Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1869 — That Old Couple. [ARTICLE]

That Old Couple.

There may be a romance connected with the love of fresh young hearts; their wooing, and their wedding; but to me th,ere is.no affeetion so beautiful as that between an aged man and wife. When I see such a couple, I always think of the faraway days, when for them love was young, and gave pleasant hours of wooing, dreamy days of courtship, and finally crowned their happiness at the altar. Together they have drank of life’s joyß, and with clasped hands have knelt beforo sorrow's shrine. Away back in the days that we know nothing of, memory holds for them saored hours and scenes. Scenes of joy, the nature of the ten-der-birdlings that have found their way into the parent nest, their pride, their joy; perhaps the aged mother is oven now dreaming of 'the day when her daughter baby in her arms, or led by her hand. Or of the brave sons who have one by one gone out into the great world to fight their battles with late, or be

borne unresisting on its tide. Now for them arp all the tender home-ties loosened, and only the vacant places by tho hearthstone, and now and then a letter, or dying visit, are all that remains. Yet, in all these years, has their wedded love grown stronger, aud no memory of joys past is dearer to them than the sad vision of hands clasped over the cold form of their loved dead. White headstones gleam here and there amid the memory of their past joys, and the heart’s tears proclaim how saerpd is our sorrow sanctified by love, We cannot understand all the poetry, all the beauty of a love that has threaded two lives upon one string. We look upon an old couple who have passed their labor, as upon the fruit waiting to be gathered, or the wheat fully ripe, nor dream of the wealth of tender memories and recollections filling their breasts. We call old people children and “broken down,” when they are oaly living and acting upon the spirit of dead and gone days. How their hearts grow tender with age, is only known to God. Give tne, as life’s best boon, a surety of the lasting love of my youth. I ask no more for' my age than the faithful affection of the heart on which toy youth rested. All things else may bo denied" me—wealth, honors, beauty, health —but so I may tread the shadowy wafks to the end ot life, hand in hand with him, I care not where our heads may rest, for I know tlfat n l° vo that can outlast all the cares and trials, and opposing influences of this life, must soften aud purify the soul until it is fit for heaven at the end Companion. Zlli —^—: