hich it
fondly clings, become the theme of her holiest and her happiest thoughts;
and she retains them with a passionate ardor, exceeded only by that with
which she clung to the living child. Her greatest pleasure is, to retire
from the busy cares of the world, to some solitude where she may sit among
flowers that remind her of the one that withered in her arms, and meditate
upon him who slumbers beneath the clods of the valley. Oh, these are sweet
and precious moments to her; and the tears which are then drawn from the
deep well-springs of reminiscence, are sacred to him with whom she in
spirit there communes. There with, rapture she remembers

"All his winning ways,
His pretty, playful smiles,
His joy, his ecstasy,
His tricks, his mimicry,
And all his little wiles;
Oh! these are recollections
Round mothers' hearts that cling--
That mingle with the tears
And smiles of after years,
With oft awakening!"

Memory links together the loved, ones of home though they be widely
separated from each other, some on earth, and some in eternity. There is a
mystic chain which binds them together, and brings them in spirit near to
each other and infuses, as it were, with electric power, a realizing sense
of each other, while their past life under the same roof, "like shadows
o'er them sweep." In the light of memory their faded forms are vividly
brought back to view; they see each other as when they rambled over their
childhood haunts; and the echo of their playful mirth comes booming back in
deep reverberations through their souls. In this respect the memory of the
dead is a pleasure so deep and delicate, and withal so melancholy, yea, so
painful, that the heart shrinks from its intensity. This we experience when
we ramble through the family graveyard, and bring within the sweep of
recollection our past communion with the loved who slumber there. There is
a mysterious feeling awakened in our hearts,--a feeling of peculiar
melancholy, which, combines two opposite emotions,--that of pleasure and
that of pain. These seem to embrace each other, and their union in our
hearts affords us a strange enjoyment. We enjoy the pain; the agony
awakened by the remembrance of those who lie beneath the sod is pleasing to
us. It is a bitter cup we love to drink; we love to keep open the wounds
there inflicted. The sadness we then feel we dearly cherish; and we linger
around these tombs as if bound to them by some mystic chord w