which the boy had won them to his heart's
desire, these people could never have again lived their simple lives
without dreams coming--and doubts. To say, 'God knows best,' meant to
repress the disturbing thoughts that must have often arisen.

"In these hills boys become men, and one boy became something more. This
was a family of beautiful and devoted love. The brothers were what God
meant brothers to be, friends whose hearts were linked. For every member
of this little group of one blood, all the others felt a mighty bond of
affection. And here they stayed." The four words might have been the
text, and through the talk it ran with the insistence of a refrain,
until it sank into the brain of every man and every woman who listened.

"Here they stayed, and if each one of them thought often of what may
have been given up by that decision, no one of them said so.

"Perhaps Paul, with the golden pattern of his dreams, may often have
mused upon what the outer world could have given him. Perhaps he thought
of himself as swaying audiences with his fingers on the keys and dreamed
of lips that parted and eyes that grew misty--because they listened to
the voices he could send pealing to their hearts. But he stayed here and
the audiences that sat spellbound were those little neighborhood
audiences, who stood a long way off from a full understanding of his
soul's ethereal web and woof.

"Perhaps Thomas Burton, whose hands were calloused with toil, sometimes
permitted himself to think, at the end of his day's labors, of the ease
and comfort which might have come to him, had his son's great ambition
actually drawn him into mighty battles and victories instead of only
beckoning him.

"Perhaps the woman, who must have felt that her children were not
ordinary children, may have shed a tear at times, because she was denied
the triumph of beholding their triumph. _But they stayed_--and if their
peaceful lives were troubled with misgivings, at least they knew that
this was certain and that doubtful--and that, while they might miss much
of achievement, they also missed much of peril, for none can say what a
journey means along an untried road. Who knows what an epic their lives
might have spelled--or what tragedy? But they stayed.

"And now we are gathered to do homage by the grave of the woman whose
quiet life ran its course with theirs--the woman who bore these children
and taught them, at her knee, those lessons which made them
bene