Emory Adams Allen

“ In sorrows we love and trust our friends more tenderly, and the dead become dearer to us. Just as the stars shine out in the night, so there are faces that look at us in our grief, though before they were fading from our recollections. Suffering! Let no man dread it too much, because it is better for him, and will help make him sure of being immortal. Just as it is only at night that other worlds are to be seen shining in the distance, so it is in sorrow—the night of the soul—that we see the farthest, and know ourselves natives of infinity, sons and daughters of immortality. ”

“ Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them; every storm beats against them. What, in the world, we would pass by in sport, in our homes would wound us to the quick. Very little can we bear at home, for it is a sensitive place.
If we would have a true home, we must guard well our thoughts and actions. A single bitter word may disquiet the home for a whole day; but, like unexpected flowers which spring up along our path full of freshness, fragrance, and beauty, so do kind words and gentle acts and sweet disposition make glad the home where peace and blessing dwell. ”

“ We creep into childhood, bound into youth, sober into manhood, and totter into old age. But through all let us so live that when in the evening of life the golden clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden mountains, and the light of heaven streams down through the gathering mists of death, we may have a peaceful and joyous entrance into that world of blessedness, where the great riddle of life, whose meaning we can only guess at here below, will be unfolded to us in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed and purified. ”

“ The eyes that are full of tears do not see, though, in the course of time, they come to see more clearly and brightly than those that have never known sorrow. Perhaps the heaviest affliction of life is that of the mother who has lost a child. As the waters roll in on shore with incessant throbs—not alone when storms prevail, but in calms as well—so it is with a mother's heart, bereaved of her children. Death always speaks with a voice of instruction and reproof; but when the first death happens in a home it speaks with a voice which scarcely any other form of tribulation can equal. ”

“ To the little child, home is his world—he knows no other. The father's love, the mother's smile, the sister's embrace, the brother's welcome, throw about his home a heavenly halo, and make it as attractive to him as the home of angels. Home is the spot where the child pours out all his complaint, and it is the grave of all his sorrows. Childhood has its sorrows and its grievances; but home is the place where these are soothed and banished by the sweet lullaby of a fond mother's voice. ”

“ Life is often but a bitter struggle from first to last with many who wear smiling faces and are ever ready with a cheerful word, when there is scarcely a shred left of the hopes and opportunities which for years promised happiness and content. But it is human still to strive and yearn and grope for some unknown good that shall send all unrest and troubles to the winds and settle down over one's life with a halo of peace and satisfaction. The rainbow of hope is always visible in the future. ”

“ Selfishness contracts and narrows our benevolence, and causes us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to all the world besides. As frost to the bud and blight to the blossom, even such is self-interest to friendship, for confidence can not dwell where selfishness is porter at the gate. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. Selfishness is the bane of all life. ”

“ For too many homes are like the frame of a harp that stands without strings. In form and outline they suggest music, but no melody arises from the empty spaces; and thus it happens that home is unattractive, dreary, and dull.
And do you, fathers and mothers, you who have sons and daughters growing up around you, do you ever think of your responsibility of keeping alive the home feeling in the hearts of your children? Remember that within your means the obligation rests upon you of making their homes the pleasantest spot on earth, to make the word home to them the synonym of happiness. ”

“ Without it life would be a blank, a dreary void, an inextricable chaos, an unlettered page cast upon the vast ocean of uncertainty. Memory is the cabinet of the imagination, the treasury of reason, the registry of conscience, and the council chamber of thought. It is the only paradise we are sure of always possessing. Even our first parents could not be driven out of it. The memory of good actions is the starlight of the soul. Memory tempers prosperity by recalling past distresses, mitigates adversity by bringing up the thoughts of past joys, it controls youth and delights old age. ”

“ The love we should bear to a parent is not to be measured by years, nor annihilated by distance, nor forgotten when they sleep in dust. Marks of age may appear in our homes and on our persons, but the memory of a beloved parent is more enduring than that of time itself. Who has stood by the grave of a mother and not remembered her pleasant smiles, kind words, earnest prayer, and assurance expressed in a dying hour? Many years may have passed, memory may be treacherous in other things, but will reproduce with freshness the impressions once made by a mother's influence. ”

“ But when we have once been called upon to feel and undergo a great sorrow, to bend the back and bow the head, to endure the yoke and suffer the agony, to abide the pelting of the storm of adversity and sorrow, when few, perhaps none, sympathize with us—these are the days of anguish and of darkness, these the nights of desolation and despair; and when they have once come upon us with their appalling weight, their remorseless power, we can never be beguiled into a forgetfulness of them. The memory of them will endure as long as life shall last. ”

