By MRS. MARY LOW DICKINSON.
[Continued.]
Away from Boulogne-sur-Mer,—away from the treacherous sea, that laughs,
as we look back upon it, tossing its white caps mischievously up to the
smiling sky; away from thoughts of Thackeray, who has left the wide
stretches of coast around Boulogne haunted by Claude Newcombe’s ghost,
and on as fast as the “boat-train” can take us to the place where, some
one has said, “good Americans go when they die.”
There is nothing interesting in the tame, flat country; nothing novel
in the farm houses, and thatched cottages, and sleepy-looking villages
along the route, or in the general aspect of the people, except that
the bonnet of the English peasant is replaced by the snowy cap, the
frock of the English farmer by the Frenchman’s clean blue blouse. The
English fog keeps its own side of the channel, and we look up into the
blue sky, radiant with sunshine, with a sense of having found an old
long-absent friend. Long before we arrive in Paris, even the staunchest
Briton of us all marvels why she wanted to stay in London, when here,
just over the water, lay this smiling and beautiful France.
And to us, as to most strangers, Paris and France are one. We shall
see none of its other cities unless, moving southward, we stop at
Lyons, and linger a day at Marseilles. Provincial life will come to us
only in the city’s borrowed attire, as we find it in Paris, imported,
and making itself at home. Nature and natural scenery can do little
to captivate unless, indeed, we enter Italy by the pass of Mont
Cenis, when we shall see what it is, even to a frivolous people like
the French, to “lift their eyes unto the hills.” Ordinarily, nature
seems here at a disadvantage, a pale, flat background for the intense
artificiality of France. Her rivers seem to wind—the sluggish Seine
with the rest—to show the architectural effect of her bridges, rather
than to make the green banks blossom and to refresh the thirsty land.
Her forests, even Fontainebleau and Versailles, what are they but
the background for palaces? And even her wide, straight, dusty roads
stretch on with a dreadful symmetry of commonplaceness that makes one
feel as if the land had no lovely nooks, to reach which one must choose
a shaded or winding way.
Once in the city, and this impression of the extreme of artificial life
deepens. Everything—streets, dwellings, shops, squares, fountains,
monuments—has been made as fine as it well could be; but all has been
made, nothing has been let to grow; and in the monotony of construction
one longs to see something that reveals individuality in its maker
or itself. Humanity has the same stamp, and it is only the intense
vivacity common to its various national types that gives the pleasing
sense of variety. Dress, habit, bearing, manners, are singularly
after one style, a better one in some respects, we will admit, than
we have as yet found time to cultivate. In minor manners this is most
noticeable. The ready “good morning,” and “thank you,” are on the lips
of every servant and child, and the prompt “beg pardon” reconciles one
to an occasional rudeness or lack of care. It is only fair to say,
however, that in a crowd where an American might tread on one’s toes
and never say a word, yet be most careful not to repeat the offence,
the Frenchman would politely “beg pardon,” and while replacing the
lifted hat, tread on the unlucky toes again. Still, there is something
flattering to vanity in the easy deference that makes the waiter help
you on with your overcoat with an air that thanks you for permitting
him the honor, and the wheels of the traveler’s life do run more
smoothly for the lubricating of French good manners. How mightily it
helps the sales in the inevitable round of shopping that beguiles all
womankind in Paris,—except of course, Chautauquans, good and true.
American tradesmen might well learn a lesson here, and by practice
take to themselves many a reluctant dollar that now stays pocket-safe,
because of the gruffness or superciliousness of some airy clerk. But of
all places, Paris needs no such addition as courtesy to the attractive
seductions which her tasteful displays of beautiful things offer to the
foreign purse. Her shop windows alone would draw one’s money up from
the depths of the pocket, through the bewitchment of the eye. No matter
how small the window, no matter how hideous the name of the shop—and
these are of all names, from “Good Angel” to “Good Devil”—the very most
and best is made of the goods to charm the eye and cause the passer’s
step to halt. Halting, he is sure to enter; entering, he is sure to
buy, and lucky the man or woman who escapes with a few lone rattling
sous as _pour boire_ for the cabman whom he hails to drive him home.
One never knows what a magnificent creature a poor mortal can become,
nor has a realizing sense of his capacity for enjoying “things,” till
he has been set loose in the streets of this alluring world’s bazar.
