmage

What a rue old world-worn say
ing it is. that blessings brighten as
hey take their%dight. / was talking
TO a man along this line the other
DAY. and he told me of an expert
ence he had just had
For years. he said. Il have talk
ed of my old ancestral home, the
spacious piazzas, the long winding
road that approaches the house. the
driveway down 10 the stable 1 had
not been there since | was a child,
Jut remembered it all wildly. The
large rooms, and view from the win
dow.
Il had always had a strong desire
TO go back. Somehow, / felt the
memories surrounding the place
would make me feel young again.
We had sold the place, so l made a
special trip to look il over before it
passed out Of our possession. Hiring
a team,-motors were not to be had
in that country drove up TO the
house. Arriving at an ordinary frame
house with a driveway leading from
the gate to the side entrance, / said,
Oh, you have made a mistake. this
IS not the old home. But il was,
they assured me. DisillusiOned in the
size OF the house. asked TO be
driven TO the stable. oh, it's not
wide enough for the whiffie tree to
lass through. 1 was told.
Gould it be? Was this little mar
row road leading up TO a small barn,
The spacious road l had been pic
turing all the time? Had l all these
years been uncOnsciously giving my
friends a false impression of past
grandeur. The past had simply
been magnified in my mind"
That reminds me of a trip l took
back 10 the place where l had spent
some time in my childhood 1 re-
mem bered a tall stone wall that we
children used to climb over and
which had been the meeting ground
for so much of our play My first
wish was to see the old wall. "Oh
what a shame" I exclaimed when
saw it, why did they cut down that
beautiful high old English wall. q"
1T has not been cut down" / was
told. 1T is exactly the height it has
always been. II is only syou who
have changed"
Haven't we all been brought up to
this very situation many times in
life? We forget we are changing
How often we are surprised and
disappointed to find we have lost in
terest in some one or something
,,-bicI, Iod goor,,od s,,oI, , ,,o,+ 3
our lives. one of your great finan-
ciers told me that for years he had
dreamed of going back TO a little
corner store, i'm the country town
where he was born, where they had
kind OF cake he had never been
able to get anywhere else in the
world. He made a trip 10 that coun-
try place just 10 satisfy himself, and.
as he said. you can imagine my dis
appointment TO find the cake was
SIMPLY impossible for me 10 eat.
Have we not been disappointed in
this same way with some friends =?
We have met them after years of
separation to find life had developed
! Us both along different lines. and our
dreams of congeniality and under
standing all vanish. One of last
| years successful plays was written
around the theme Of how a woman
was spelling what1would have been
happy married life by the memory
of a man who had gone out Of her
/ life. She had imbued him with all
the traits she wanted in a man.
| When. by chance. she met him
again. and knew him for what he
really was, she got the full realiza-
/ ton of the fact that blessings bright
en- as they take their flight Let Us
/ not then allow memory with its
| softening shadows erect in any way
the present with its realities, neither
d let il spoil the present in vain re-
grets.