THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3176, 27 January 1915, Page 66

THE GARLAND.

By Duncan Wright, Dunedin.

FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 74.

“HOME! SWEET HOME!” Who has not sung, or heard sung, John Howard Payne’s beautiful song, “Home sweet home”? To sing in or near the trenches where our gallant sons are now enduring indescribable hardships and suffering in defence of our glorious * Empire would be refined cruelty. Don’t you think so? ’Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam, , . ... Bo it ever so humble, there s no place like borne; A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, , Which, seek through the world, is ue er met with elsewhere, Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There’s no place like home! there s no place like homel And we readily recall, too, the words of James Montgomery : There is a land of every land the pride, Belov’d by heaven o’er all the world beside, Where shall that land, that spot on earth be found? , , , Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around; Oh! thou shall find, howe’er thy footsteps roam, That land thy country, and that spot thy home. Sir Walter Scott asks: Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said: This is my own, my native land! Whose heart has ne’er within him burn’d As home his footsteps he hath turn'd Prom wandering on >a foreign strand? And Goldsmith sings : Such is the patriot’s boast, where’er we roam. His first, best country ever is at home. Have you seen the proverbs I now quote? If so, perhaps they have been forgotten: East or west, home is best. The place to spend a happy day —home. He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. An Englishman’s house is his castle (English). To every bird its nest is fair (French). The reek of my own house is better than the fire of another’s (Spanish). Every dog is a lion at home (Italian). To Adam, Paradise was home; to the good among his descendants, home is paradise. She always made home happy (epitaph). A child, speaking of his home to a friend, was asked: “Where is your home?” and replied “Where mother is.” How often have we seen in cottage and mansion the motto: “What is home without a mother?” Ornithologists tell us that many birds return year after year to the same tree to nest. The wren, the peewit, and the robin repeatedly occupy the same nesting places, their return being prompted by a true love of home. An exile from home, splendour dazzles in vain, O give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gaily that came at my call, Give me them with the peace of mind, dearer than all. Home! Home! Sweet home! During the Franco German war (1870) pigeons were largely used as messengers. One of them, caught by the Prussians, was sent by Prince Frederick Charles to his mother as a prisoner of war. After four years of confinement in the royal lofts the little French captive took advantage of an opportunity to escape, and returned to its old home. If we but knew the language of these songsters would it sound sometimes like ; Homo, home, sweet, sweet home, There’s no place like home! Well do I remember what happened, long years ago, when new-comers from the Old Land arrived at the old barracks at Caversham. A number of us visited and tried to cheer the poor things, who felt lonely and homesick; but very often the only response we received was a flood of tears. Home-sickness, like sea-sickness, is a really dreadful malady and quite beyond the power of your most skilled medico. Thank God, all these experiences have been forgotten, and hundreds of these very people have comfortable homes and are prosperous and well-contented colonists. But we also know how the exile longs to see his native land. The same remark applies to the lonely mariner, “ far, far at sea”; to the soldier on the battlefield; aye, and to the prodigal (son or daughter) who has left the parental roof; and to both men and women who, in foreign parts, are near the end of life’s journey. Many a Swiss, it is well known, has sunk as a martyr to his longing after home. His heart is moved when he hears the celebrated national air of the “ Ranz dcs Vaches,” the herdsman’s melody, played on the alpenhorn as a call to the cows. When played in the open air, with the

