"Sweet is the hour that brings us home,
Where all will spring to meet us;
Where hands are striving as we come,
To be the first to greet us.
When the world has spent its frowns and wrath,
And care been sorely pressing;
'Tis sweet to turn from our roving path,
And find a fireside blessing;
Ah, joyfully dear is the homeward track,
If we are but sure of a welcome back!"
Home again in dear old Baltimore, where over my cradle was sung my
mother's first lullaby, and where so many localities were invested with
the charm of loved association. I of course visited the Institution for
the Blind, which would not, in its many changes, have seemed at all like
home but for the music of a familiar voice and the presence of dear Miss
Bond, who still with loving dignity presided as matron, throned in the
majesty of noble humanity, and crowned with purity and goodness.
Dr. Fisher, Mr. Trust and Mr. Newcomer still faithfully held their
positions as Directors, and cordially welcomed me home. Mr. Morrison, the
new Superintendent, and his most estimable wife, although they had never
seen me, brought me near to them by the bond of sympathetic kindness, and
seemed not like strangers but friends.
It seemed singular to those who had known little Mary Day to have her go
back to them a married woman, and indeed, for the moment, time seemed to
have gone backward in its flight; the dignity of the matron was forgotten,
and I was a child again, even little Mary Day. I felt glad of an assurance
from Miss Bond, that so fondly had my name been cherished, even by those
in the institution who had never met me, that it was regarded as a
"household word," and that enshrined in the most sacred niche of the
temple of love was the image of Mary L. Day. As a testimony of this
continued affection I was fondly urged to remain in the institution while
in the city, but, as I had so many resident relatives, I declined.
My cousin, William Heald, who had by his kindness infused light into some
of my darkest hours, had won a lovely woman for a wife, and certainly no
one more richly deserved such a consummation. Cousin Sammy Heald had also
married his fair fiance, of the West, who in her sweet purity of
character, beauty of person and a life fragrant and blossoming with good
deeds, could justly be called a "prairie flower." He had been ordained a
Methodist minister, and was winning true laurels in his little charge in
Iowa, to which conference he belonged. He had chosen his proper vocation,
for as a preacher he was "Native, and to the manor born," for when a wee
boy, he had written and declaimed many a sermon, and had his mimic
audience been a real one these efforts would have produced electrical
effect.
Among the many changes in my Baltimore circle was the vacant chair at the
fireside, once filled by my uncle Jacob Day, whose memory and whose life
was pervaded by the odor of true sanctity. It could truly be said of him
at the sunset of a beautiful life, that
"Each silver hair, each wrinkle there,
Records some good deed done;
Some flower cast along the way,
Some spark from love's bright sun."
He had been a great leader in the Sabbath School movement, and a prominent
feature of the funeral cortege was a procession of his pupils in pure
white raiment, who, in token of their love and bereavement, strewed his
grave with flowers.
I cannot close my home chapter without an expression of exultant pride for
my classmates who have done so nobly in their various vocations. Two had
entered the literary ranks as book-writers, and had met with marked
success in the acceptance and sale of their works; three stood high as
teachers; one earned a good living by tuning pianos; several were engaged
in various departments of the institution; and two ranked high as
musicians, which profession has seemed an especial field for the blind.
To use the musical measure of poetic prose as rendered by Mr. Artman, one
of the most renowned blind authors--"There is a world to which night
brings no gloom, no sadness, no impediments; fills no yawning chasm and
hides from the traveler no pitfall. It is the world of sound. Silence is
its night, the only darkness of which the blind have any knowledge. In it
every attribute of Nature has a voice; the beautiful, the grand, the
sublime, have each a language, and to me, whose heart is in tune, every
sound has a peculiar significance. Sounds fill the soul, while light fills
the eye only. 'In the varied strains of warbling melody,' as it winds in
its graceful meanderings to the deep recesses of his soul, or of the rich
and boundless harmony, as it swells and rolls its pompous tide around him,
he finds a solace and a compensation for the absent joys of sight."
And so I close with a blessing upon the members of my class, and may the
God of light and love illumine their paths, and glorify their lives, is my
earnest, heartfelt prayer.