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 Jifatfyer anh ^otljer 
 
 By EUGENE V. DEBS 
 
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 OP 
 
 Jean Daniel Debs and Marguerite 
 Bettrich Debs at Terre Haute, 
 Indiana, September 13th, 1899 
 
3 
 
 Golden Wedding Anniversary 
 
 The celebration of a Golden wedding is 
 a rare occurrence in the history of fami- 
 lies; only to the favored few is such a bless- 
 ing vouchsafed. It is an occasion when 
 nuptial vows pledged at Hymen's altar take 
 on inexpressible sacredness. A far distant 
 day is recalled when “two souls with but a 
 single thought" and two loving hearts that 
 “beat as one," courageously and con- 
 fidently entered upon the voyage of matri- 
 monial life. Thomas Moore, inspired by the 
 genius of love, rapturously sang: 
 
 “There's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told. 
 When two, that are linked in one heavenly tie. 
 With heart never changing and brow never cold. 
 
 Live on thro’ all ills, and love on till they die." 
 
 It is not given to us children and grand- 
 children, who meet today at the old home 
 shrine to lay our offerings, consecreated by 
 our affection, upon the family altar, to know 
 the heart and soul yearnings of our aged 
 parents to find some favored spot, some oasis 
 in the desert, where they could build a home 
 and enjoy the fruitions of peace and con- 
 tentment amidst a family of bright-eyed, 
 rosy-cheeked and merry-voiced children. 
 
 In fancy's eye we see their beautiful and 
 vine-clad native France; we see them in 
 the bloom and strength of youth, standing 
 at the altar and pledging to each other 
 unchanging fidelity in storm and shine, 
 ready to meet the future as the days un- 
 folded their duties, their opportunities, 
 their tasks and trials, sustained by a faith 
 and hope which cheered them on their pil- 
 grimage through all their married days. 
 
 2 
 
Those of us who have reached years of 
 maturity and are here with wives and hus- 
 bands and children and children’s children, 
 may in fancy’s telescopic vision see the 
 youthful pair leaving the old for the new 
 world, whispering to each other with brim- 
 ful eyes and quivering lips: 
 
 “Go where we will, this hand in thine. 
 
 Those eyes before me smiling thus. 
 
 Through good and ill, through storm and shine. 
 The world’s a world of love for us.” 
 
 And such has been the world to them. Love 
 has been their guiding star; no cloud ever 
 obscured it; and the darker the day of ad- 
 versity the brighter shone their love which 
 bathed their home and our home in its 
 mellow, cheering light. 
 
 In celebrating this golden wedding an- 
 niversary, all the halcyon days of our lives 
 are included and there come to us messages 
 from the past, under the sea and over the 
 land, burdened with the aroma of violets 
 and roses, caught from the flower gardens 
 of memory, planted in youth and blooming 
 in perennial beauty to old age. 
 
 I confess to you, my venerable parents, 
 and to you my sisters and brothers, and to 
 those of younger generations, to over- 
 mastering emotions of love and gratitude 
 as I survey this family scene, never to be 
 pictured again save upon the canvas of our 
 memories. But I would voice no requiem 
 note. Today our ears are not attuned to the 
 dirge’s mournful cadence. This is not the 
 occasion for planting weeping willows, the 
 cypress or the ivy vine — 
 
 “Creeping where grim death is seen.” 
 
 Here the mingled cup of love and grati- 
 tude and joy, brimful, is quaffed in honor 
 of an event which to us all is a priceless 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
benediction ; but, if from its fountain a 
 tear mingles with the draught to sparkle 
 on the brim of the loving cup, it bears tes- 
 timony that our hearts are touched by feel- 
 ings as divine as ever sanctified human af- 
 fection. 
 
 The serenity, the rare loveliness of this 
 scene create emotions which no words, how- 
 ever fitly chosen, can express. I can but 
 say in the name of my sisters and my broth- 
 ers and those younger in the bonds of fam- 
 ily allegiance to our father — the patriarch 
 of these sons and daughters — that we tender 
 him our warmest congratulations upon this 
 rare occasion. When we greet him our 
 hearts are in our hands; when we kiss his 
 time-furrowed cheeks our hearts are on our 
 lips, and when we congratulate him upon 
 this, his golden wedding anniversary, our 
 hearts are in our words. 
 