Things! He, the traveler—or, possibly _she_—becomes possessed by a
demon for which there is no other name than “things.” Things to eat,
things to wear, things to hide away, things to give away, things to
take home,—there is no end to it after it is once begun. People go out,
meaning to buy nothing, and buy everything, until the playful remark of
an American author that “Paris is a great sweating furnace, in which
human beings would turn life everlasting into gold, provided it were of
negotiable value,” seems not so far from true. Thankful indeed might be
the traveler, Chautauquan or other, who, unable to gratify temptation,
escapes it, as only it can be escaped, by filling the time so full that
there are left no hours for the loitering amid lovely and alluring
things. Virtuous, very virtuous, indeed, no doubt, was our quartette in
this prudent regard. “Why should they care for shining and insidious
vanities of to-day,” asked the student, “with historical Paris, and
ecclesiastical Paris, and monumental Paris, and artistic Paris, with
Paris, living and dead, past and present, lying about, in unctuous
abundance, waiting to be rolled in sweet morsels under their tongues?”
“Why, indeed?” echoed the other three, as on the night of arrival they
went rattling in a four-seated cab, in which two lolled comfortably
back and indulged in exclamations of delight over the brilliant city,
blazing with its thousand lights, and gay with moving throngs, and the
other two hung on the edge of the narrow shelf called a front seat, and
longed for annihilation as to knees that there might be room for big
basket, little basket, bundles and bags.
One night only for them in a large hotel in the American quarter,
with the Grand Opera House before their windows, and a dozen hotels
all crowded with Americans, within a quarter of a mile. Silently the
sisters sit in a reception room about as large as a comfortable hall
bed-room, while the student adds their names to the very long list
of Americans in the register in the office, a little den just large
enough for a double desk. Then a porter, once a black-haired, brawny
Breton peasant in the ever-lasting blue blouse, swings a trunk upon
his shoulder, gathers up in one hand all the umbrellas and bags, which
it took four of us to bring, and the _concierge_, from her own little
den at the foot of the staircase, hands forth our keys with a smile
that is purely French and means nothing, yet says plainer than words
that she has been longing all day for our coming, and is so relieved
that we are safely arrived at last. Cheered by its welcome, hollow
though we know it to be, we mount the easy stairs behind the Breton
and the baggage. Number fifty, one, two and three, calls the clerk to
a frisky chambermaid in white apron and cap, and away she goes before
with her white cap-strings flying, down the corridor. Why such speed?
we question, but not for long. There are four rooms, and each room has
from four to six candles—candles on bureau, mantle and table, “candles
to right of us, candles to left of us, candles behind us glimmered
and sputtered.” With incredible celerity the white-capped maid had
lighted them all. Lights are an extra in France, and when we go away
to-morrow we shall find them all upon the bill, and for eighteen
_bougies_ it will be our duty to pay. Americans have been found, soon
after our civil war, when the spirit of strife was not yet quelled,
courageous enough to resist the candle swindle, and women prudent
enough to take all they paid for, and to bear them away, rolled in bits
of _Galignani’s Messenger_, and tucked in with the best black silk.
But the world still waits for the great spirit that shall successfully
grapple the _bougie_ fraud. Our quartette, I am ashamed to say, tamely
submitted, the sisters unable to get the right proportions of sweetness
and light on the subject, and the brethren remarking that some games
were not worth the candles, and some candles were not worth the game.
Still the rather luminous exhibition of what it would be likely to cost
them to dwell in this particular quarter, helped them to see their
way out, and before night of the second day they answered the tender
parting smile of madame, the _concierge_, each with a touching franc,
and saw their luggage in a pyramid on the top of a two-seated _voiture
de place_, the brethren shrunken as to knees, to the space allotted in
front of their little shelf, and away they went to dine in their little
cosy sitting room of an apartment far out in the suburb of Passy,
beyond the city bounds, where they paid for the parlor and bed-rooms
and service less per month than it would cost for one room at any of
the grand hotels.
And here they lived as nearly as possible the life of the French home.
