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A HUNDRED YEARS TO COME.
Who’ll press for gold this crowded street
A hundred years to come?
Who’ll tread yon church with willing feet,
A hundred years to come?
Pale, trembling age and fiery youth,
And childhood with its brow of truth,
The rich and poor, on land, on sea,
Where will the mighty millions be,
A hundred years to come?
We all within our graves shall sleep,
A hundred years to come;
No living soul for us will weep,
A hundred years to come.
But other men our land will till,
And others then our streets will fill,
And other words will sing as gay,
And bright the sunshine as today,
A hundred years to come.
—Anonymous.
•t
CHAT.
Have you noticed that people are becoming longer
lived? Almost every day we read of persons still
alive who have passed the hundredth mile stone, and
one old colored uncle is reported to be enjoying life
in Pelham, Georgia, at the age of 128. I wish some
one from Pelham would write me about this most
remarkable case. The old man is said to have been
a drummer boy in the War of 1812.
Also, I would like to know the sequel of that won
derful story published last year, of a Tennessee cen
tenarian, who had invited all the boys and girls over
ninety years old to a reception and banquet near
Tate Springs, where he would wed his first —and last
—love on her hundredth birthday. They had been sep
arated by cruel fate (in the shape of worldly par
ents) but had remained loyal and unwedded, though
quite lost sight of by each other until the lady
chanced to see his published invitation to all nonage
narians to attend a reunion, he paying all traveling
and other expenses of his guests. She at once wrote
to him from England, where she was living, and,
overjoyed, he cabled to her that he would come and
bring her to the re-union. This beautiful “romance
of real life’’ was published last summer, with the
names and addresses of the two parties and a pro
gram of the proposed centenarian’s re-union. Was
the program carried out? Did the true hearted lover
—his name was Burden —take the voyage to Eng
land in defiance of years and seasickness and bring
back his boyhood’s lady love and marry her on her
hundredth birthday, under the very tree which was
their trysting spot when they were boy and girl
sweethearts, and mortally afraid of the old folks?
This spot was near Tate Springs, Alabama, and sure
ly, if that marvelous program was carried out, the
story should have been told to the public. I hope some
of our Alabama readers will let us hear about it.
We have a near-centenarian in our village, w T hose
mind is as clear as his body is active. He is nine
ty-five years old. We had another, still older, who
hade fair to round out his century until he was par
alyzed by an accident that might well have killed a
young man, but he lived eight months after it.
The fact that so many noted men who lived to a
great age retained their mental faculties unclouded
is most encouraging as tending to confirm our belief
in the continued existence of the mind after the death
of the body. Tennyson’s and Gladstone’s last utter
ances were even more full of thought, force and im
agination than the earlier outcome of their genius.
Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, and other Americans were
mentally sound when they were octogenarians, and of
noted historic characters, Von Moltke, John Wes
ley, John Adams, Michael Angelo, and many others
have shown that they could keep up their youthful
pace far into the nineties.
I believe we are kept here as long as we are use
ful to others —as long as we can serve. Some serve,
as you know, “who only stand and wait,” and some
who are helpless, and perhaps irritable, fulfill their
mission by serving to cultivate patience and forbear
ance in those who have the care of them. Other
dependent and helpless ones call out pity and ten
derness in others, thus developing uplifting traits.
Truly all of us have our missions—and usually
these missions are services to others either directly
or indirectly, by acts, or through written or spoken
words, example and influence.
THE HOUSEHOLD
A Department of Expression For Those Who Feel and Think.
The Golden Age for August 20, 1908.
I have just been well pleased by receiving a letter
for the Household from cur gifted Geraldine, that
dear lover of. nature and of flowers, who has told
us so many things worth remembering about the
culture of her floral favorites.
Another flower lover and fine letter writer, well
known to the Sunny South Household —Tessa W.
Roddey—comes back to us today. Both these old time
friends are as welcome as roses in May. Geraldine
tells us sad news of some of our old Sunny South
boys. Both Slip and Dr. Gem have been ill, and Sol
dier Kintz —our member from the Philippines, who
generously sent the Householders such beautiful sou
venirs from the tropic islands, has been suffering all
summer at Fort Riley, Kansas. If Geraldine will
send me the number of his regiment and company,
I will write to him and send copies of the Golden
Age. Geraldine is already preparing to surround
herself with indoor greenery, when winter has made
the earth brown and bare. She has ordered thirteen
different kinds of ferns. Order one more, Gerry, I am
superstitious about that number thirteen.
Wtb ®ur Correspondents
LEARN TO THROW AWAY.
Some women, in their desire to economize, have
as their motto “Save everything,” and carry it out to
an extreme end. Their homes are veritable lumber
dens, old shoes, old clothes, old mattresses, old fur
niture and quilts are stored away in closets and attics
and corners, making breeding places for moths and
disease germs. Their trunks, chests, and bureau
drawers are filled with a motley collection of soiled
gloves, wrinkled ribbons, worn-out belts, stockings,
etc., which they keep with the intention, in some far
away time of leisure, to renovate, clean and mend.
But the time for this never comes and the things
are not worth it if it should come. In these busy
days there is need for every spare moment, either for
work that tells, or for needed rest. Give the old
things away if you can, and if not, make a bonfire
of them and of the moths and germs they harbor.
GRACE TELFAIR.
FLOWERS—THE SOULS OF NATURE.
