Visit the Old Home
I hope that you, the departing daughter, will not forget to write often home; for, whatever betide you, the old folks will never lose their interest in your welfare. Make visits to them also as often, and stay as long as you can, for there will be changes at the old place after awhile. Every time you go you will find more gray hairs on father’s head and more wrinkles on mother’s brow; and after awhile you will notice that the elastic step has become decrepitude. And some day one of the two pillars of your early home will fall, and after awhile the other pillar of that home will fall, and it will be a comfort to yourself if, when they are gone, you can feel that while you are faithful in your new home you never forget your old home, and the first friends you ever had, and those to whom you are more indebted than you ever can be to any one else except to God—I mean your father and mother. Alexander Pope put it in effective rhythm when he said:
“Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.”
And now I commend all this precious and splendid young womanhood before me to-day to the God “who setteth the solitary in families.”