Revisiting the Earth Part 1

Revisiting the Earth.

by James Langdon Hill.

CHAPTER I

REVISITING THE EARTH

To revisit the earth after one's departure from it has always been a common wish among men. The frequency with which this desire is expressed in biographies and in literature, keeps the project alive, and works it to the front in one's plans. Benjamin Franklin presents the thought in such attractive dress that we incline to adopt it for a programme. There is one item in his proposition that calls for argument at the bar of public opinion. It touches the length of the interval that should be suffered to elapse before the visit is made. So rapid is the growth, so radical are the changes, that if one's reappearance is too long delayed he would recognize nothing in the new conditions. He might as well set himself down in some other unfamiliar place. The postponement should not exceed a third of a century. It is his world that a man wants to see, and each one has his own. His antecedents and experiences have given to it a distinctive character.

_To Open Books that are Sealed_

On a golden day the thought came to me unbidden, I have seen three and thirty years rise and fall since I have viewed the identical spots that I would care most to look upon. Instantly I made the resolve, I will visit, in the first eight weeks of summer, every place in which I have lived or loved or labored. I ascertained, in advance, the name of some kindly disposed person at each point in my itinerary, who could identify the site of the house in which I lived, if it is not still standing, also of the school and church that I attended. The letter I had written was handed in one case to the editor of the local paper, who featured it, in his columns, asking for the names of persons now living who remembered me. Here is plainly seen an insuperable objection to waiting Ben Franklin's interval of one hundred years before revisiting the earth. This correspondence, which contributed immeasurably to the pleasure and profit of the project, ought to be undertaken, while there are two parties to conduct it. Where one's coming is expected and welcomed he pa.s.ses at once into the right relations to the place, also into the atmosphere he desires.

_Let Me Drop a Hint Here Like a Seed_

I care not how widely you have traveled if you have never made a pious pilgrimage to your childhood's shrines--you have still missed your superlative pleasure.

It is possible for you to live your life over and the part commended for you to live over again is when you were young.

Here is rejuvenation. To live one's life over is to live it twice. This amounts to doubling it. Who would not do it? If the period of time during which one may live on the earth is fixed, it certainly is limited, if there is a possible way to live twice, what one does live, he would better be extremely hospitable to the scheme. Opposition will come from three sources, first from the man who thinks himself taken up by the future and by his hopes. But it is patience that works "experience and experience hope." Hope detached from the present and the past is such a baseless fabric of a vision that it probably will not leave even so much as a wreck behind. Another man will counter with the familiar statement that his eyes are on the front of his head and he only travels in the direction that they lead.

Now my kind, optimistic brother, I have a word here for you. You are traveling in blinders. You are a mechanical pace-setter. All your training is for the middle of the road. It is counted a physical deformity if a person cannot turn his head. It is an expression of opprobrium to find people stiff-necked. The chief office of a vehicle is to carry on, yet for use at home, a carriage that cannot be turned round would be extremely inconvenient.

_Pausing for a Fore-taste_

The observation car giving the best view to be had of the mountain landscape as it waltzes by, is placed at the rear of the train. The most extravagant demonstrations of joy and grat.i.tude, our most hallowed feelings come from looking back on what has been done unto us and for us.

Hesitancy about revisiting the earth comes lastly from those who think they have lost their interest in days that are gone, that forgetfulness has done its sad work, that the dead past has buried its dead. It is to witness the miracle of a resurrection that we are uttering our cry.

_Waymarks of the Journey_

They a.s.sume that a fact or a name is gone into oblivion when, for example, they are unable by a repeated effort to recall it. The mind is a delicate organism. You cannot well force things. It has its own laws of suggestion. Once coming into the old surroundings, which rake up the past, standing again on a recognized corner, which carry one's thoughts back with delight into familiar haunts, the law of a.s.sociation will put on the tip of your tongue names and incidents that you supposed to be clean forgotten. If a person had asked me to give the name of the first barber that ever set foot in the town of my boyhood home, I would have believed it sunk in oblivion. In the summer coming upon the cross-roads, I said, "Here stood the first barber shop in town." The name of the negro, even, that kept it flashed on my mind. It was Stanbach, the last syllable as he p.r.o.nounced it ended with the German guttural. His son, a little freckled mulatto, was called Johnnie Stanbach. When a little full-blooded negro appeared, Johnnie would not a.s.sociate with him. He was "too black," "black enough to s.m.u.t a body."

