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REVISITING THE EARTH
BY JAMES L. HILL, D.D.
_Author of "The Immortal Seven," "The Scholar's Larger Life," "The Worst
Boys in Town," "Favorites of History," "The Century's Capstone," "Memory
Comforting Sorrow," "A Crowning Achievement," etc._
"_We know not the future,--the past we have felt_"
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY RICHARD G. BADGER
All Rights Reserved
Made in the United States of America
The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.
"'_Tis sweet to remember! I would not forego
The charm which the Past o'er the Present can thro_"
[Illustration: THE LITTLE SEMINARY OF LETTERS]
CONTENTS
I. REVISITING THE EARTH
II. THE PICTURE LAND OF THE HEART
III. THE DEAREST SPOT ON EARTH TO ME
IV. THE LAND OF USED-TO-BE
V. SEEN THROUGH THE LONG VISTA OF DEPARTED YEARS
VI. WHERE WE PLAYED MUMBLE-THE-PEG
VII. THE SCENE OF THE SCHOOL FIGHTS
VIII. TOUCHING A LONG SLUMBERING CHORD
IX. WHAT HAD BECOME OF THE OLD ECCENTRICITIES
X. TO SEE AND FEEL THE PAST
XI. A RETURN TO ONE'S HOLY LAND
XII. LOOKING UP THE SONS OF WELL-REMEMBERED MOTHERS
XIII. THINGS THAT HAD PASSED AWAY "STILL LIVE"
XIV. WHERE A VISITANT SEES MORE THAN A RESIDENT
XV. WHERE I MET MYSELF
XVI. RETRACING THE OLD PATHS
XVII. GOING BACK TO MY PADAN-ARAM
XVIII. A NEW KNOCK AT AN OLD DOOR
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE LITTLE SEMINARY OF LETTERS
"I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN"
THE LITTLE SANCTUARY
PARADISE LOST--BEFORE THE SALEM FIRE
PARADISE REGAINED--AFTER THE CONFLAGRATION
THE MEETING OF "THE SENATE"
A SEAT OF LEARNING FULL OF MEMORIES
THE GROUNDS OF THE BELOVED COLLEGE
THE GREATEST PLEASURE GIVEN TO MAN
REVISITING THE EARTH
CHAPTER I
REVISITING THE EARTH
To revisit the earth after one's departure from it has always been a
common wish among men. The frequency with which this desire is expressed
in biographies and in literature, keeps the project alive, and works it
to the front in one's plans. Benjamin Franklin presents the thought in
such attractive dress that we incline to adopt it for a programme. There
is one item in his proposition that calls for argument at the bar of
public opinion. It touches the length of the interval that should be
suffered to elapse before the visit is made. So rapid is the growth, so
radical are the changes, that if one's reappearance is too long delayed
he would recognize nothing in the new conditions. He might as well set
himself down in some other unfamiliar place. The postponement should not
exceed a third of a century. It is his world that a man wants to see,
and each one has his own. His antecedents and experiences have given to
it a distinctive character.
_To Open Books that are Sealed_
On a golden day the thought came to me unbidden, I have seen three and
thirty years rise and fall since I have viewed the identical spots that
I would care most to look upon. Instantly I made the resolve, I will
visit, in the first eight weeks of summer, every place in which I have
lived or loved or labored. I ascertained, in advance, the name of some
kindly disposed person at each point in my itinerary, who could identify
the site of the house in which I lived, if it is not still standing,
also of the school and church that I attended. The letter I had written
was handed in one case to the editor of the local paper, who featured
it, in his columns, asking for the names of persons now living who
remembered me. Here is plainly seen an insuperable objection to waiting
Ben Franklin's interval of one hundred years before revisiting the
earth. This correspondence, which contributed immeasurably to the
pleasure and profit of the project, ought to be undertaken, while there
are two parties to conduct it. Where one's coming is expected and
welcomed he passes at once into the right relations to the place, also
into the atmosphere he desires.
