To My Little GranddaughterClara Bradley Wheeler
To My Little GranddaughterClara Bradley Wheeler
WHO, with tottering baby steps, is coming in to the entrance of the Stage of Life, just as her Grandfather, with footsteps equally uncertain, is slowly passing out at its Exit. The baby, doubtless wondering much that the World should be so immeasurably large. He certainly, marvelling, as he looks back, that a Stage so small and circumscribed could hold so many people. She looks at her Grandfather with the Wonder-Wisdom in the baby eyes, but she does not know what he is thinking, nor how much he knows. And he, looking at the Little One with the meditative inquiry of Old Age, knows just as little what she is thinking, just as little how much she knows. For a handful of days only have they known one another, each speaking a language strange and incomprehensible to the other. But the two hearts, one old as the ashes of last year’s camp fires, the other young and fragrant as the roses of this June morning, have knitted themselves together with a love that will outlive Time. This is one of the Beautiful Mysteries of Life. “And the Evening and the Morning are another Day.”
“Sunnycrest”Pasadena, CaliforniaChristmastide, 1913