Reminiscence

“ It is also my conviction that whatever brings us acquainted with, and interested in the affairs and well being of our fellow creatures, in their varied stations and positions in society, may have a beneficial influence on our hearts, minds, and characters.
Another short “Reminiscence,” which was written about this time, will show how her thoughts went back to the days of her youth, and with what tenacity her memory retained the most minute details of bygone scenes and events. ”

“ But now, to close my remarks on national peculiarities, with what I may term a practical and personal application. We have in our later pages adopted a more solemn and serious view of past reminiscences as they bear upon questions connected with a profession of religion. It is quite suitable then to recall the fact which applies individually to all our readers. We shall ourselves each of us one day become subject to a "reminiscence" of others. ”

“ Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad. ”

“ I am reporting it as an experience in life; those who understand will understand. And thus out of my journeys I have words which bring back to me with indescribable poignancy the particular impression of a time or a place. I prize them more highly than almost any other of my possessions, for they come to me seemingly out of the air, and the remembrance of them enables me to recall or live over a past experience with scarcely diminished emotion. ”

“ It is pleasant to look back upon past pleasures, to recall the beautiful scenes we have once witnessed, the smile of friendship, the tear of sympathy, the glance of affection, the tone of love, or to listen again to the thrilling sounds of soul-enrapturing music, that has once delighted us. But so varied is our pathway of life, that a thorough retrospection must ever be fraught with sad as well as pleasing reflection. Is memory thus faithful to her trust? ”

“ Old memories rush o'er my mind just now
⁠Of faces and friends of the past;
Of that happy time when life's dream was all bright,
⁠E'er the clear sky of youth was o'ercast.
Very dear are those mem'ries,—they've clung round my heart. ”

“ What an interesting and varied picture do these dates present to my mind's eye, and how many remembrances are associated with them of joy and sorrow, of trial and happiness! I could willingly spend hours in recalling all in detail, and I feel as if it would do us both good, should I do so; for I find that, in the full occupation of the present, the lessons of the past are losing their power over me. Their voice cannot be heard in the busy bustle of life ”

“ And with our memory wings her own fond prayer.
O bliss of child-like innocence, and love
Tried to old age! creative power to win,
And raise new worlds, where happy fancies rove,
Forgetting quite this grosser world of sin.
Bright are their dreams, because their thoughts are clear,
Their memory cheering: but th’ earth-stained spright,
Whose wakeful musings are of guilt and fear,
Must hover nearer earth, and less in light.
Farewell, for her, th’ ideal scenes so fair—
Yet not farewell her hope, since thou hast deigned,
Creator of all hearts! ”

“ Memory! Who has not felt its influence! Who of us would wish to part with its delights and quiet teachings! Beautifully adapted is the twilight hour to the cherishing of the recollections of the past. It is then that the hum of busy life is hushed, and all nature seems resting from its toil. Then, in undisturbed peace, rise before us the loved ones we have cherished, and whose memories, like guardian angels, always attend us. ”

“ Every life-memory, every life-experience, is a common possession, and with a tone, a look, a gesture, a silent motion, as much of joy, sorrow, or reflection is aroused in their bosoms as we can bring about through long expositions and spluttering declamations. ”

“ Let us all take care, as the daily life rolls swiftly on, that we lay up happy memories, or at least pleasant memories, when that daily life has become the past,—the past which, when it was the present, was, alas! ”

“ After many years of travel and home-staying observation I have found that all worth remembrance, the salient things and scenes, emerge clearly out of myriad impressions, and become permanent in mind and memory. Things so emerging are typical at least, and probably true. ”

“ Its fever and its frolic and its fun;
The old life with its din, its laughter and its sin —
And chuck me in the gutter when it’s done.
Ah, well! it’s past and gone, and the memory is wan,
That conjures up each old familiar face ”

