Homesickness - No. 1 by Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 28, 1913

Homesickness — No. 1

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

I SHALL not undertake a description of this most peculiar malady, because to those who never experienced its nauseating pangs, my language would be quite unintelligible; while to those who have tasted its abject misery, tho for only a day or an hour, my very best and most vivid description would seem weak and tame.

To experience one throb of this unique misery, is never to forget it. It leaves its own indelible record upon the quivering tablet of our heart; and until the heart ceases to beat, that record of abject misery is never effaced. For every other disease in the whole catalog, there is a multitude of panaceas; but for this, there is only one remedy — home.

I do not suppose that any one was ever genuinely homesick if he had never known the satisfying delights of home. It may be in the country, where the songs of the wild birds make sweet music among the orchard trees, and the old grove with its tangle of wild grape-vines just back of the barn, echoes to the shrill sound of childish laughter; or it may be in the crowded city, amid the hum and thrill of busy life, where the screech of the locomotive and the factory whistle break, like a clamorous babel, upon the sensitive ear of the unaccustomed.

It may be in the heart of the tropics, where sunshine and beautiful birds and brilliant flowers and babbling brooks and trailing mosses and blossoming trees ravish the eye and the ear, and compel the admiration of the most careless and unappreciative; or it may be among the snow huts of the fur-clad Eskimo; but if it be home—“sweet, sweet home”—it is the dearest spot on earth.

Mud hut or palace, high or low, rich or poor, well furnished or bare and comfortless, if it is only home, there is something about it which appeals to the heart’s affections as nothing else can.

Years ago, I remember reading about a sailing vessel which went to the coasts of Greenland. When he returned home, the captain brought with him a native from that far-away land of snow and ice. He was an intelligent old man; but all his life had been spent amid storms and tempests; and the country of sunshine and flowers, to which, with wide-eyed astonishment he was so suddenly introduced, had no charm for him. He remained an unhappy and an unwilling guest until the vessel again started on its Northern trip. A short distance from land, the lonely, homesick wanderer was taken with a fatal malady. Day after day he lingered, constantly turning his hungry gaze toward the distant North. If he could only live to see it once again—his native land! Storm-tossed and tempest-riven, it had no terror for him. It was only beautiful; it was home.

“Are we almost there? do you see the icebergs?”

They were his last words, spoken in piteous appeal to his shipmates. Poor, homesick, hungry heart! he never again saw the icebergs.

The Almighty, in His infinite wisdom, has made us so; and I am glad He has. But I tell you, “home” means something more than four walls; it means warmth and light and sunshine and good cheer and tenderness and sympathy and love. Perhaps I ought to have said that this is what home should mean, and what, by the grace of God, it may mean to the Christian.

The faded pictures, cheap and unvarnished, which hang upon the low, musty walls of the humble miner’s cabin amid the mountains of solitude, are as dear to the children of that home, as are the expensive paintings of the masters, to the surfeited child of wealth.

The old-fashioned chromo and the poorest woodcut, appealed to my childish eye as veritable achievements of art; and I have never seen anything since, that seemed half so beautiful as the simple little cards bearing the words, “Reward of Merit,” which I received in childish ecstasy.

Ah! the old schoolhouse and the old home! The front door, which looked toward the north, was painted red, and there were tall hollyhocks back of the house, under the bedroom window. It would not have been called a beautiful home by the fastidious stranger; but in and out of that same red door my childish feet have played. Every foot of the old home farm is rendered sacred by a thousand hallowed memories.

Just north of the house is the old sugar-bush. Do you remember how we used to pour the piping hot sirup over our saucers of snow? Never such delightful nectar as that which came from that old sugar-bush! Here in this secluded nook is the playhouse. Can you not almost see the groups of happy, childish faces, flashing in and out from among the shady retreats?

Do you see that winding path? Let us follow it. Notice that large gray boulder close by the fence: it is quite smooth and flat on the top side. How natural it looks! Ah, many and many a time, in the old days, has my mother taken my little hand and quietly led me along this same winding path to this same gray rock, and there knelt in humble prayer, commending her little girl to God.

The faithful mother has gone, now; but the fragrance of a beautiful life, filled with deeds of Christian piety, seems to grow sweeter as the years go by; and I grow homesick for that country of blessedness—that land where farewells are never spoken.