_The Mind's Re-invigoration_

When Hon. James O. Crosby, an eminent lawyer, in my native village, having a large practice in the courts of the county, met the father of John R. Mott of merited distinction, a living force, this was the dialogue: "How do you do, Mr. Mott!" "How do you do, Mr. Crosby!" and then taking Mr. Crosby's hand Mr. Mott said to him, "Your face seems familiar but I cannot seem to recall your name." This occurrence gives a volume of experience in revisiting the earth. When Mr. Mott badgered his mind to recall Mr. Crosby's name, his intellect balked, utterly, and continuously refused to act. The mind often halts, even as to common words. One's mental powers come to a sudden pause, like circus horses, and a man recovers their use, not by any effort of will, but by some sudden, and almost impulsive, suggestion. Recent events and dates are easily lost or pa.s.s into confusion while those of long prior time still hold firm root and their right place in remembrance. As we have seen, a quick, unerring, even unconscious mental spring, acting according to the laws of the a.s.sociation of ideas will unaided and without effort, bring a name, pent up in one's memory, promptly forward for his instant use.

The value of this power is beyond estimation. Occurrences supposed to be forgotten are very much alive, when upon old familiar ground. Revisiting the earth is a simple string of these acts of spontaneous recollection.

If you hear a few notes of music, the inseparable a.s.sociation, that exists in the mind, suggests the rest of the tune. That is a very apt expression, when a person says he is haunted by a tune. It implies an existence, in the chambers of the brain, that is making a stir and which he supposed to be dead. The simple act of thus recalling an event is in itself the most wonderful of all mental processes.

_The Re-creation of the World_

I heard of a man who had over-looked the fact that memory paints with fast colors, also that a recollection that is dim in one locality is bright in another. On reaching a scene of early a.s.sociations, on picking up a thing, he found it was like one of the links of a chain, that one being stirred, others were moved and the man was found discoursing on How I improved my memory in one evening. On revisiting the earth, memories are awakened which, but for coming upon the old soil, would probably have slept silently to the end of life. It is given to me, to have a distinct testimony in this matter. Many others can corroborate these hints by startling facts in their own lives and without any stretch of their imagination. I was brought to the belief, that a person may not ever forget anything. The recollection turns out to be a faithful, painstaking, autobiographer. This almost scares a person. A wand seemed to be waved and forth came people and anecdotes and events that he supposed were in oblivion. There turns out to be, not only a recollection of the head, but also a memory of the heart. The process is different. On the one hand a boy commits to memory and learns by rote, on the other hand there are some things he loves. All these he knows by heart. This is an undying, imperishable recollection. It is the immortality of the affections. Vividness of feeling does it. All that pertains to home, he learns by heart. It is as indestructible as his eternal being. "Dot must be der vonderful blace Ohm, to make der British cry. I tink to myself, I vill go and see dis blace, Ohm, vot der vos no blace like. Vich is der vay to 'Ohm, Sweet Ohm?'" Where the affections have been unlocked and the whole inner man has been stirred,--a high water mark has been registered in one's memory that can never be eradicated. Your heart shall live forever, so shall all of your heart's histories. They give you something that the thieving years can never take away. I have pleasure in adding to the a.s.surance of it.

_Blessing in the Guise of an Excursion_

It is now only one hundred and eighty generations, as we used to be taught, since Adam, peace to his memory and his ashes, who was grandfather of us all. There are thus but one hundred and seventy-eight generations between us and him. This would take but one hundred and seventy-eight father-to-son steps to bring us to the original family home in the Garden of Eden. There are only one hundred and eighty life-times to review. The grandfather of Noah, who was six hundred years old when he encountered the flood, was Methuselah, who remembered Adam.

If our line of ancestry is so short, and if all the progress we have made has been accomplished within a history so brief, it is little wonder that the transformations to be witnessed in one of these not numerous generations are so incredible and so instructive.

I do not know, but I may cla.s.s traveling among our duties. It opens new spheres of thought and observation and places us in new relations to mankind and makes us better students of human nature. Leisure is sweet to the taste and for that reason it soon palls. Pleasure is a by-product. Enjoyment is greatest when it is incidental to some well-advised quest. Idleness is the least pleasure of a holiday. To make high festival of a pilgrimage to a shrine is more common in the older nations than in our own. It is the habit of the human mind to love that which is memorial in its character. We cannot, as Longfellow says, buy with gold the old a.s.sociations. "He that is searching for rare and remote things will neglect those that are obvious and familiar. It is remarkable," continues Dr. Johnson in the preface to his dictionary, "that in reviewing my collection of words I found the word 'sea'

unexemplified." I have had many vacations, in places wide apart. Having gone further and fared worse, returning to what is nearer, having an inspiration of beauty upon it, I say, touching Revisiting the Earth, as David declared of Goliath's sword, There is none like that, give me it.

