Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 3/Number 5/Home and Early Feelings

HOME AND EARLY FEELINGS.

The love of our native home increases with time and distance; and those only who have left it to wander over foreign lands, can conceive the softness of soul with which we entertain and indulge every thought that recalls it to our memory, or awakens in us those associations which form part of our being. I know no idea thnt [that] has greater power over the mind, or that possesses a stronger spell to:

Wake it all to subtlest feeling,

Bid the tear of transport flow.

But when we analyze it, what is it?-Strictly speaking, one's country may be circumscribed between the house where we were born, and the churchyard of our parish. It can be measured by an infant's swaddling-clothes sewed to a winding-sheet. It is the spot where our bodily and mental faculties were developed; where we grew up under our mother's eyes; it is the place where we have accompanied the coffins of our family to the grave which devours them. In a wider point of view, it is the scene where grew the early flowers I gathered; where moved the animals, where warbled the birds, where buzzed the insects which were familiar to me; where the aspect of the scenes of nature is the same as that which delighted my childish eyes. When I, a northern man, see the orange-tree growing naturally in its native clime, when I gaze upon a smoking volcano, or see another standard than the star-spangled banner waving over a fortress, then I have changed my country. The idea of country is a notion springing from early association, engrafted by custom, and strengthened by habit. To me that spot is my country which my Kate hallows by her beauty-where my child is growing in innocence and loveliness, and where love consecrates each hour.

Ignorance is of a peculiar nature, once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish, it is not originally a thing of itself, but it is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made so when once informed.

It is hard to be civil to an unthankful person; it is like feeding an ill natured dog, that snarls while he takes food from your own hands.