or a fragment of a cradle somewhere that could tell a story of
midnight supplication in your behalf. Where is the old rocking-chair
in which you were sung to sleep with the holy nursery rhyme? Where is
the old clock that ticked away the moments of that sickness on that
awful night when there were but three of you awake--you and God and
mother? Is there not an old staff in some closet? is there not an old
family Bible on some shelf that seems to address you, saying: "My son,
my daughter, how can you reject that God who so kindly dealt with us
all our lives and to whom we commended you in our prayers living and
dying? By the memory of the old homestead, by the family altar, by our
dying pillow, by the graves in which our bodies sleep while our
spirits hover, we beg you to turn over a new leaf for the new year."
Oh, the power of ancestral piety, well illustrated by a young man of
New York who attended a prayer-meeting one night and asked for
prayer, and then went home and wrote down these words: