By the Golden Gate; Or, San Francisco, the Queen City of the Pacific Coast: With Scenes and Incidents Characteristic of its LifeCarey, Joseph
History
By the Golden Gate; Or, San Francisco, the Queen City of the Pacific Coast: With Scenes and Incidents Characteristic of its Life
Carey, Joseph
San Francisco (Calif.)
Gathering clouds hung over the horizon and formed the shadows in the
picture. Every picture has light and shade. It is a portrait of life.
We stood silently for a time drinking in all the beauty of the scene,
well nigh entranced, awed, thrilled betimes; and at last in order to
give fitting expression to the thoughts within our hearts, I suggested
that we should hold a brief service in recognition of His power who
holds the seas in the hollow of His hands, Who had guided our feet in
safe paths and byways of the world, often over its troublesome waves.
Ashton said an appropriate Collect from the dear old Prayer Book of so
many tender and far off memories, while I expressed my feelings in the
grand words of the Psalm--"Thy way is in the sea, and Thy paths in the
great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known." We felt God's presence
in that hushed hour, we saw in vision the divine Christ walking over
the waters to us!
In our wanderings about the city the sleeping places of the dead
naturally attracted our attention; and where, especially, on Sunday
afternoons, the living congregate to mourn over their loved ones, to
scatter flowers on their graves, or to while away an hour amid scenes
which have a melancholy interest and tend to sobriety and remind one
of another land where there is no death for those who pass through the
Golden Gate of eternity. Cemeteries have always attracted the living
to their solemn precincts at stated times, anniversaries and fiestas.
It is so in all lands, among all peoples no matter what their creed,
and in all ages. Jew and Gentile alike, Mohammedan and Christian, by
visiting tomb or grassy mound with some token of their affection, the
prayer uttered, the tear shed, the blossoms laid on sacred soil, after
this manner cherish the memories of the departed. And it is well!
Scenes which the traveller may witness in the Campo Santo of Genoa or
in the Koimeteria of Athens, on Sundays, in the Mezâristans of Skutari
on the Bosphorus and Eyûb on the Golden Horn, on Friday afternoons,
and in the Kibroth of old Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee or outside of
the walls of Jerusalem, on Saturday or in the Cimenterios of Mexico
City on fiestas, all testify to the universality of the deep and
tender feelings of reverence and affection which animate the human
heart and make all men as one in thought and sentiment as they stand
on time's shores and follow the receding forms of their kindred and
friends with wishful eyes bedimmed with tears across the Dark River!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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