Abandoning soon the hearty American breakfast, the student learned that
the brain worked well during the morning hours on its cup of coffee and
its share,—a yard if you like, for bread can be bought by the yard—of
bread. And away out here in Passy they found their servant, the good
old woman who owned the house, yet waited upon them with her own hands,
had not yet learned the trick of the hotels and cafés frequented by
foreigners, but still gave them coffee such as we read about as found
in Paris in “ye olden time.” In common with nearly all French families,
she frequented every morning the coffee-shops scattered at convenient
distances throughout the whole city, and selected her coffee in just
the quantity required for the day, from the freshly-roasted mass, and
saw it ground and mixed before her eyes. The custom is to combine three
kinds of coffee—one for strength, and two for flavor, for the morning
use. Then it is neither smoked, drenched nor boiled until the result is
an injurious decoction, but, placed in its perforated cup, just boiling
water enough is poured upon it to swell every grain and force it to
yield up its delicious first aroma; then again and again is the bath
repeated, until a half a teacupful will be all the coffee prepared for
a household. Now, to a tablespoonful or two of this beverage she adds
a cup of milk, heated almost to a boiling point, and the liquid is fit
for a king. Quite another affair is the _café noir_, made usually by
boiling the residue of the breakfast coffee, and religiously let alone
by the occupants of many French homes. Out of doors, after coffee,
for two or three good hours of work in museums, and galleries, and
palaces, and churches, and streets, wherever the city offered anything
to be enjoyed or learned, and then back to breakfast at twelve o’clock
in the day, a meal of meats and vegetables, salads and sweets,—a
dinner really in all but soup and a name. Dinner at six, cooked by
the owner of the rooms, served by her daughter, a black-eyed, tidy
girl of seventeen, comprised the _menu_ of the home. This was varied
by an occasional raid upon the American gingerbread at the bakery of
the Boulevard Malesherbes, or a visit to restaurants, where, at any
price from thirty cents to a dollar and a half, according to location
and appointments, one can be sure of a dinner, appetizing, clean,
well-served, abundant, and so, whether one sits under the arches of the
old historic Palais Royale, and takes history with his soup, and blends
the gay kaleidoscopic throng before his eyes with the throngs that have
filled the court in other days, or chooses his seat under the gilt
and crystal of the glittering Boulevard des Italians, or boards at a
pension at ten francs a day, and finds himself in a mitigated American
boarding-house, where he puts a sou in the charity plate as a forfeit
for every word of English spoken, or runs around in the Rue Neuve de
Petit Champs, and consoles his patriotism by fish-balls and buckwheat
cakes, or lets some kind, shrewd old woman buy and cook his chop,
piously pilfering regularly her two sous a pound, there is no need to
go hungry in Paris. Alas, that so much can not be said for the poorer
classes of Parisians themselves, the laborers under whose lack of bread
wrongs long suffered have so often ripened to revolutions. Let no one
suppose the stimulating coffee, daintily prepared, is the drink of the
laboring man of France. Happy is he who gets it once a week, and the
common food on which the laborer works is soup, in which the meat is
ordinarily scant enough, and the bread,—of which he can not always take
as much as he would like and leave a portion of the loaf for the little
ones at home;—a piece of bread with a bit of sausage, when he can
afford it, makes the meal that marks the noonday pause in labor, and
gives the more fortunate his _dejeuner a la fourchette_. In no city in
the world is there more destitution than in Paris among the unfortunate
and the deserving poor. The surface of its social life is kept so
whitened that one forgets that it is like the sepulcher of Holy Writ.
Only now and then, on some grand holiday, when misery may seem only a
farce, only a fantastic spectacle in a pageant, is squalor’s want and
beggary allowed to see the light. At all other times, the beggar’s hand
must hold something to sell, and the reality of want be treated as if
it were sham, and crime be made to feel ashamed of nothing but the
day. With the slow-coming change in public opinion, on all questions
of philanthropy and morals, with the slow-coming emancipation of
education, with the slow-coming freedom from priestcraft and the growth
of true religious sentiment in France, there must dawn a brighter day
for the masses, those enormous majorities who make the under strata of
the nation’s life. That it is volcanic strata, with a heart of fire
that now and then heaves with its gigantic throbs the upper world, and
sends forth the low rumble of suppressed lava-floods and the dull smoke
of threatening revolution, is no marvel to any student of the past
history and present social and moral and political conditions of France.
