Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/230

 WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

THE first entrance into London is an era in the life of every human being. The deep tide of historic asso ciation, meeting the strong surge of living things, like a conflicting current, sways and bewilders the balance of the mind. For a moment, the Past and Present are chaotic elements.

But with me, as motes may eclipse the sun, a little fountain in the heart sprang up, and prevailed. Let ters from home ! our first letters from home ! Here they met us. So uncertain and erratic had been our programme, that our bankers deemed it safest not to forward them.

Words of love ! What force do they gather by trav ersing thousands of miles of earth and ocean. They remember us still ! the dwellers in that home which is ever on our prayers. Those lines from the young pens of children, -why are they suddenly so wet with tears ? Let the mother, who has scarcely ever been absent for a week from those she has nurtured, who could hear, on her own pillow, their sweet breathings in the nursery, count the hours of silence for seventy-

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