I wish I could impress on my readers how necessa
ry it is to have flowers in the home, especially in
winter. Flowers are the souls of nature. In an
opening flower there is soul uplift, a moral exhila
ration, a spiritual awakening that lifts one for the
moment far above the sordid elements that dominate
so many lives.
To see a home where every idea is to make money
and every effort is to save money, where everything
that doesn’t help to make or to save money is looked
on as waste of time and effort, is to see a place not
worth while remaining long in its atmosphere.
Money is not the greatest good, but an all-absorb
ing desire for it is the greatest evil —it is a desire,
which, if encouraged, will ultimately eliminate all
finer sensibilities and resolve us into mere mechani
cal appliances for money saving, money making and
money getting.
As flowers carry us away from this sordidness
lift us above it, as they charm us into forgetfulness,
for the moment, of the merely material, let’s keep
flowers, lots of them, not just a few rare ones to be
looked at and used for decorative purposes, but
many of them, and keep them because you like to
give them rich soil and watch a deeper, richer green
come into the foliage, because you like to give them
copious drinks of water and see them lift their
graceful heads in prompt, responsive appreciation.
Keep plants because you love to touch the delicate
leaves, love to feed them soil elements to give new
life and vigor and if one accidentally gets broken,
don’t throw the broken member out into the sun
to die, but push it down into the soil by the parent
plant and let it send out small thread-like rootlets
to draw sustenance for it and help it to
grow into a fine plant to give its share of
bloom and beauty to God’s lovely world. Don’t ever
keep plants for mercenary motives; don’t keep them
because it is customary to have a few about a house.
Keep them because you love them and can’t help
keeping them; if you feel deeply interested in plants
and enjoy working with them and for them, there is
something good in you, some yearning for the high-
est life and if you don’t love them, buy a few and
cultivate a love for them, that is so easily
done. You have no idea how strong an appeal they
will make, and soon you will find yourself loving
each plant, welcoming each new leaf with a smile,
watching each new bloom and greeting it with a
feeling of closer kinship with the Divine Creator of
all bloom and beauty.
Don’t lend your plants to decorate churches and
halls just to attract the attention or some wealthy
people and secure their aid and influence —that is
degrading flowers; but give your plants to the sick
and needy poor, to hospital wards, where the
feverish, restless, pain-smitten eyes of the sufferer
can turn to the living beauty of green leaves and
fresh blossoms and find comfort and ease.
Flowers are God’s gift of beauty to his children of
the earth. We should receive them gratefully and
care for them with tenderness. In the spring, when
the world of nature is a living, growing illustration of
’the truth of the resurrection, the flowers unfolding
everywhere from their brown or green sheaths, thrill
us with a spiritual awakening which should show us
how necessary to our soul refreshment are these fair
and fragrant messengers of divine love. But it is
when autumn’s winds are moaning and the earth is
chill and sad that the late blooming roses, dahlias,
and great feathery chrysanthemums brighten the
melancholy days. So now, while the time is ripe,
while the season is fitting, select bulbs for winter
blooms.
Hyacinths are my favorites. Select medium-sized
fern bulbs, rather than larger, soft ones, bury them
in damp soil and place in a dark corner. Don’t put
on too much water. Be patient and when you see
two green hands pushing through the soil, move
the box to a sunnier place. Place about six bulbs
to one box, and select varieties —pink, blue, purple,
white —such a lovely cluster as they make, and
many cold, rainy winter days you can carry this
box of bloom and beauty into some one’s room and
watch the glow of pleasure they will call to every
face. Os course there are many flowers to select
from, scarlet salvia, geraniums, lilies, fuchsias, but
let me urge you, no matter how great the effort
you must make to have them, do try to have a
winter garden in your room, by a sunny window if
no larger spot can be found, and you will get pleasure
and give pleasure therefrom.
Long Beach, Miss. TESSA W. RODDEY.
*
THAT MOUNTAIN WALK, A DAY DREAM.
To my invitation to come and spend the summer
with us in the mountains of old east Tennessee, our
Mother Meb tells us how much she would like to
do so, and imagines that she would like to take
walks among the mountains and ravines, but does
not assure us that we need expect her; so we shall
do the next best thing and imagine that we are to
meet her at the railroad, some thirteen miles away.
We prepared the company tent for her and whatever
other friends she chose to bring with her and
on the day she would arrive, we got up about 3
o’clock in the morning and had the big mules hitched
to the hack and set off for the station to meet one
whom we have not seen, yet one for whom we have
a deep regard.
We waited about the depot, after being told that the
train was over an hour late, until we began to feel
that we should like to have the management of
the little railroad with its large and independent
ways for a week or so, until we had turned off a
few conductors and superintendents and had ap
pointed others that w r ould have some regard for the
feelings of the traveling public that pays its money
to them for its accommodation.
At last we heard a whistle blow in the distance,
and the loungers about the depot began to show signs
of life as the train of one car came (slowly) dashing
(!) up.
We were expectant, very, and our heart beat as
it used to when we went to see our best girl and
tried to tell her some of our deepest thoughts.
First there came out a slender, graceful woman
with an alert manner and a wealth of dark hair.
Could this be our little mother”? No, when we
looked again and saw her eyes snap with a “keep
your distance kind of look we discovered that she
was too young for M. E. B. But we were sure that
we knew her, and we ventured to speak the name
Lomacita in a low tone. When she looked our way