But it is not in these undercurrents that control national destiny
that we can afford to drift our little tourist bark. What ought to be
done, one can but vaguely feel; of what is being done, one may have a
faint glimpse who will follow the history of the Protestant movement,
and make himself acquainted with the missions in the city of Paris
alone. I doubt if it would do to take our quartette too near the heart
of this work, since some of them, at least, would never be willing
to come away. And we can never let them leave Paris without a sight
of the wonders that everybody sees. From Passy they make daily their
_entree_ into the city by the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and pass
under the great Arc de Triomphe, that stands, the largest triumphal
arch in the world, in the center of the beautiful Place de l’Etoile,
from which branch like the points to a star the new beautiful avenues
cut by Napoleon III in every direction, straight through miles of the
most populous portions of the city. Climb the arch, a massive pile
of stone larger than our largest churches, and let the eye run down
the star-points. Here on the right is the most beautiful of all, the
Avenue de l’Imperatrice, over three hundred feet wide, and extending
to the Bois de Boulogne, the Central Park of Paris. Down this drive
on any Saturday morning one may see many a cab containing a groom and
bride of humble station, she in her white dress and orange wreath,
going out to spend the wedding day walking and talking, and feasting
at one of the many restaurants in the beautiful wood. A little earlier
in the day, in the Madelaine, one might see the marriage ceremony
performed. Our travelers chanced on one sunny morning to find a bride
and groom before one altar, a coffin in the aisle, while at the font
a priest was baptising a little child. Down this avenue to the Bois,
all the finest equipages of the pleasure-lovers of Paris drift every
day, and especially every Sunday. On Sunday occur the races and the
military reviews. In the mornings the churches are thinly peopled with
worshippers, principally women; in the afternoon the city is alive with
pleasure seekers of every class. Yet let no one imagine Paris given
to pleasure to be what New York or Chicago under the same conditions
might be—noisy, uproarious, or rude. Everybody on the brilliant,
crowded boulevards, in the Bois, all down the whole length of the
Champs Elysees, is decorous, moderate, well dressed and well behaved.
The whirligigs laden with little children whirl softly; even Punch and
Judy, never-failing delight of childhood, are not too noisy in their
quarrels. The cabmen drowse on their boxes, the horses go at a slow and
steady jog. On the sidewalks the people sip their ices or their soda.
There is animation, vivacity, but no rush or scramble or haste such
as marks not only our work-a-day; but our holiday life. It is on the
boulevards and the Champs Elysees that French leisure and pleasure may
be seen at their best.
This wonderful Champs Elysees lies before one who stands at the Place
de l’Etoile, in its whole length of more than two miles from the Arc
de Triomphe to the beautiful Tuilleries gardens. In the daytime it
is all foliage and sunshine and brightness; at night the gas-lights
glitter in unbroken chains from tree to tree. From one end we can
see the fountains play at the other, as they sparkle all day in the
square by the old Egyptian obelisk, that marks the place of the
guillotine, the memory of which changes all the brightness to gloom
in the space of a single thought. Beyond, the half-ruined piles of
the Tuilleries palace stand up gray and grim, as if they had not yet
recovered from the astonishment and shock of their blows. Further still
rise the palace and gallery of the Louvre, which some one has aptly
called “the first and last fascination of Paris.” We would make the
fascinations plural, and include the Luxembourg gallery, which, though
smaller, holds no second place in the Parisian world of art. Let no
one fancy our tourists saw the Louvre in a day, or can write of it
in a paragraph. What one finds there depends on what one carries in
of technical knowledge, in intelligent apprehension, in sympathetic
insight and appreciation. Words are not the medium for the description
of pictures, or for the transmission of the sense of beauty. One
should go to the Louvre once, at least, thinking of the building only.
Remember that if it and the adjoining Tuilleries palace were extended
their full length along the Seine, we should walk a mile to pass them.
Once within, and relieved of our umbrellas, lest we forget ourselves
and inadvertently “poke” some antique marble warrior, or try the point
upon some crumbling mummy, we climb innumerable stairs and walk over
acres of slippery, polished floors, and through rooms heavy with
gilded decoration, burdened with every adornment that wealth or taste
could devise. The lower floors are devoted to libraries, to Egyptian,
Assyrian, and Greek museums, and the upper to room after room of
paintings, where one wanders at first aimless and bewildered, like a
child whose Christmas riches leave it unknowing what first to enjoy.
One or two sauntering visits like this, and the great pictures begin to
come out from the mass, and we know which are those which belong to us
by some subtle power of entering into their significance which we feel,
but can not define. Then one by one they begin to lay a touch upon us,
and draw us back again and again, for just one other look. How, after
a little, our eyes let go, as our souls do also, of nine-tenths of the
pictures, those with which we have been able to establish no line of
communication, which may be, and are, doubtless, fine, only they are
not for us. Then how we yield ourselves to the touch of those that
have reached us through their greatness, that could not be resisted.