“ Memory has one, stranger still—filled with landscapes of imperishable interest! Who has not such a gallery in his own soul? Let Memory withdraw her folding-doors—and what do we see? The old homes of cherished infancy may be the first to crowd the walls and arrest the eye;—scenes of life's bright morning, the sun tipping with his rising beam the dim mountain-heights of the future! ”

“ Then how necessary that we should improve each moment, as it glides along into the unbounded ocean of eternity, that it may bear a good record to the future hour. And, O, how necessary that we should so spend our lives, that when we come to be laid upon our death-bed, in the last agonies of expiring nature, if reason does not forsake her throne, and memory still proves true to her trust, it may bring up the pleasing recollection that life has been well spent. ”

“ For the Remembrance even of the pleasantest Part of it is commonly attended with Shame, and Sting of Conscience, insomuch that the Memory of past Delights is more painful to us, than that of past Misfortunes. ”

“ Have power the sad remembrance to prolong,
Of love so ardent, and of faith so pure;
Still shall my verse thine epitaph remain,
Still shall thy charms be deathless in my strain,
While Time, and Love, and Memory, shall endure. ”

“ Come gentle reader, let us entwine arms with Memory, and wander back through the avenues of life to childhood's sunny dell, and as we return more leisurely pluck the wild flowers that grow beside the pathway, and entwine them for Memory's garland, and inhale the fragrance of by-gone years. ”

“ In a little we are upon our way again, a lessening memory at our backs; growing ruddy and merry, laughing, deriding, scoffing, enjoying, taking the blandishments of the moment with a heart of the lightest. ”

“ In tracing back the associations of many gone-by years, a host of thoughts rush in, and pensive remembrance of the dead who have labored with us casts deep shadows into the vista through which we view the past. ”

“ And upon no spot in the review of the past does one's memory dwell with so much intense emotion, as upon that thorny and tangled labyrinth through which the spirit wandered, 'bewildered, but not lost,' at the period when the necessity and duty of proving its own character first roused it to a sense of its responsibilities. You say most truly, that it is good to look at things at a distance, from new and various points of view. ”

“ And these memories of a time for ever fled, these lights which gladden or stir again your old heart sad and cold, these are the simple and fruitful beliefs, the transports of the soul, the insane devotions, the ardent passions, and all those orgies of heart and sense, all those frenzies of imagination, and all those follies of youth, which cause the wise to cry out so loudly, and which are the only feast-days of life. ”

“ Of cheering perfume streams,
Till with a lifted heart we tread
The pleasant land of dreams.
Make friends of potent memory,
Oh! young man in thy prime,
And with her jewels bright and rare,
Enrich the board of Time ”

“ The Net of Memory
I cast the Net of Memory,
Man's torment and delight,
Over the level Sands of Youth
That lay serenely bright,
Their tranquil gold at times submerged
In the Spring Tides of Love's Delight. ”

“ The memory that obtrudes is of a clouded page in my life—a chapter which I fatuously hoped had been closed and laid aside forever—something to be regretted, to stand as a warning in the future, and yet inclining me to a greater charity. This I know is the experience of many men. ”

“ My Father, I pray that it may be mine to have the recollection of happy deeds, and not the memory of unkept promises. Help me to remember that one act is worth a thousand intentions, and that memory is the storehouse that supplies old age. ”

“ Even the times of separation or of bitter quarrel, the aching heart whereon the keepsake lies, the spasms of jealousy, the tenterhooks of doubt; remembrance looks upon them all as treasures of a golden age. ”

“ Thus we find the aged invariably attached to the days that are gone, more than to those that are passing, or to come; even recollected pain loses its anguish, and the traces of memory though broken and imperfect are delightful to the eye that has grown dim to the illusions of hope. But to us, my young friends, who have never felt affliction to disgust us with life, or age to paralize the ardour of fancy, still to us memory opens a full source of pleasure. ”

