“I am far from the home that gave me birth,
    A blight is on my name;
  It only brings to my father’s hearth
    The memory of shame;
  Yet, oh! do they think of me to-day,
    The loved ones lingering there;
  Do they think of the outcast far away,
    And breathe for me a prayer? 
  That early home I shall see no more,
    And I wish not there to go,
  For the happy past may nought restore—­
        The future is but woe. 
  But ’twould be a balm to my heavy heart
        Upon its dreary way,
  If I could think I have a part
        In the prayers of home to-day!”

Every thing within the memory of home will question our hearts whether we have been faithful to her parental ministry.  Every cherished association; every remembered object, and even the old scenes and objects around the homestead, will challenge our faithfulness.  The trees under whose shade we frolicked and of whose fruit we ate; the streams that meandered through the meadow; the hills and groves over which we gamboled in the sunny days of childhood; the old oaken bucket and the old ancestral walls that yet stand as monuments of the past,—­these will all question your fidelity to the training you received in their midst; and oh, if they assume, in the courts of memory, the attitude of witnesses against you; if nursery recollections speak of forgotten prayers and abandoned habits, what a deep and painful sense of guilt and ingratitude will this testimony develop in your bosom, and

  “Darken’d and troubled you’ll come at last,
  To the home of your boyish glee.”

How precious are the mementoes of home!  Memory needs such auxiliaries.  That lock of silken hair which the mother holds with tearful contemplation, and wears as a precious relic, near her heart, what recollections of the buried one it awakens within her!

  “Thou bringest fond memories of a gentle girl,
  Like passing spirits in a summer night! 
                Oh, precious curl!”

And that picture of a departed mother which the orphan child presses with holy reverence to her bosom!  As she gazes upon those familiar features, and reads in them a mother’s love and kindness, what scenes of home-life rise upon the troubled thought, and what echoes of love come through the lapse of years from the old homestead, touching all the fires of her soul, and causing them to thrill with plaintive sadness and with painful joy.  What mementoes of a sad, yet pleasing memory are found in the chamber of bereavement, where death has done his work; the empty chair; the garments laid by; playthings idly scattered there;—­these are pictures upon which the eye of memory rests with pensive meditation.  And our letters from home!  What sweet recollections they awaken as we read line after line; and what volumes of love they contain from those dear ones who now moulder in the narrow vaults of death!  Oh, how miserable must he be who has no recollections of home, who is not able to revert to the scenes of childhood, and amid whose cherished memories of life, the image of a mother does not glow!