I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write
often home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose
their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and
stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place
after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on
father's head and more wrinkles on mother's brow; and after awhile you
will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day
one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile
the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to
yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are
faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the
first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted
than you ever can be to any one else except to God--I mean your father
and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:
"Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky."
And now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood
before me to-day to the God "who setteth the solitary in families."