THE DEAREST SPOT ON EARTH TO ME
The flood gates of memory opened wide as the lamented Queen of England,
with the weight of eighty years resting upon her, was wheeled in her
chair, from room to room in the old fashioned brick palace at
Kensington. Here in this unpretentious princely abode with its beautiful
name, she was born, and here when she was waked very early out of heavy
sleep to be hailed, Queen, she said prettily, "I will be good."
She kept her word. Here remain, as she left them her doll's house, the
miniature counter where she sold ribbons and laces to imaginary
customers, the doll's linen, marked with her own childish cross-stitch
and the furniture and mementoes which cause the plain, irregular, rather
homely structure to be hallowed as the shrine of Victoria. Here she saw
her little set of cooking utensils, her child's scrapbook and little
boxes of paints with camel's hair brushes. She lingered lovingly over
these objects, which once meant so much to her, and as the vivid
association and tender suggestiveness of her surroundings touched her
feelings, in the presence of a group of dolls, being amid her toys, she
desired the attendants who accompanied her to withdraw, expressing the
desire, in that sacred place, to be alone.
_The Glory of Life in its First Spring_
On revisiting the earth I wanted to be alone on reaching my memory room.
In that corner stood my trundle bed and about here, well say about
there, is where I kneeled to say my earliest prayers. I have never felt
so rich since, as I did when I came into the undisputed and sole
possession of a hair-covered trunk which I could lock and bear away the
key. Into this trunk I emptied the week's accumulation of all my
week-day pockets as often as I put on my Sunday clothes. In this old
hide-bound trunk were my sainted mother's letters, and missives with my
own name in large John Hancock looking letters on the back, from my
grandfather who kept store and sometimes sent me pocket pieces of money.
On the outside of the pack, always in view, always to be kept, no more
resembling others than an electric light resembles a tallow dip, was the
first letter personally addressed to me that I ever received. Here was a
child's cheap album containing photographs of Commodore Nutt and Minnie
Warren, of a family of Albinos having white hair and pink eyes, and of
a fat boy only 16 years old that had struck me with wonder. Here is a
red morocco bag in which I kept my ill-gotten gains in marbles. Although
forbidden to play "keeps" myself, the neighbor's boy, a surer shot, did
not hesitate with my capital to engage in the excitement and to make a
"divy" of the proceeds, while I watched the game, and as a better
disciple carried the bag. I used to feel a real pride in my collection.
I knew the price of each kind and computed the value of them all to a
cent. That day was marked by the event when I exchanged so many of the
brown, baked, clay sort, for a big taw alley (made of alabaster). Some
of the big chinas were striped in varied colors and we made a sharp
difference between those where the bright color was laid on and soon
began to wash and wear and those where it was baked in like the pictures
on cups, where it is as indestructible as the material itself. To this
day I cannot see boys playing at marbles without feeling a strong desire
to join them.
_The Rule of the Shekel_
Among playthings my specialty was marbles. I specialized on three lines,
blue clays, real agates, the handsomest of all marbles, and big glass
center-pieces. I knew well just what I must hold to dominate the market
and just how many of the common sort a boy would give for an alley taw,
or tor, as we used to pronounce it. Taw is the line or limit from which
the players shoot. Others would have returned from the visit to the old
time school-house to the hotel. I knew a merchant well, who being
delighted with his entertainment in Lucerne did not think it worth while
to go out to the leaf-embowered pool to see Thorwaldsen's Lion. Naples
has such outstanding beauty that the visitor is ready to "die" and thus
omits any visit to Vesuvius, the most famous elevation in the world. But
I went from the school-ground to the place, where the soil was once
beaten to the hardness of a floor, by the village boys, who, each of
them, placed one or two marbles in a ring and in turn shot at them and
he who obtained most of them by beating them out of the ring was the
winner. We were happy
"To kneel and draw
The chalky ring and knuckle down at taw."
Here in this trunk were my old club skates which I used to sharpen
myself and tie on with strings and leathern thongs, and here was an old
ball which, I, having first ravelled the yarn, wound myself and cut the
cover out of an old boot top in the good democratic days of town-ball or
of "Two-old-cat," when we chose up, for the ins, and did not leave the
playing to a few, and half of them from out of town, when a "foul" and
"daisy-cutter" were unknown terms. While one dear, sweet,
not-to-be-valued-with-the-Gold-of-Ophir object remained among them, it
has been hard for me to "put away childish things." Most people are
extremely like one's self, and choosing among relics would be supposed
to first take one of the sandals of Empedocles, fabled to have been cast
forth by Aetna. This father of rhetoric, statesman, prophet, and
reformer threw himself into that volcano to disappear and leave no trace
and thus establish a belief that he was so beloved of the gods that he
was translated. But the volcano would not stand for this imposition and
threw out one of his sandals. But I am not interested in such a relic
when it is compared with a little token that tells of the deep desire
there is in every heart to be remembered.
_The Last Wish of Ambitious Minds_
We shrink from the fate of being dropped out of sight and out of
thought. It strikes a pang to a mother's heart to even hear the adage
"out of sight, out of mind." Trading upon her warm feelings, she was
solicited to buy, as a birthday gift for her boy, a little china cup,
highly colored, inscribed with the words, "remember me." This little
token proved to be the best seller on the market. The longer it is kept
the greater is the desire to keep it. The child is not asked to prize
the gift. The legend upon it tells rather her intensest longing. Her
one deepest wish at the moment of final parting could not be better
expressed.
"A place in thy memory, dearest,
Is all that I claim:
To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name."
