The Golden Censer. John McGovern
business, whose short note his sister has just laid down—of course, he was the fireman and the engineer!
We see the sister of Rembrandt, the painter, traveling weary miles to the house of the brother whom in youth she shielded from the wrath of a drunken father, whose rude pictures she concealed from eyes that would have looked upon them in anger. Now he is the most celebrated painter of his time. He is rich beyond the imagination of his humble contemporaries. He never receives people into his stronghold.
TWO GREAT DOGS GUARD THE ENTRANCE.
Into a gloomy portal the aged sister enters, and soon the miser and the good angel of his past are together. There they sit in the dusk, and recall, after sixty years of separation, the scenes of the Home which existed eighty years before! We marvel at a word that comes along a cable under the ocean. Why should we not also wonder at a little word that can sound across the awful stretch of eighty years, through
AN OCEAN OF LIFE,
stormy with fearful disappointments, boisterous with seasons of success, and desolate with the drift, the slime, and the fungus of miserly greed!
Says Dickens: "If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and proud to Home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven."
"If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man," writes Jeremy Taylor, "how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious."
It has happened within a hundred years that men of private station have become Kings. One of the severest trials of their exalted lot has been the disaster which came upon their homes.
KINGS HAVE NO HOMES.
I am told that the Presidents of the United States have complained very naturally that they are denied that privacy which is accorded to the lowliest citizen in the land. It should content the possessor of a Home that he has that which Kings cannot have, and which if it be bright and free from wrong, is more valuable than palaces and marble halls. Of this golden right of asylum in the Home, Abraham Cowley has written: "Democritus relates, as if he gloried in the good fortune of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus; after whose death, making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of that most talked of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were
NO TWO NAMES OF MEN MORE KNOWN
or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to an ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of."
What makes the remembrance of the old Home so happy? Was it not because there the storms of life were turned away from us by those who bore the blasts to keep us in our innocence? And now that future which then was on our horizon has neared us and is our zenith, the centre of our heavens. About us are
PRATTLING LITTLE ONES
who in the far-off years will clothe this house about with that holy mantle which will give it the right to that same grand title, Home. Can we not, in thinking of the good old Home, stand a little nearer to the blast and warm some tiny heart a little more? Does the merry laugh sing out as it did in our own youth? Then this is indeed a Home, growing each day more sacred in the mind of those fledglings who will so soon fly from the nest to beat a fluttering and a weary way through the tempests that will encompass them. A Christmas-tree, a picnic, a May-day festival, make trouble for limbs already weary with labor, but
IT IS THE WEARINESS AND THE SELF-SACRIFICE
as well as the mirth and the innocence which have girt this great word round about with its bright girdle of true glory. "Suffer little children to come unto me," says the Lord Jesus, "and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." We may say likewise, following the beauteous expression of our Savior, "Suffer little children to come into our homes, and forbid them not their mirth and their joy, for their contentment is now the one lesson that will take deep hold on their lives, and their souls will grow rapidly in such surroundings." Says the poet Southey: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks."
"He is the happiest," says Goethe, "be he King or peasant, who finds peace in his Home." Especially should
THE YOUNG MAN
be taught the value of a Home. If his advisers lay before him the lesson of life in all its aspects, he will indeed be a prodigal if he have not a Home of his own almost immediately upon leaving the fatherly roof. There are no reasons, no exceptions, which relieve the healthy, able-bodied young man from an early advance on the enemies who threaten the welfare of the citizen. The strongest fortification which the human heart can throw up against temptation is the Home. Certain men are almost invincible against the onslaughts of the many base allurements which wreak such misery on all sides of us. Why are they so firm? It is because a glorious example has stood before their minds, a liberal and older knowledge of the world has aided their early endeavors, and a plentiful advice has fastened in their understandings the wisdom of virtue and industry. If your sons have Homes of their own, you can leave them, as a great General leaves his lieutenants to occupy a country, here a fortress held in safety, there a cantonment with natural defenses, and there a "city on a hill," while you advance into those other regions which are written on the map of your destiny, "sustained by the unfaltering trust" that you have kept the great obligation imposed on you, and handled your forces for the best advantage of the cause you served.
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot.—Thomson.
y the general voice of mankind, children are held to be a blessing to the good. Where the bonds of love do not tighten as the children grow, it is like those cases where the chords and muscles do not fasten together after a hurt—there has been malpractice. Let us not live like quacks. There are some general rules in life which will lead us toward a greater enjoyment of our children's lives. Through them and their issue we become immortal on this earth. Death cannot sweep us down entirely. We leave our lives set in a younger cast of flesh, to hold the fight against the enemy. While they thus serve us, to guard us from extinction, we also stand as their ambassadors in heaven, presently to go on our mission—first to finish our own preparations, and then to begin those of our offspring, who will follow in our footsteps. Says Shakspeare: "The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants." Our experience teaches us that virtue and honesty are in themselves great rewards. Whether we be virtuous and honest matters little in our estimation of the value of those qualities. The thief, quaking before the Judge, cannot but compare his own lot with that of the good man who sits above him. The one has followed every bent of his inclination, which gradually became more and more capricious, more difficult to satisfy. The other put on a steadying curb in early life, denied himself nine times where he humored himself once, and
FINALLY HAD A CHARACTER
which made few demands upon him, and whose demands