WINTER MEETING. 159' 



A VISIT TO THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 



BY MISS LAURA A. NELSON, OP LBBANON. 



How much is expressed in these few words. How much suggested, only 

 those who have feeling and keen sensibility can appreciate. "What a picture it 

 brings before us of a happy past, of an unbroken family circle. The time when 

 father, mother, sisters and brothers gathered for home cheer around one fireside; 

 before the boys had been fired by ambition to go into the world and seek their 

 own fortune, and the girls been won as help-mates to cheer other homes and 

 hearts. Ah, but we now speak of it as the ' 'old homestead." The ones who 

 made that once happy home have long since scattered— some risen to honor and 

 fame, fulfilling the ambition of their youth, others whose lives have been suc- 

 cessful, and still others who have been rudely snatched by the hand of death, 

 but in God's own time will be, we pray, a united family in an eternal home, not, 

 like our earthly one, subject to change and decay. I have let my imagination 

 roam too far. I shall come from sentiment to reality, and tell you of my visit to 

 my father's old homestead. 



Nearly one year ago I left my home in Lebanon, Mo., to visit my relatives 

 and friends in the grand old state of New York. The beautiful and picturesque 

 city of Buffalo, the city of my birth, was the first place I visited. I was over- 

 whelmed by the changes, as the growth and improvement had been phenomenal, 

 but what surprised me most was the change in my childhood friends, who, like 

 myself, had put away childish things and had blossomed into young man and 

 womanhood since our separation. There was among the many changes one thing 

 that remained as I had left it— grand old Lake Erie. How I drank in the beauties 

 of that scene, the rays of the declining sun upon the foaming waves, and watohed 

 the vessels sail in like so many white-winged birds. The enchantment of the 

 scene made me wish I had come to stay. However, I must not linger in the beau- 

 tiful city. 



I have other friends to visit and other places that are near and dear to me. 



One morning, the Ist of June, an ideal time for a visit to the country, my 

 cousin and I left Buffalo for Oneida county, to visit the old home of my parents. 

 We were met at the station by relatives and taken to their home in the beautiful 

 little town of Verona, which is surrounded by lovely, fertile and salubrious farm- 

 ing lands and grand old orchards, owned by men who have given their lives and 

 put forth their best efforts for the cause of horticulture, as well as agriculture. 

 In this quiet little town my father's early religious training began. 



There wai* a greater charm to me in that simple, unpretentious little building, 

 where father as a boy attended church and Sunday-school, than in all the grand 

 cathedrals I had seen before. The place of most interest was yet before us, the 

 former home of my father and grandfather. Through a lovely country studded 

 with fields of waving grain, beautiful orchards and prolific gardens, we drove with 

 our uncle in his "one-horse shay" to where we saw the old home which once meant 

 "Home, sweet home," to my father, and there stood the trees with their sturdy 

 bodies and waving branches, that he in his boyhood days had planted— then like 

 himself, young and tender, but now strong, grand and old, throwing out their 

 branches to protect man and beast from the scorching rays of the sun, while he 

 has thrown out his thoughts and knowledge to protect horticulturists from insects 

 and other things that menace and destroy plant life. 



Those grand rows of trees will stand to refresh many. generations, and no 

 doubt his children's children will some day look upon them as a llvitg monument 



