It steals the harshness from their
speech, and every word becomes a song. Far across the gulf that ever
widens, they look upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and which
light us to success. We acknowledge our inheritance; we accept our
birthright; we own that their careers have pledged us to noble action.
Every great life is an incentive to all other lives; but when the
brave heart, that beats for the world, loves us with the warmth of
private affection, then the example of heroism is more persuasive,
because more personal.
This is the true pride of ancestry. It is founded in the tenderness
with which the child regards the father, and in the romance that time
sheds upon history.
"Where be all the bad people buried?" asks every man, with Charles
Lamb, as he strolls among the rank grave-yard grass, and brushes it
aside to read of the faithful husband, and the loving wife, and the
dutiful child.
He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because the human heart is kind;
because it yearns with wistful tenderness after all its brethren who
have passed into the cloud, and will only speak well of the departed.
Pages:
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189