The absence of the giver makes the gift more dear. I do not call this
idolatry. A German doctor of divinity has expressed the common feeling
in an exaggerated form, by saying that he loved God, in his mother and
in his wife and children. He saw God-likeness in them and they commended
the love of God to him. Certainly next to pleasing God the desire to
honor the memory of my father and mother has been my highest incentive
in life. One of these motives does not leave off when the other begins.
It is a kind of piety which is natural to me. It is spontaneous and
seems divinely implanted. Reverence toward Godly people is at least a
schooling in piety. I mean of course God's church and God's Book when I
speak of my mother's church and my mother's bible. When one is given his
old seat in his childhood's home, his mother seems near, and he feels
like saying to her,
"I've passed through many a changing scene
Since thus I sat by thee;
O, let me look into thine eyes;
Their meek, soft, loving light
Falls like a gleam of holiness
Upon my heart tonight."
That great truth which Gray tells us he discovered for himself, and
which very few people learn, till they find it by experience, went to my
heart, that in this world a human being never can have more than one
mother.
It is a peculiar expression that people use when they say that they
"keep" Lent, or "keep" Sunday, or "keep" Christmas, or "keep" a
birthday. They mean that they observe it, and by thus marking it they
get something out of it which is pleasant and suggestive. We all have
our little festivals, life's private anniversaries, these jubilees of
the heart which we love to celebrate. That day is a high day, when the
old homestead becomes an inspiration point. Stores, long ago laid by in
the memory, come forth from their hiding places. In unexpected
exaltation of spirit, one is lifted above himself.
_Strikes a Chord Unconsciously_
He gets out of himself and lives for the hour a sort of sublime life. It
was worth the trip to obtain such a revelation of my own mind. Of all
the works of the Creator's power and wisdom the mind bears most plainly
the private mark of the invisible God. Things have almost a miraculous
power to visualize persons. This is true to an extent that will not be
believed. And here is a perplexity. Shall I insist upon the point? The
incredible part is the particular thing I want to emphasize. The trundle
bed, the hair-covered trunk, the stairs, the door, the window become
active factors, and the faculties awaking out of long heavy slumber
become vocal. Faces and tones are at once recalled and intensely vivid
remembrances take shape, hue and voice. Spirits of father and mother,
are ye here, entering into the high communion of this hour? The
suggestiveness of the environment was such that somehow and suddenly, I
was a boy again. This is such a day as that in which our parents blessed
us, and such a day as that in which our mother fulfilled both of those
relations to us. Her love was like spikenard, perfuming the house. Two
good friends I there summoned to go with me, memory and resolution. One
of these friends reinforces the work of the other. When I vividly
remember, I want to make a consecration. I want to do some sacrificial
act, and to do it distinctively for mother's sake. Now, henceforth, "No
day without something learned: no day without something done." I took
some live coals off the home altar to start new fires. Our ancestors
had, what they styled "living" money and "dead" money. In emergencies
they sought to convert dead resources into currency. My legacy is a
memory and the old battered trunk which was a little world in itself.
_Old Home Looks Young Again_
In the days of my top and kite-hood, the trunk had constantly to be
opened because something had been forgotten. How small a thing it was to
contain as much as I thought there was in it. I showed my regard for it
by the things I entrusted to it. The germ of every home I ever had was
in it. Its contents I have almost idolized. I speak advisedly, I would
rather lose the house than what, reserved from it, has come down with me
through the years, taken with their setting. A boy likes a place to keep
his things. A boy accumulates. That's his nature. An associate has just
said that his first memory was a suit that had pockets. There is
something in a boy's constitution that gives him a large use for
pockets. To empty them is not a convenience, merely, but a necessity, as
in his use of them they project like two bay-windows. His nature
necessitates a trunk. There must be a secret spot around which can rally
the sentiments that a home awakens and conserves. A mother loves to get
a Bible into this trunk, which is to be the center-point to his heart
and home. Mother's sentiment was well chosen. This book will keep you
from sin and sin will keep you from this book. They do not go together.
They do not keep company. This Bible had about it what it calls "a sweet
smelling savor." A new pocket book, a gift from my grandfather, was also
quite redolent but the odor of these was different.
_The Odor of Apple Blossoms_
I read in an old legend that a Damascus Blade gave forth both sparks and
perfume. My sense of smell was always exceedingly acute. It has guarded
me often against exposure. I can instantly detect invisible forms of
peril. I knew a way to find out about those qualities of a Damascus
Blade. A boy is always ready to educate himself by the use of his sense
perceptions, and is particularly prompt with taste and smell. I had from
the first a rare, refreshing pleasure from flowers, perfumes, aromatic
materials producing a sweet odor when burned and the smell of fruits. I
used to love the fragrance of new hay and of the freshly plowed ground
and of the earth when moistened by a quick summer shower, the scented
fumes wafted from the land when approached from the ocean, and the fishy
smell of the shore when you have reached it. The odor of a well-kept
light harness when well warmed up on a fine gaited horse, and the odor
of the varnish on the carriage, I, to this hour, remember from my
boyhood days. I loved the intensity of odors so peculiar, so unlike
those of summer, that we used to notice after the frost had fallen, when
the winter was at hand, and the aroma of the woods having been first
imprisoned, was exhaled by a warm sun, in a cloud of incense. All the
sense perceptions were wide open to the mind. We were constantly
learning. Life was a school without recesses or vacations and had a full
corps of instructors in all the departments.
"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee." "There are, it may be, so
many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without
signification."