"How many times and oft" has the sweet, sweet word been sung in
song and told in story. And he sang sweetest of home, who had
never a home on earth. If one to whom home was only a poet's
dream, could portray its charms by only imagination, until a
million hearts thrilled with responsive echo, how deeper, how
more intense must be his longings and recollections who
treasures, deep down in his heart the sweet delights and pure
associations that he has known, but never may know again. We do
not appreciate our blessings until they have passed. We do not
try to gather the sunbeams until the clouds have obscured them.
How many and many a youth, brave-hearted and true, answers with
eager haste the war call of his native land all heedless of the
home he is leaving, and the loving arms that sheltered him there.
But when his soldier's blood is crimsoning the sands beneath a
foreign sky, the thoughts that go with his ebbing life are of
home--all of home.
Who rushes from his home out into the world, blind devotee of
fortune's phantom goddess, to realize a phantom indeed, sits down
in his despondency and his despair, to dream of "dear old home".
Yes, too, and the wretch--so seemingly depraved that nothing
beautiful or pure of soul is left--who flings from him his life
in mad suicide, goes out into that trackless eternity with home
upon the lips of death. Then if the patter of baby's feet, the
glad ring of children's voices echo within the walls of your
home, if father and mother; and brothers and sisters brighten it
with the sunshine of love, enjoy it while you may, make it your
heaven, and be not in over-haste to break the ties that bind you
there.
You may never weep, perchance, over a home made desolate by
death; and yet, time--so surely as time is--will make it but only
a memory. And all too late each heart will learn that it did not
prize enough the blessedness of home.