Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1924-02-16
GRANDMOTHER
By DR.. Frank Crane

TTARDLY has a line fuller of sweet sad
ness ever been penned than Omar's
Where is the OF yesterday?"- or
Villon's where are the SHOWS of yester-
year,"
There is something pathetic in anything
that is past just because it is past.
This peculiar fact l have also noticed
that | remember a past sorrow with pleas
anter feeling than that which experience in
recalling past joy.
When the recollection of that time was
betrayed that time l failed, or that time I
was Inundated, comes to me have the same
sense OF relief that | feel in waking from a
bad dream and being glad it was all dream.
| It is over thanks be! the past is over, and
the present is free.
'Je suis, ellie n est pas; ellie est je ne suis
plus
Q am, it is not it is, I am no more.)
But there is little thorn set in "the rose
of yesterday"
Dear as remembered kisses after DEATH"
writes Tennyson. Deep as first love and
wild with all regreat, oh death in life, the
days that are no more"
And he says the same better in the line,
"a sorrows crown of sorrow is remembering
happier things"
There is well-known expression in Dante
to the same effect-"There is n greater sor-
row than to be mindful of the happy time in
misery" (Longfellow's translation.)
Also Boethus is his Consolation of Philos-
ophy says: "Infelicissum genus est .infor-
tunii fuisse felcem" (to have been happy IS
the most unhappy kind of msfortune) Ct
am still of those you notice, who think that
a bit of foreign tongue spices a page.)
There are many kinds of sorrow. Some
kinds burn and destroy. some others chill
and deaden, while still others work madness
in u.s. but the sorrow that is set up in us by
the memory of past happiness is like none Of
these, but is soft and gentle and disposes to
cha ritv and nohleness of heart
Therefore life ought TO grow sweeteY 1t
grows ripper and old age, bearing so many
gracious memories, ought to be as 1oveller
than life's prime as sunset is lovelier than
noon.
OF all the household grandmother ought to
be the dearest. There are no red kisses on
her lips, as upon Susanna's eighteen-year-old
cherry ripeness that lips should seek
them. but there remembered kisses there,
very fra grant to the. soul
There are no fierce passions in grandmoth
er's heart, but there are the angels of dead
passions, who walk among her thoughts as
stately shadows pass through gardens of
roses and rue.
She is DID, but she is not bitter. The little
graves in her heart are covered with long
June grass. The dead days of joy, each is
marked with cross.
If it were not for grandmothers we should
never know how perfect and beautiful the
human life may be.
IOu NOuuSI WY oAC 10 % S0AChS on op1A
mist. 1t is because her joy is sorrow that
has ripened, and her faith is not militant
creed but a matured instinct.
she is so sure and wise because she knows
that so very many things make matter.
That perhaps is why the little boy seems
to love her If not better, at least in more
intimate and understanding way than he
loves his mother. Grandmother has come
into that rare wisdom that sees and knows
the childs heart
A happy child is happy animal; happy
girl is a happy heart; happy mother is
happy human; but happy grandmother is
best of ALL for she is happy spirit
1 know where are those roses OF yesterday.
Grandmother has them.