Never did a child perform an errand with more alacrity than I executed this mission.

CHAPTER II

THE PICTURE LAND OF THE HEART

The day is blue above, without a cloud. Will you walk with me through our village, gentle reader? We will begin at the handsome open square.

Now as we advance my heart leaps at the sight of my birthplace. What a pretty location it is! Here is "the cot of my father:" "In youth it sheltered me." It is the "loved spot which my infancy knew." "How dear to my heart" is this "scene of my childhood." Happy childhood thus early blessed with blessings hereditary to all after hours! There is no place so suggestive and interesting in our adult years as that in which we began life. It is one of those exquisite situations which paint their own picture insensibly in the memory while you look on them, natural, daguerreotypes, as it were. Considered only as a house, it left some things to be desired but it is never to be considered only as a house.

Why is it that we thus love the place of our birth? Why have all men done the same? The son of the mist, in Scott, in his dying hour, begged that he might be turned so that his eyes could rest once more upon his native hills and close with their latest vision fixed there. Why did the hero of Virgil, in his death hour, manifest his love for the place of his birth which is so beautifully narrated by that immortal bard? It is an instinct, which gives to it a place in the human heart, and such an expression in human thought. Like poetry it is born with us, not made.

There probably is no stronger feeling in us than that of attachment to our first home. A man transplanted to another field may have succeeded well. His condition may have been vastly improved and yet he may have drooped without apparent cause, in his temporary home, pining for those days which were pa.s.sed in the Eden of his life. I could not get enough of the place. Must I leave thee, dear sacred spot, how can I leave thee?

My heart was full and the tears started to my eyes as I gazed around upon every object. The words of my earliest progenitor, on leaving our ancestral garden, as quoted by Milton, came to me, "Must I leave thee, paradise?"

_The Vine Must Have the Wall_

Luther could appear in battle scenes for social and religious reform with undaunted spirit. He could oppose the enemies of his faith without a trembling nerve. He could resist those, bent on his destruction, with the courage and calmness of a Christian hero, but when upon a journey to meet the Counts of Mansfield, he came in sight of his own native Eisleben, the great man was overcome with emotion and he bowed his head and wept.

"_The Man Returned who Left these Haunts a Boy_"

Congress voted unanimously in 1824 to invite Lafayette to visit this country. He was received everywhere with great demonstrations of popular enthusiasm and his progress through the country resembled a continuous triumphal procession. He visited, in succession, each of the twenty-four states, and all the princ.i.p.al cities which vied to do him honor, but relatively he was unmoved. A splendid coach was at his service. He pa.s.sed beneath an elaborate arch blazoned with words of welcome, but Lafayette relatively was unmoved. Sitting quietly with no expectation excited, before a screen in a public a.s.sembly, the curtain lifted and there stood his birthplace, in speaking beauty and suggestiveness and all the deeps of his heroic nature were broken up and he sobbed audibly like a child. The strong old home still held him to its heart.

How is such a birthplace marked? Chiefly by a gush of rich emotion in the heart of him who claims it as his own. Nature attends to that. A boy has warm affections. A birthplace may have no Forefathers' Rock.

Peregrine White was not born there. No Charter Oak or Was.h.i.+ngton Elm, with living dignity may identify the place. There may be no cellar which concealed the royal judges, nor any door pierced by Indian bullets, nor drums which awaked the sleepers at Lexington and Concord, yet it is distinctively sacred to one's childhood days. It has the deep endearment of a darling home.

"I remember, I remember The house where I was born The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn."

"Where is my home? I want to go before dark," said a spirited little fellow of three years. The action of his inner nature was like the turning of the needle to the pole. Thus an unfortunate child will put up a fight for his birthright and he will not yield without returning to the struggle. He wants his heritage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER, THE HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN"]

_The Gate to Life_

Somehow my heart keeps flying back to my birthplace as Antony's kept flying back to Egypt. If a man has no heart, if he is altogether lacking in veneration the attention given to his birthplace by other persons would impress it upon his notice. "Where were you born?" asks the life insurance agent. What has that to do with it? How does that affect the situation? Why does he not limit himself to vital statistics, like your age, habits, general health? Through more than three thousand closely printed pages, Who's Who in America, carefully mentions in each biography the birthplace of the subject. There must be some reason for making this one of the chief facts when the s.p.a.ce is needed to tell of positions held, wealth and fame acquired.