"Our boys have taken especial pains to beautify that favorite spot, this
season."
"This disposition to adorn the resting-place of the body, so common
among us, is becoming popular in your country, I believe," said our
host, courteously.
I replied, that it was,--that in our larger towns the place of burial
was generally rendered attractive, but that in the rural districts the
burying-grounds were yet neglected and unsightly; and ventured the
opinion, that this neglect might be partly traceable to the iconoclastic
tendencies of our Puritan ancestors.
Dr. Wichern thought not; the neglect of the earthly home of the dead
resulted from the prevalence of indifference to the glorious doctrine of
the Resurrection; and whatever a people might profess, he could not but
believe them infidel at heart, if they were entirely neglectful of the
resting-place of their dead.
The close of our repast precluded further discussion, and at our host's
invitation we accompanied him to the rural cemetery, where such of the
pupils and Brothers as died during their connection with the school were
buried. An English writer has very appropriately called the Rauhe Haus a
"Home among the Flowers"; but the title is far more appropriate to this
beautiful spot. Whatever a pure and exquisite taste could conceive as
becoming in a place consecrated to such a purpose, willing hands have
executed; and early every Sabbath morning, Dr. Wichern says, the pupils
resort hither to see that everything necessary is done to keep it in
perfect order. The air seemed almost heavy with the perfume of flowers;
and though the home of the living pupils of the Rauhe Haus is plain in
the extreme, the palace of their dead surpasses in splendor that of the
proudest of earthly monarchs. One could hardly help coveting such a
resting-place.
It was with reluctance that we at last turned our faces homeward, and
bade the excellent director farewell. The world has seen, in this
nineteenth century, few nobler spirits than his. Possessed of uncommon
intellect, he combines with it executive talent of no ordinary
character, and a capacity for labor which seems almost fabulous. His
duties as the head of the Inner Mission, whose scope comprises the
organization and management of reformatory institutions of all kinds,
throughout Germany, as well as efforts analogous to those of our city
missions, temperance societies, etc., might well be supposed to be
sufficient for one man; but these are supplementary to his labors as
director of the Rauhe Haus, and editor of the _Fliegende Blätter_, and
the other literature, by no means inconsiderable, of the Inner Mission.
Dr. Wichern is highly esteemed and possesses almost unbounded influence
throughout Germany; and that influence, potent as it is, even with the
princes and crowned heads of the German States, is uniformly exerted in
behalf of the poor, the unfortunate, the ignorant, and the degraded.
When the history of philanthropy shall be written, and the just meed
of commendation bestowed on the benefactors of humanity, how much more
exalted a place will he receive, in the memory and gratitude of the
world, than the perjured and audacious despot who, born the same year,
in the neighboring city of the Hague, has won his way to the throne of
France by deeds of selfishness and cruelty! Even to-day, who would not
rather be John Henry Wichern, the director of the Rauhe Haus at Horn,
than Louis Napoleon, emperor of France?
Would that on our own side of the Atlantic a Wichern might arise, whose
abilities should be sufficient to unite in one common purpose our
reformatory enterprises, and rescue from infamy and sin the tens of
thousands of children who now, apt scholars in crime, throng the
purlieus of vice in our large cities, and are already committing deeds
whose desperate wickedness might well cause hardened criminals to
shudder. The existence of a popular government depends, we are often
told, upon the intelligence and virtue of the people. What hope, then,
can we have of the perpetuity of our institutions, when those who are to
control them have become monsters of iniquity ere they have reached the
age of manhood?
The forces of Good and Evil are ever striving for the mastery in human
society. Happy is that philanthropist, and honored should he be with a
nation's gratitude, who can rescue these juvenile offenders from the
power of evil, and from the fearful suggestings of temptation and want,
and enlist them on the side of virtue and right! We rear monuments of
marble and bronze to those heroes who on the battle-field and in the
fierce assault have kept our nation's fame untarnished, and added new
laurels to the renown of our country's prowess; but more enduring than
marble, more lasting than brass, should be the monument reared to him
who, in the fierce contest with the powers of evil, shall rescue
the soul of the child from the grasp of the tempter, and change the
brutalized and degraded offspring of crime and lust into a youth of
generous, active, and noble impulses. But though earthly fame may be
denied to such a benefactor of his race, his record shall be on high;
and at that grand assize where all human actions shall be weighed, His
voice, whose philanthropy exceeded, infinitely, the noblest deeds of
benevolence of the sons of earth, shall be heard, saying to these humble
laborers in the vineyard of our God, "Friends, come up higher!"
Those who are interested in knowing what has been accomplished by the
reformatory institutions of Europe will find a full and entertaining
account of most of them in a volume recently published, entitled "Papers
on Preventive, Correctional, and Reformatory Institutions and Agencies
in Different Countries," by Henry Barnard, LL.D. Hartford: F.C.
Brownell, 1857. Dr. Barnard has done a good work in collecting these
valuable documents.