Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1883 — Reminiscences. [ARTICLE]

Reminiscences.

There is an old chest of drawers—an heir-loom. It is full of the dead years, laid away with withered rose-leaves and lavender. A grandmother’s cap, a mother’s wedding-comb, my Own wed-ding-dress, a deep crape veil, worn for father and mother ; baby frocks, shoes, and little pants, barlow knives, a schoolgirl album, full of forgotten names—names cohered with lichens, in the only other place where they still remain, and old letters—great bundles of them. How these old letters comfort me oftentimes! No matter how the writers have changed, these words live. Mother, father, brothers, friends and lover, remain unchanged in the drawer among the withered roses of long ago. I will not weary you with the tale of the sorrows borne, the joys shared, in my own south room' overlooking the garden, so fair with flowers, or of the guest room, sacred to friendship. But there are tears and smiles for both, with all of the rest. Before I tell you good-bye at the door, let us go down, and sit for a moment in the dining-room. Ah ! the good cheer that has smoked on that long table. The many times I have stood with tired body, but swelling heart over its tempting array. Each birthday, through all the years, from the first one when the baby began to talk, to the last one who left a bearded man, has been remembered in this room. How the brown turkeys, flanked by oysters and cranberries, have steamed on thanksgiving days—although we are Western folk—and what exultation has the room resounded with, on Christmas and New Tear’s, when not only the best cheer of winter, bnt love gifts, from and to, each and all, piled up the tables, and ohairs. As I talk of it in its near recurrence, the old feeling comes back, and I feel as if all the dear little people were only out, at school, perhaps, and would burst in presently, to question and talk eagerly of the good things coming. Oh yes, a woman’s life is often a poem, and her home its binding, bright and gilded in youth, dark and worn with use in age!— M. E. Banta in Indianapolis Herald.