Southern Christian Advocate

My Birth-Day Night,

BY E. A. W.

I'm sitting lonely this dark summer night while others are sleeping,
thinking of the early years of this pilgrimage of mine. Sometimes I'm
in shadows, sometimes in sunshine.

The old home where I was reared stands up vividly 'midst widespreading oaks and graceful elms. I can hear again the soft murmur of the rolling river just beyond and see the lazy herds grazing in the green meadows.

Memory delights to recall the old folks at home, their crosses and joys and how perplexed they often were by the rude little boy, providence placed in their hands. There they stand in the porch in the shadow of the trees and their smile is just the same it seems to-day as it was of yore.

There is old Carlo, too, my first dog pet, wagging his tail, looking benignantly. He was half cur, and half bull, and as brave a dog as ever gave battle. I remember his sad end. It was a frosty morning, and I took him with me on my first hunting excursion. A hare was "jumped" Carlo jumped and I jumped and fired, killing dead the faithful old dog. I'll never forget his reproachful look—it follows me even to-day—as he laid down, groaned and died.

And the school—the old log house in the scrubby pines was not far from the foot of the hill where bubbled all the time the coolest water you ever drank. Miss Hannah, a serious spinster, taught us the rules and boxed me on the ears one day till I heard a ringing noise, all because on the slate I was making p'ctures and not "tending to my ciphering.

There looms up too the little sweetheart in the dim mist of past recollections—her flushed cheeks, smiling face and the sad brown eyes as fresh from play, we'd sit together and ply our daily tasks at school. But after a summer or two she went one way, I another and she is so mixed in this big mortal crowd that I know not how she fares to-day, or whether she be in earth or in heaven above.

Thus went childhood's happy hours till I reached the dreadful teens and learned to sin and alas, made more "pictures." Oh, well, I'll drop a tear over time misspent and leisure hours misapplied and will eagerly grasp the hand of hope to be led a better way. The morning hours are not yet all gone and ere the evening shades come on He whom I follow will sanctify time and talent and make all loss gain.

Moral: Hearken ye young: "Act, act, in the living present." Don't make pictures, and 'tend to your ciphering.

Smoaks, S. C., Aug. 17, 1898.