Roundabout Papers [84]
over poor Jack Reckless's note-book, amongst his memoranda of racing odds given and taken, perhaps you may read:--"Nabbam's bill, due 29th September, 142l. 15s. 6d." Let us trust, as the day has passed, that the little transaction here noted has been satisfactorily terminated. If you are paterfamilias, and a worthy kind gentleman, no doubt you have marked down on your register, 17th December (say), "Boys come home." Ah, how carefully that blessed day is marked in THEIR little calendars! In my time it used to be, Wednesday, 13th November, "5 WEEKS FROM THE HOLIDAYS;" Wednesday, 20th November, "4 WEEKS FROM THE HOLIDAYS;" until sluggish time sped on, and we came to WEDNESDAY l8th DECEMBER. O rapture! Do you remember pea- shooters? I think we only had them on going home for holidays from private schools,--at public schools men are too dignified. And then came that glorious announcement, Wednesday, 27th, "Papa took us to the Pantomime;" or if not papa, perhaps you condescended to go to the pit, under charge of the footman. That was near the end of the year--and mamma gave you a new pocket- book, perhaps, with a little coin, God bless her, in the pocket. And that pocket-book was for next year, you know; and, in that pocket-book you had to write down that sad day, Wednesday, January 24th, eighteen hundred and never mind what,--when Dr. Birch's young friends were expected to re-assemble. Ah me! Every person who turns this page over has his own little diary, in paper or ruled in his memory tablets, and in which are set down the transactions of the now dying year. Boys and men, we have our calendar, mothers and maidens. For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad day that is--how fondly and bitterly remembered--when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger, to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at home, when the tall brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about him wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and other wondrous apparatus of war and travel which poured in and filled the hall; the new dressing-case for the beard not yet grown; the great sword-case at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how quickly the melancholy dawn came! Only too soon the sun rose over the houses. And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. The house began to stir. The family gathers together for the last meal. For the last time in the midst of them the widow kneels amongst her kneeling children, and falters a prayer in which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to the care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide--what prayers you hear! And so the nights pass and the days succeed, until that one comes when tears and parting shall be no more. In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sadness, not for this year only, but for all. On a certain day--and the sun perhaps, shining ever so brightly--the housemother comes down to her family with a sad face, which scares the children round about in the midst of their laughter and prattle. They may have forgotten--but she has not--a day which came, twenty years ago it may be, and which she remembers only too well: the long night-watch; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating at the pane; the infant speechless, but moaning in its little crib; and then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then the children, as they see their mother's face, remember this was the day on which their little brother died. It was before they were born; but she remembers