Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1876 — For the Last Time. [ARTICLE]

For the Last Time.

There is a touch of pathos about doing even the simplest thing “for the last time.” It is not alone kissing the dead that gives you this strange pain. You feel it when you have looked your last time upon some scene you have loved—when you stand in some quiet city street where you know that you will never stand again. The actor playing his parefor the last time, the singer whose voice is cracked hopelessly, and who after this once will never stand before! the sea of upturned faces disputing the plaudits with fresher voices and fairer forms, the minister who has preached his last sermon—these all know the hidden bitterness of the two words “ never again.” How they come to us on our birthdays as we grow older! Never again young; always nearer and nearer to the vere last —the and which is universal, “ the last thing which shall follow all last things,” and turn them, let us hope, from pains to joys. We put away our boyish toys with an odd heartache. .We were too .old to walk any longer on our stilts—too tall to play marbles on the sidewalk. Yet there was a pang when we thought we had played with our merrythoughts for the fast time, and life’s serious, grown-up work was waiting for us. Now we do not want the lost toys back. Life has other’ and larger playthings for us. May it not be that these too shall seem in the light of some far off day as the boyish games seem to our manhood, and we shad learn that death is but the opening of the gate into the new land of promise?— Exchange.