“ On every side are mementos of a happy past, and all, though mute, speaking to me in a language whose power stirs the depths of my soul. Wherever the eye may turn, it meets with a silent greeting from an old friend, and the whole shrouded in a weird gloom that lends to the most common object an air of melancholy mystery. ”

“ But there is one object to which the mind and eye turn back yet again, and which by associations variously tender, pathetic, or amusing, lead memory off for a while to wander in the dreamy mazes of the past. ”

“ The remembrance of all that made life dear pierced me to the core—all that nature was to me, all the pleasures of sense and intellect, the hopes I had cherished—all was revealed to me as by a flash of lightning. ”

“ Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting, So but thy image endure in its prime. But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature Wills that remembrance should always decay— If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away— Me let no half-effaced memories cumber! ”

“ Did we behold, fair sights that might repay
All disappointment! and, as such, the eye
Delighted in them; but we felt, the while,
We should forget them:—they are of the sky,
And from our earthly memory fade away. ”

“ Is not Memory a fairy spirit, like Giselle, dancing round graves, hovering between us and the stars, flitting across our woodland rambles, throwing us garlands and love-tokens from the past, coming to us in dreams, so real that we clasp our loved ones, and gliding away when morning gleams on the material world? ”

“ When memory thus becomes the depository of grief, how faithfully is the charge kept!—and how much superior are the touches of one who paints from the life, and the heart, and the senses,—to those of one who dips his pen in his ink-stand, and casts his eye on a heap of musty parchments, to glean his facts or his feelings from them! ”

“ Thou, upon whom thy years fourscore
So lightly sit, thou hast a store
Of memories such as they alone
May have whose hearts all truth have known.
Now may this year bring thee no less
Than all the past of happiness! ”

“ Like the dying echo of the last tones of the departed, it is full of hallowed memories, and cherished associations, that haunt the inner chambers of the imagination, and linger with a mournful tenderness about the better feelings of the heart. ”

“ The mind of man is like a moving picture, supplied with objects not only from contemplation on things present, but from the fruitful sources of recollection and anticipation.
p. 27Memory retraces past events, and restores an ideal reality to scenes which are gone by for ever. They live again in revived imagery, and we seem to hear and see with renewed emotions what we heard and saw at a former period. Successions of such recollected circumstances often form a series of welcome memorials. In religious meditations, the memory becomes a sanctified instrument of spiritual improvement. ”

“ I wished to tell you, that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind, and sweet memory of the dead which you so happily describe as now almost begun, but I felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part not only of their "dream, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness." ”

“ And with the memories which that picture called up I may well bring these Recollections to a close. It is something to remember, amid the bustle and bitterness of active life, that one once had youth, and hope, and eagerness, and large opportunities, and generous friends. A tender and regretful sentiment seems to cling to the very walls and trees among which one cherished such bright ambitions and felt the passionate sympathy of such loving hearts. ”

“ That is what Memory can do even in this life under strong excitation, calling up its forgotten stores. Think what its power may be in that life as a handmaid to Conscience. With all its old lumber rooms of forgotten deeds thrown open—with all the forgotten feelings of my life—boyhood, youth, manhood—open for my contemplation. ”

“ How hard it is to remember what is most memorable. We remember how we itched, not how our hearts beat. I can sometimes recall to mind the quality, the immortality of my youthful life, but in memory is the only relation to it. ”

“ We have here expressed in plain language the imaginative memory of the beloved dead, rising upon the past, like moonlight upon midnight,—
"The gleam, the shadow, and the peace supreme."
This is its simple meaning—the statement of a truth, the utterance of personal feeling. But observe its hidden abstract significance—it is the revelation of what goes on in the depths of the soul, when the dead elements of what once was, are laid before the imagination, and so breathed upon as to be quickened into a new and higher life. ”

“ It is something even if one is bent double and may never again behold the light of day, to be able to reach back into a dim and forgotten past and to say, "I remember," especially when the memory recalls days of brilliance and of importance. ”