Then we feel the pathos of Triosa’s “Burial,” and the passion of
despair in the writhing forms and agonized faces of his “Deluge.” Then
we feel the strength in the masterpieces of David, and the exquisite
delicacy and suffering and resolve in the “Ecce Homo” of Guido. Here
Raphael’s genius shines upon us in the seraphic sweetness of the “Holy
Family,” and Veronese’s “Marriage of Cana,” with its beauty of form
and richness of color, and marvelous vigor of conception. And here is
the mysterious, half-triumphant, half-timid, grace and beauty of “The
Conception,” by Murillo. The longer one lingers, the more one dreads to
hear the voice of the guard who calls out the time to close, and when
the spell is fairly on one who loves art, he will pass from Louvre to
Luxembourg, and back again from Luxembourg to Louvre, unheeding the
great, gay, bustling world that is surging up and down between. At the
smaller gallery, modern art and living artists are better represented
than at the Louvre. Look here for De la Roche and Rosa Bonheur, and
if the horrors of the French Revolution are not already coming up too
often, as you pass about the city, dwell upon the anguished faces of
the prisoners in the picture called “The Night Before Execution,”
and I can promise you an afternight of troubled sleep. How gladly
one turns from its horrors to the calm, sad strength in the face of
the Christ in Ary Scheffer’s “Temptation,” rejoicing in the grand
expression the artist has given to the power before which ultimately
shall shrink back all the pain of the world, all the horrors and shames
of sin. Between the thick walls of her silent galleries, and in the
hushed air of her churches, one who had time could find a wealth of
association, historical and other, that would enrich weeks spent in
their examination alone.
But we cannot see all, and we can linger in but very few. We must go to
the Hotel des Invalides, under whose dome lie in solemn splendor the
remains of Napoleon I. We must stand for a moment, at least, in the
spots made interesting by associations with history that can never be
forgotten. Who would not go out of his way, for example, to hear for a
few strokes the bell of St. Germain L’Auxerrois, when he remembers that
it gave the midnight signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew? Who
would not seek his opportunities to sit for a while under the towers
of Notre Dame, or behind the porches of the Madelaine, or to rest in
the rustic chapel behind the high altar of St. Roche? Here, as they
should be everywhere, the churches are open all day long. The busy
mother of a family on her way to market, may come in and, dropping her
basket on the floor, kneel and pray for patience and strength for her
round of common care. The world-weary soul may creep into the shadow
of some high column, or kneel at some dim altar, and find the rest he
craves. It is, at least, a spot to escape for a while into blessed
stillness from the wearing turmoil of the world, and forgetting the
papal altars, and the tinsel, and the gaudy images of the Virgin, and
caricatures of angels, and remembering the great sea of human sin and
sorrow surging forever beyond, the stranger can but be glad that the
gates stand open wide.
Little time have we to linger in the most interesting, but we must
surely go out to the church of St. Denis and see where, for thirteen
hundred years, France has laid her royal dead. It is a drive of only
five miles, and that is only a fair walk for some of our number, who
would enjoy walking it every step alone, and calling up out of the past
a procession of priests and courtiers bearing a dead king to his rest.
Alas, that so many of them blessed France on the day they were borne to
St. Denis more than in all their long, luxurious lives.
And to St. Denis is not the only little excursion that must be made
from Paris. We cannot turn our faces southward without having visited
Fontainebleau, and having had at least a long bright day in the palace
of Versailles.
For the former excursion, only thirty-five miles from Paris, a day may
be taken, though a charming little hotel outside the wood will tempt
one to linger for a night, and thus secure an uninterrupted day for
visiting the palace, strolling about the grounds, or driving in the
charming roads through the forest.
