| Things to Live For |
Chapter 19 |
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There is another way in which our beloved ones stay with us after they have vanished from sight in death’s mists. Everything they have touched becomes in a certain sense sacramental. Their names are written everywhere. They have left part of themselves, as it were, on each familiar thing or scene with which in life they were associated. Whatever we move we are reminded of them. Here is a path where their feet walked. Here is a tree under which they sat. Here is a book they read, with the pencil marks indicating the thought that pleased them. Here is a garment their hands made, or a picture they painted, or some bit of work they did. About the house everything is sacred because of the memories it awakens.
The friends are not altogether gone from us who are brought back so vividly to our memory by the things and places amid which they once walked. Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster has written tenderly of this staying of our friends with us in the familiar scenes on which they left the touch of their life:–
“They never quite leave us, our friends who have passed
Through the shadows of death to the sunlight above;
A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast
To the places thy blessed with their presence and love.
“The work which they left, and the books which they read,
Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence rare;
And the songs that they sung, and the dear words that they said,
Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air.”
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