mountain echoes answering, it is very effective. Overcome with emotion, the Swiss sheds tears, and is only consoled by the prospect of immediately returning to his native home. Who shall blame him ? HENRY WARD BEECHER’S idea of home is expressed thus: “ A man’s house should be on the hilltop of cheerfulness and serenity, so high that no shadows rest upon it, and where the morning comes so early and the evening tarries so late that the day has twice as many golden hours as those of other men. Home should be the centre of joy, equatorial and tropical.” If all that we have said and quoted be true, is it any wonder that scores of homes give a prominent place to the motto or prayer: “God bless our home”? By the soft green light in the woody glade, On the banks of moss where thy childhood played, By the household tree through which thine First looked in love to the summer sky, By the dewy gleam, by the very breath Of the primrose-tufts in the grass beneath, Upon thine heart there is laid a spell Holy and precious—guard it well. Do you know the story of the life and labours of Duncan Mathieson, the Scottish evangelist? Let me quote one incident : ‘‘Do you ever take God’s name in vain?” was the question put by a minister to a herd laddie. “ Na, na, sir. God’s children never sweer,” said the boy. “You are, then, one of God’s children, are you? When did that come about?” _ “ Weel, sir,” replied the lad, “it wis ahoot the Martimiss term last year when I gaed hame to see my faither’s fouk. I wonnered when I saw a’ things sae sair changed and the hoose was changed like. An’ my faither, he prayed afore the supper an’ efter the supper, an’ he never used to say grace at a’. An’ syne he said : ‘ Fetch ben the buik,’ an’ he read, an’ he sang, and syne they a’ gaed doon on their knees; an’ I never saw that afore. An’ my faither he prayed, an’ I grat,_ an’ we a’ grat, an’ I was converted that nicht. That was Martimiss last year, ye ken; an’ I never could sweer sin syne.” Thanks, my toy, thanks for the dear old Doric. Many readers remember and could quote from “The Cottar’s Saturday Night,” by Robert Burns; The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside. His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare, Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care; And “ Let us worship God,” he says with solemn air. How sweet and sacred are these memories of long ago! Those who live in these far-off lands under the Southern Cross never forgot the sunny days of childhood! Never. I Do we forget the old dominies? Do we forget the village pastor, or the companions of long, long ago? Does any reader call this sentiment? If so, the writer of this message glories in being a sentimentalist. Home, home, sweet, sweet home, There's no place like home! Sing it again, and let your children sing it, and in all sincerity repeat, once more, the gi’acions words : GOD BLESS OUR HOME! I would fly from the city, would fly from its care, To my own native plants and my flowers so fair, To the cool grassy shade and the rivulet bright, Which reflects the pale moon in its bosom of light; , Again would X view the old cottage so dear, Where I sported a babe without sorrow or I would leave this great city, so brilliant and gay, For a peep at my home on this fair summer day. . I have friends whom I love and would leave with regret, , But the love of my home, oh tis tenderer yet. Margaret M. Davidson. To some it may seem strange and almost inconsistent, but the fact remains that men who make no profession of religion cordially assent to the petition quoted —“God Bless Our Home.” _ As for mothers, all the world knows their attitude towards high ideals in home life. A pang of deepest anguish wrings her hearty as she looks at her bonnie bairns in view of the rushing tide of evil to which they will bo exposed, and the temptations which await them, as they reach riper years; and then, with great intensity, she lifts up her eyes to the hills and cries: “0 God, save and bless and keep my children, and make them a blessing.” Once more I quote from my dear old friend, Duncan Mathieson : “Sir,” said a woman to me one day, “I am happier than I was on my marriage day.” She had been converted to God at an evangelistic meeting. Her husband, a scoffer and a victim to strong drink, was maddened by her conversion, and gave her no peflce. She bore his brutal treatment with Christian fortitude and meakness, and never ceased to pray for hini. “God has heard my prayers._ Oh, sir, if you had seen him the other night'holding family worship for the first time in his life! There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and oor wee lassie looked up in his face and said, ‘Father, ye’ll win to heaven, noo, an’ I’ll gang avi’ ye, and we’ll a’ he there.’ ” Have you read the pathetic story of the man who wrote “Home, sweet home”? Overtaken by misfortune, poverty, and sickness, John Howard Payne in weakness staggered down the streets of Paris towards the garret where he slept. Dark ness had fallen. The sleet drove against his face, and the cold pierced his thin cloak. That right, shivering beside his table, he lighted his candle, and though

uie tears tea on tne paper lus heart went bounding across the seas, for he knew there was no place like home. In vision he saw the old homestead, saw again the smile of the mother, long since dead, and heard his father s voice, and realised that home, that once was behind him, was now before him, in that heaven where he should meet again those whom he had loved and lost. Home! Sweet Home! May we all meet in the morning light, where darkness never comes!