_Let Me Drop a Hint Here Like a Seed_
I care not how widely you have traveled if you have never made a pious
pilgrimage to your childhood's shrines--you have still missed your
superlative pleasure.
It is possible for you to live your life over and the part commended for
you to live over again is when you were young.
Here is rejuvenation. To live one's life over is to live it twice. This
amounts to doubling it. Who would not do it? If the period of time
during which one may live on the earth is fixed, it certainly is
limited, if there is a possible way to live twice, what one does live,
he would better be extremely hospitable to the scheme. Opposition will
come from three sources, first from the man who thinks himself taken up
by the future and by his hopes. But it is patience that works
"experience and experience hope." Hope detached from the present and the
past is such a baseless fabric of a vision that it probably will not
leave even so much as a wreck behind. Another man will counter with the
familiar statement that his eyes are on the front of his head and he
only travels in the direction that they lead.
Now my kind, optimistic brother, I have a word here for you. You are
traveling in blinders. You are a mechanical pace-setter. All your
training is for the middle of the road. It is counted a physical
deformity if a person cannot turn his head. It is an expression of
opprobrium to find people stiff-necked. The chief office of a vehicle is
to carry on, yet for use at home, a carriage that cannot be turned round
would be extremely inconvenient.
_Pausing for a Fore-taste_
The observation car giving the best view to be had of the mountain
landscape as it waltzes by, is placed at the rear of the train. The most
extravagant demonstrations of joy and gratitude, our most hallowed
feelings come from looking back on what has been done unto us and for
us.
Hesitancy about revisiting the earth comes lastly from those who think
they have lost their interest in days that are gone, that forgetfulness
has done its sad work, that the dead past has buried its dead. It is to
witness the miracle of a resurrection that we are uttering our cry.
_Waymarks of the Journey_
They assume that a fact or a name is gone into oblivion when, for
example, they are unable by a repeated effort to recall it. The mind is
a delicate organism. You cannot well force things. It has its own laws
of suggestion. Once coming into the old surroundings, which rake up the
past, standing again on a recognized corner, which carry one's thoughts
back with delight into familiar haunts, the law of association will put
on the tip of your tongue names and incidents that you supposed to be
clean forgotten. If a person had asked me to give the name of the first
barber that ever set foot in the town of my boyhood home, I would have
believed it sunk in oblivion. In the summer coming upon the cross-roads,
I said, "Here stood the first barber shop in town." The name of the
negro, even, that kept it flashed on my mind. It was Stanbach, the last
syllable as he pronounced it ended with the German guttural. His son, a
little freckled mulatto, was called Johnnie Stanbach. When a little
full-blooded negro appeared, Johnnie would not associate with him. He
was "too black," "black enough to smut a body."
_The Mind's Re-invigoration_
When Hon. James O. Crosby, an eminent lawyer, in my native village,
having a large practice in the courts of the county, met the father of
John R. Mott of merited distinction, a living force, this was the
dialogue: "How do you do, Mr. Mott!" "How do you do, Mr. Crosby!" and
then taking Mr. Crosby's hand Mr. Mott said to him, "Your face seems
familiar but I cannot seem to recall your name." This occurrence gives a
volume of experience in revisiting the earth. When Mr. Mott badgered his
mind to recall Mr. Crosby's name, his intellect balked, utterly, and
continuously refused to act. The mind often halts, even as to common
words. One's mental powers come to a sudden pause, like circus horses,
and a man recovers their use, not by any effort of will, but by some
sudden, and almost impulsive, suggestion. Recent events and dates are
easily lost or pass into confusion while those of long prior time still
hold firm root and their right place in remembrance. As we have seen, a
quick, unerring, even unconscious mental spring, acting according to the
laws of the association of ideas will unaided and without effort, bring
a name, pent up in one's memory, promptly forward for his instant use.
