ot a spirit
that can be raised at will. It cannot go on forever, that walking down
to church on Sundays, and ascending those pulpit-steps; it will change
to feeling, though I humbly trust it may be long before it shall change
in fact. Don't you all sometimes feel something like that? Don't you
sometimes look about you and say to yourself, That furniture will wear
out: those window-curtains are getting sadly faded; they will not last a
lifetime? Those carpets must be replaced some day; and the old patterns
which looked at you with a kindly, familiar expression, through these
long years, must be among the old familiar faces that are gone. These
are little things, indeed, but they are among the vague recollections
that bewilder our memory; they are among the things which come up in the
strange, confused remembrance of the dying man in the last days of life.
There is an old fir-tree, a twisted, strange-looking fir-tree, which
will be among my last recollections, I know, as it was among my first.
It was always before my eyes, when I was three, four, five years old: I
see the pyramidal top, rising over a mass of shrubbery; I see it always
against a sunset-sky; always in the subdued twilight in which we seem to
see things in distant years. These old friends will die, you think;
who will take their place? You will be an old gentleman, a frail old
gentleman, wondered at by younger men, and telling them long stones
about the days when Lincoln was President, like those which weary you
now about the War of 1812. It will not be the same world then. Your
children will not be always children. Enjoy their fresh youth while it
lasts, for it will not last long. Do not skim over the present too fast,
through a constant habit of onward-looking. Many men of an anxious turn
are so eagerly concerned in providing for the future, that they hardly
remark the blessings of the present. Yet it is only because the future
will some day be present, that it deserves any thought at all. And many
men, instead of heartily enjoying present blessings while they are
present, train themselves to a habit of regarding these things as merely
the foundation on which they are to build some vague fabric of they know
not what. I have known a clergyman, who was very fond of music, and in
whose church the music was very fine, who seemed incapable of enjoying
its solemn beauty as a thing to be enjoyed while passing, but who
persisted in regarding each beautiful strain me