A VISIT TO WEST ARMUCHEE VALLEY, FIFTY YEARS AFTER I
MOVED TO FLORIDA.
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Fifty years makes young people old, and old people dead. I found it so. All the old
folks had passed on, and only eight of the young people left, and they were old. I felt
like a stranger among these old acquainances. It is not easy to bridge fifty years with
comradship. It is like meeting people from the dead, and not in heaven, where eternal
youth dwells.
I was by mother’s grave in the morning of the day she had been buried fifty years.
I sat by that large poplar tree, I left a sapling, and fasted with mother. I wrote on
paper, that I had been gone a long time, and had come a long way to see her. As far as I
know, no one saw me there but some negro children; how many, if any, spiritual being were
there, I have no way to tell. According to previous appointment, in Shiloh Church, on
Sunday, I preached my mother’s funeral sermon, fifty years after her death, because
she had none when buried. At close of sermon, I ask John Young, son of Frank Young, to
lead in prayer, he ask some one else, who did. Afterwards, he said he was too full to lead
in prayer.