The value of this power is beyond estimation. Occurrences supposed to be
forgotten are very much alive, when upon old familiar ground. Revisiting
the earth is a simple string of these acts of spontaneous recollection.
If you hear a few notes of music, the inseparable association, that
exists in the mind, suggests the rest of the tune. That is a very apt
expression, when a person says he is haunted by a tune. It implies an
existence, in the chambers of the brain, that is making a stir and which
he supposed to be dead. The simple act of thus recalling an event is in
itself the most wonderful of all mental processes.
_The Re-creation of the World_
I heard of a man who had over-looked the fact that memory paints with
fast colors, also that a recollection that is dim in one locality is
bright in another. On reaching a scene of early associations, on picking
up a thing, he found it was like one of the links of a chain, that one
being stirred, others were moved and the man was found discoursing on
How I improved my memory in one evening. On revisiting the earth,
memories are awakened which, but for coming upon the old soil, would
probably have slept silently to the end of life. It is given to me, to
have a distinct testimony in this matter. Many others can corroborate
these hints by startling facts in their own lives and without any
stretch of their imagination. I was brought to the belief, that a person
may not ever forget anything. The recollection turns out to be a
faithful, painstaking, autobiographer. This almost scares a person. A
wand seemed to be waved and forth came people and anecdotes and events
that he supposed were in oblivion. There turns out to be, not only a
recollection of the head, but also a memory of the heart. The process is
different. On the one hand a boy commits to memory and learns by rote,
on the other hand there are some things he loves. All these he knows by
heart. This is an undying, imperishable recollection. It is the
immortality of the affections. Vividness of feeling does it. All that
pertains to home, he learns by heart. It is as indestructible as his
eternal being. "Dot must be der vonderful blace Ohm, to make der British
cry. I tink to myself, I vill go and see dis blace, Ohm, vot der vos no
blace like. Vich is der vay to 'Ohm, Sweet Ohm?'" Where the affections
have been unlocked and the whole inner man has been stirred,--a high
water mark has been registered in one's memory that can never be
eradicated. Your heart shall live forever, so shall all of your heart's
histories. They give you something that the thieving years can never
take away. I have pleasure in adding to the assurance of it.
_Blessing in the Guise of an Excursion_
It is now only one hundred and eighty generations, as we used to be
taught, since Adam, peace to his memory and his ashes, who was
grandfather of us all. There are thus but one hundred and seventy-eight
generations between us and him. This would take but one hundred and
seventy-eight father-to-son steps to bring us to the original family
home in the Garden of Eden. There are only one hundred and eighty
life-times to review. The grandfather of Noah, who was six hundred years
old when he encountered the flood, was Methuselah, who remembered Adam.
If our line of ancestry is so short, and if all the progress we have
made has been accomplished within a history so brief, it is little
wonder that the transformations to be witnessed in one of these not
numerous generations are so incredible and so instructive.
I do not know, but I may class traveling among our duties. It opens new
spheres of thought and observation and places us in new relations to
mankind and makes us better students of human nature. Leisure is sweet
to the taste and for that reason it soon palls. Pleasure is a
by-product. Enjoyment is greatest when it is incidental to some
well-advised quest. Idleness is the least pleasure of a holiday. To make
high festival of a pilgrimage to a shrine is more common in the older
nations than in our own. It is the habit of the human mind to love that
which is memorial in its character. We cannot, as Longfellow says, buy
with gold the old associations. "He that is searching for rare and
remote things will neglect those that are obvious and familiar. It is
remarkable," continues Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary,
"that in reviewing my collection of words I found the word 'sea'
unexemplified." I have had many vacations, in places wide apart. Having
gone further and fared worse, returning to what is nearer, having an
inspiration of beauty upon it, I say, touching Revisiting the Earth, as
David declared of Goliath's sword, There is none like that, give me it.
Never did a child perform an errand with more alacrity than I executed
this mission.