The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-05
GRANDMOTHER
:. ABy, IT, franix Crslss

.Tt# rf T I- 4 < JIardly has line fulISf { Of fasweet Sadness 6Ser been pekned than Omar 's s1Thefe is thAfose of gsster- day?" ofvillon's "where are the ssowsf,pf :s gesterysaf F g There 9Eia something. patheticsir anything that 'E past just because it is past. This
 peculiar fact. I have also gnoticed- that. remember a past sorrow with "a pieasanter feeling than that which
 I experience in recalling d past joy. When the recollection of that time I was betrayed, that time I
 failed, or that time I was, ,humiliated,
 comes to me I have the same sense
 of. relief that feel in waking from
 bad dream and being glad it was
 all dream. It is over, thanks be l! tie past is over, and the present is free =. . 'sJe suis, elle nest, pas; ellie est, gje ne suis plus" .Ia q am, it is not; it is, I am no more.)
 But there is little thorn set in ."the rose of yesterday" '5 t'"Dear as remembered kisses after death," writes Tennyson. Deep as first love and wild with all regret,
 oh death in life, the days that are no more.' % v s
 ; And he says the same better in
 the line, "A sorrows crown of sor-
 row is remembering happier things" !"
 There is a well known expression in Dante to the same effect-"There is no greater sorrow than to be mindful of the happy time in mis- cry" (Longfellow's translation.)
 Also Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy says: "Infelicissium genus est infortupii felicem" (to have been happy is the most un- happy kind of misfortune.) q am sti1l of. those, you notice, who think that n 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 rothers work madness in us; 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 of charity and noble Aess of heart. Therefore life ought to grow sweeter as it grows riper, and old age, bearing tso many gra- 'cious memories, ought to be as ,lovelier than life's prime as sunset is lovelier than noon. s,.,
 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 our lips should seek them, but there are remembered kisses there,. very fragrant to the soul. There are no fierce passions in grandmother's heart, but there are the angels of dead passions, who walk among her thoughts us stately shadows. pass through gardens of roses and rue. She is old, 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. F You wonder why she is so serene an optimist. It is because her joy is sorrow that has ripened, and her faith is not militant creed, but a matured instinct. She is 50 sure and wise because she knows that so very many things make no matter. That, perhaps, is why the little boy seems to love her, if not better, at sIo,, standing way than he loves his mother Grandmother has come into that rare wisdom that seess and knows the. child's heart.
 aj A, happy child is a happy animal @ happy girl is a happy heart; a happy mother is happy human but happy grandmother is best of all. for she is a happy spirit. & VT know where are those roses of yesterday. Grandmother has them.