“ Real friends are wont to visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come of their own accord. A friend is not known in prosperity, but can not be hidden in adversity. If we lack the sagacity to discriminate wisely between our acquaintances and our friends, misfortune will readily do it for us. Prosperity gains friends, and adversity tries them. False friends are like our shadows—keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade. False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces ”

“ Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror of daily life. Tears and laughter are twin-born. Like two children sleeping in one cradle, when one wakes and stirs the other wakes also.
Be not dismayed at the trials of life; they are sent for your good. God knows what keys in the human soul to touch in order to draw out its sweetest and most perfect harmonies. These may be the strains of sadness and sorrow as well as the loftier notes of joy and gladness. Think not that uninterrupted joy is good. The sunshine lies upon the mountain top all day, and lingers there latest and longest at eventide. ”

“ It is the tear dropped with the mother as she weeps over the bier of her departed child; it is the word of sympathy to the discouraged and the disheartened, the cup of cold water and the slice of bread to the hungry one.
Kindness makes sunshine wherever it goes. It finds its way into the hidden chambers of the heart, and brings forth golden treasures, which harshness would have sealed up forever. Kindness makes the mother's lullaby sweeter than the song of the lark, and renders the care-worn brow of the father and man of business less severe in its expression. ”

“ No calamity can produce such a paralysis of the mind. It is the capstone of the climax of human misery. The mental powers are frozen with indifference, the heart becomes ossified with melancholy, the soul is shrouded in a cloud of gloom. No words of consolation, no cheerful repartee can break the death-like calm; no love can warm the pent-up heart, no sunbeam dispel the dark cloud. Time may effect a change; death will break the monotony. We can extend our kindness, but can not relieve the victim. ”

“ This is always the case where the heart fails to accept the lesson taught. By submission to sorrow the sweetest traits of character are developed, as some fruits are brought to perfection only by frost. Misfortune should act upon us or upon our feelings like fire upon old tenements, which are consumed only to be rebuilt with greater perfection. The winds of adversity sweep over the soul and scatter the fairest blossoms of hope. But the blossoms fall that the fruit may appear. So with us, when the flowers of hope are gone, there come the fruits of long-suffering, patience, faith, and love. ”

“ A true hope we can touch somehow through all the lights and shadows of life. It is a prophecy fulfilled in part—God's earnest money paid into our hands, that he will be ready with the whole when we are ready for it. It is the sunlight on the hill-top when the valley is dark as death; the spirit touching us, all through our pilgrimage, and then soaring away with us into the blessed life where we may expect either that the fruition will be entirely equal to the hope, or that the old glamour will come over us again, and beckon us on forever as the choicest gift heaven has to give. ”

“ It can not be that earth is man's only abiding place. It can not be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float for a moment upon its surface, and then sink into nothingness and darkness forever. Else why is it that the high and glorious aspirations, which leap like angels from the temples of our hearts, are forever wandering abroad satisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and the cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off and leave us to muse on their faded loveliness? ”

“ No costly marble can build a more enduring monument to her memory than the impress she makes on her own household. The changing scenes of life may hurl the genius of man from eminence to utter ruin; for his life hangs on the fabric of public opinion. But the honest form of a true mother reigns queen in the hearts of her children forever.
Man's admirers may be greater, but woman holds her kindred by a silken cord of familiar kindness, strengthened and extended by each little courtesy of a life-time. Man may make his monument of granite or of marble, woman hers of immortality. ”

“ The strings of your heart are not in tune with the chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he evolves the music of the universe. Your being does not respond to the touch of Providence, and if beauty and truth and goodness come down to you like angels out of heaven and sing you their sweetest songs, you do not see their wings, nor recognize their home and parentage.
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all real joys, and even procure for us the highest pleasures. ”

“ Falsehood and slander will be unknown. Sectarian walls will crumble to dust. Then this world will be transformed into a paradise, in which every thing that is beautiful and lovely shall grow and bloom. Disinterested and benevolent acts will abound. Sorrow and disappointments will flee away, and peace, sunshine, and joy will beautify and adorn life.
Death always makes a beautiful appeal to charity. When we look upon the dead form, so composed and still, the kindness and the love that are in us all come forth. The grave covers every error, buries every defect, extinguishes every resentment. ”

“ The great inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honors, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil. It is not known where he who invented the plow was born, or where he died; yet he has effected more for the happiness of the world than the whole race of heroes and conquerors who drenched it in tears and blood, whose birth, parentage, and education have been handed down to us with a precision proportionate to the mischief they have done. ”

“ The great error of womankind is that they take the shadow for the substance, the glitter for the gold, the heraldry and trappings of the world for the priceless essence of womanly worth which exists within the mind. Every young man, as a general rule, has some purpose laid down for the grand object of his life—some plan, for the accomplishment of which all his other actions are made to serve as auxiliaries. It is to be regretted that every young woman does not also have a set purpose of life—some grand aim, grand in its character. ”