My father loved the silence, and taught me that it is in silence, in the
quiet places, rather than on the house-tops, that one can hear the
spirit's call, and forget the clanging of the world. It is the great gift
which the God of nature alone can give, and "he has found happiness
who has won through the stillness of the spirit the Perfect Vision, and
this stillness comes through contentment that is regardless of the
world."

He often said to me that we are a caravan of beings, wandering
through life's pathways, hungering to taste of happiness, which comes
to us when we find plain food sweet, rough garments fine, and
contentment in the home. It comes when we are happy in a simple
way, allowing our wounds received in life's battles to be healed by the
moon-beams, which send an ointment more precious than the oil of
sandalwood.

I could go on for pages, Mother mine, of the lessons of my father, this
grand old man, "who steeled his soul and tamed his thoughts and got
his body in control by sitting in the silence and being one with nature,
God, the maker of us all." And when I think of all these things, it is
hard to believe that men who love the leisure, the poetry, the beautiful
things of life, men like my father, must pass away. It seems to me it
will be a day of great peril for China, for our young ones, when these
men of the past lose their hold on the growing mind. As rapidly as this
takes place, the reverence for the old-time gentleman, the quiet lady
of the inner courtyards, will wane, and reverence will be supplanted by
discourtesy, faith by doubt, and love of the Gods by unbelief and
impiety.

Yet they say he does not stand for progress. What is progress? What
is life? The poet truly cries: "How short a time it is that we are here!
Why then not set our hearts at rest, why wear the soul with anxious
thoughts? If we want not wealth, if we want not power, let us stroll the
bright hours as they pass, in gardens midst the flowers, mounting the
hills to sing our songs, or weaving verses by the lily ponds. Thus may
we work out our allotted span, content with life, our spirits free from
care."

My father has a scroll within his room that says:

"For fifty years I plodded through the vale of lust and strife,
Then through my dreams there flashed a ray of the old sweet peaceful
life.
No scarlet tasselled hat of state can vie with soft repose;
Grand mansions do not taste the joys that the poor man's cabin
knows.
I ha