Читать книгу The World As I Have Found It - Mary L. Day - Страница 5

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"I remember, I remember

How my childhood fleeted by—

The mirth of its December,

And the warmth of its July."

In a former volume I have recounted the varied scenes of an eventful childhood, whose auroral dawn was tinted with the rose-hue and perfumed with the breath of light-winged moments; even as the Goddess of the Morning ushers in the new-born day with her flower-laden chariot, and the bright Morning Star lends its light ere it sinks under the horizon.

Having my birth on the rich soil of a Southern land, and cradled under its tropical skies and sunny smiles, I was early transplanted to colder climes and ruder blasts, yet through the nurture of a mother's gentle hand, and the ministrations of a loving band of sisters and brothers, whose talismanic touch toned every note, softened every sorrow and heightened every hope, I could but bloom like an Alpine flower in its bed of snow.

But in the golden chain there came to be, in time, a "missing link;" the mother's life went out, and from the darkened fireside vanished the little flock, scattered through various ways to various destinies.

My own was a slippery path to tread, and ofttimes led my weary feet into the shadow, and gloom, and darkness. Through sickness, neglect and maltreatment came all too soon "sorrow's crown of sorrow;" when over the young life fell a dark pall, and eyes so used to light no longer held the prisoned sunbeams, and passed forever under the relentless bond and cruel curse of blindness. Then indeed my soul grew dark! And could my restless eyes wait in thraldom for the dawn of an eternal day, and must my wandering feet pass through the "valley of the shadow," ere I could see the light "around the Great White Throne?"

Through a singular complication of circumstances I was led to the home of a sister in Chicago, from whom I had long been separated; and by equally singular ways I was also there reunited to three of my brothers (Charles, William and Howard). Then my veiled vision could not shut out the loved lineaments living in the pictured halls of memory—the vision of a love-hallowed home, and a mother's face crowning all. Scenes and faces gone, passed like a panorama before my mind's eye, and

"So the blessed train passed by me,

But the vision was sealed upon my soul."

Through the agency of family friends I returned to my birth-place, and with strange and mingled emotions was welcomed back to Baltimore, with kind greetings from relatives and friends. Some had passed beyond the portal of earthly existence, and others unexpectedly reappeared, among whom was my father, whose face I could not see, but whose emotion betokened great anguish at the sight of his blind daughter. Oh how many memories must have passed through his mind, as he clasped to his heart his chastened, motherless child, and, while other loves and other ties were his, "the shades of friends departed" as told by Longfellow must have entered a weird train, and amid other angel footsteps must have come—

"That being beauteous

Who unto his youth was given;

More than all things else to love him,

And is now a saint in Heaven."

Notwithstanding so many former attempts at the restoration of my sight, another effort was made, involving a trip to New York, where a most painful operation was undergone. But, alas! although a brief period was accorded me, in which I saw with rapture objects around me, it was only to be shut out into utter and hopeless sightlessness. As the wounded hare seeks some cover remote from the human ken, so did my sinking soul seek the solace of solitude, where for twenty-four hours I searched my nature to its depths, and made resolves for my future course, known only to God and pitying angels. They alone comforted me then, and they have sustained and soothed through every succeeding trial!