The entire nine hundred apartments of the palace are not open for
inspection, but at twelve o’clock daily a guide gathers up the waiting
visitors and drives them like a flock of sheep through the apartments,
many of them beautiful and sumptuous in adornment, and some neglected
and forlorn. We entered by the Court of the White Horse, or the Court
of Adieux, as it has been called since the time when Napoleon I there
bade farewell to the remnant of his old guard before his departure for
Elba. His bed-room, said to be in the same state as when he left it,
and the table on which he signed his abdication, naturally claim the
attention of all strollers through these halls. Within there is the
jargon of the chattering people, who feel of the draperies as they pass
warily over the slippery floors, the autocratic twang of the guide who
means to hold us to his story until he gets us safely through and out
at the door with our francs snugly stored away in his pocket. Outside
there are lovely gardens and grounds, but cabmen beset us to drive in
the forest, and once there, produce a new waterfall, or a high rock,
or a rustic bridge, anything, everything, that a sixty-mile forest
can afford for which a _pour boire_ can be extracted. On the whole,
we are ready on the second afternoon to return to Paris, and equally
ready on the very next day to take the train for Versailles. It is
only a little journey; we are there almost before we seem started,
and in company with many other strangers, a few French families out
for a day’s holiday, and many earnest talking deputies _en route_ to
the Assembly, we go up in the omnibus through the town, which now
fairly hugs the palace gates, to the entrance of the great court, and
before us lies the enormous but not imposing pile of the Palace of
Versailles. Everybody who has never seen it knows it through pictures.
We need not even quote the guide-books, and say that the great palace
is over a quarter of a mile long, and cost France in money two hundred
millions of dollars, to say nothing of what it cost in after-suffering
to the nation and to the descendants of the king who built it as a
magnificent monument to his vanity and ambition. We all know what
part the Revolution played in it, and also that no government since
the Revolution could take the enormous expense of using it as a royal
residence. Hence, in the time of Louis Phillipe it became a grand
museum, and to-day the visitor, after exhausting himself in the effort
to traverse some of the miles of walks to see the grounds, traverses
miles of corridors and apartments lined with pictures, principally of
French battles, and dedicated to all the glories of France. To Marie
Antoinette the place of most tragic interest, to Louis Phillipe and
Louis Napoleon it was simply a museum, and to France it has come to
be, after the humiliation of seeing the German emperor encamped here,
the seat of her new government and the stronghold of the power of the
Republic.
The place of meeting of the National Assembly is in the former theater
of the palace, and if one is so fortunate as to have a friend among the
deputies, there is no difficulty in securing admission to any session.
Ordinarily, guests are shown to boxes, from which they can look down
upon the seven hundred representative men of France. The President’s
seat is at one end of the hall, with before him a tribune, or platform,
from which the deputies speak. On the right of the speaker are the
Royalists, including Legitimists, Orleanists, and Imperialists, and on
the left the Republicans. Besides these two grand divisions, there are
the minor divisions of the Right and Left Center, the former wishing a
constitutional monarchy, and the latter a conservative republic. One
should visit the Assembly more than once to bring away anything beyond
a confused sense of much animated gesticulation, violent discussion,
often rising into a frenzy of speech and movement only equalled by the
excitement of the Bourse. Calm talk grows to an apparent tempest of
speech, for which there is no control, until it subsides of itself.
Those familiar with emotional French manner will tell us that it
all means nothing serious; that, notwithstanding this turmoil, all
important questions are calmly discussed in party councils before they
are submitted to public debate, and that the excitement is only the
natural outlet of irrepressible human nature as it exists in sunny
France. And it matters little with what petty bluster or serious
throes she does it, if, out of her agitations, the nation comes, as
she seems to be slowly doing, into larger light and truer liberty,
into the grand freedom of self-control. Once there, revolutions will
cease to be chronic, and regeneration, begun in the governmental
center, may permeate the spiritual and intellectual, and ultimately
reach even the corruption of the social life. Any influence that tends
toward this, however convulsive in its action, must be welcomed by the
thinking world. In her transformed palaces and half deserted churches
one can but think on these things, forgetting that our business is
for the present to observe and not to think. There is small time
now for processes of thought, and none for opinions or conclusions.
Three-quarters of the globe is before us, and even bewildering,
bewitching France must be left behind.
[To be continued.]
“WE MUST NOT FORGET OUR DEAD.”
By MARY R. D. DINGWALL.
“So many of our students are in middle and after middle
life; the death rate is, therefore, unusually large.”
“I will have them be with me where I am,”
Says Christ of his sainted ones;
And we give them up with sorrowing hearts,
When the Master’s summons comes.
Fold we the hands, though tasks at which they wrought
May be but half completed;
And we press the lips with a solemn thought
Of the last words they repeated.
“I will have them be with me where I am,”
Says he who o’er Lazarus wept;
And with tears we lay our loved ones away,
To sleep as Lazarus slept.
And we take up the tasks they left undone,
Sing songs they would be singing,
While we run with patience the race they run,
Bring sheaves as they were bringing.