 Freely do we avow the fealty of our love 
 for his devotion to us, his children, for his 
 watchful guardianship over our giddy foot- 
 steps on youth ’s flowery pathways ; and 
 this love is blended with profound veneration 
 for his courage, which no vicissitude could 
 dampen; for his masculine virtues which 
 have endeared him to the home circle; for 
 his spotless integrity of character which has 
 given him the confidence of men, whether 
 in poverty’s vale or upon the more elevated 
 plane of prosperity, secured by industry and 
 frugality, and above all, for that parental 
 ambition and self-denial to secure for us 
 an education which should equip his children 
 for respectable and honorable positions in 
 life. 
 
 This, my beloved and honored sire, is 
 the tribute of affection your children bring 
 to you today. Your tender and unceasing 
 
 4 
 
devotion has won the overflowing gratitude 
 of our hearts, and this thankfulness, this 
 abounding sense of obligation, dearest fath- 
 er, we children with the fingers of our love 
 weave today into a crown and place it on 
 your venerable head, and though the years 
 shall continue to whiten your locks, dim the 
 lustre of your eyes and impair the strength 
 of your manly form, the wealth of our af- 
 fection shall ever increase, nor shall it 
 cease when the silver cord be loosed and at 
 the final goal you lay all your burdens 
 down. 
 
 And now our happy family circle, re- 
 joicing in kindred ties, will fill again the 
 sparkling cup with the ambrosia of affection 
 that we may drink to: 
 
 “My mother’s voice ! how often creep 
 It’s accents on my lonely hours. 
 
 Like healing sent on wings of sleep, 
 
 Or dew to the unconscious flowers. 
 
 I can forget her melting prayer 
 While leaping pulses fly. 
 
 But in the still, unbroken air 
 
 Her gentle tone comes stealing by — 
 
 And years, and sin, and folly flee. 
 
 And leave me at my mother’s knee.’’ 
 
 There are two words in our language for- 
 ever sacred to memory — Mother and Home! 
 Home, the heaven upon earth, and mother 
 its presiding angel. To us, children, here 
 today, mother and home have realized all the 
 longing, yearning aspirations of our sou.s, 
 and now, in this blissful presence, we quaff 
 to our mother this cup full and overflowing 
 with the divine nectar of our love. I need 
 not attempt to recite her deeds of devotion. 
 There is not a page of our memory, not a 
 tablet of our hearts, that is not adorned 
 and beautified by acts of her loving care, in 
 which her heart and her hands, her eyes and 
 her soul, in holy alliance, ministered to our 
 happiness. 
 
 There was never a time when there was 
 not a song in her heart, sweeter than 
 Aeolian melody, wooing her children from 
 folly to the blessedness, security, peace and 
 
 5 
 
contentment of home. Her children were 
 her jewels in home’s shining circle, and if 
 by the fiat of death a gem dropped away, 
 the affectionate care it had received added 
 soulful charm to her lullaby songs when at 
 night she dismissed us and sent us to dream- 
 land repose. 
 
 Years of duty and trial, anxiety and care 
 have bowed her form, wdiitened her hair, 
 dimmed her eyes and robbed her cheeks of 
 their maiden bloom; but O, our mother is 
 still to us our beautiful mother. Her heart 
 is as young and loving as when in infancy, 
 in youth and in riper years it throbbed re- 
 sponsive to our plaints; her hands are as 
 beautiful in our eyes as when in our child- 
 hood they were laid caressingly upon our 
 heads, and her dimpled fingers smoothed our 
 hair or wooed back to order our truant 
 tresses, and her voice, though less rosonant 
 than in the years when she called us from 
 play to duty, has the same cadence as when 
 bending over us she sang the cradle song 
 which lulled to sleep and to dreams. 
 
 O, our mother! beloved more than any 
 wealth of words could express, your children 
 on this anniversary day of your wedding 
 fifty years ago, offer you, aye, shower upon 
 you in the name of filial devotion, all the 
 holiest treasurers of garnered affection. 
 
 “We give thee all, we can no more, 
 
 Though poor the offering be; 
 
 Our hearts— our love is all the store 
 And this we bring to thee.” 
 
 We hear the wedding bells ringing in 
 celebration of the nuptials of our aged par- 
 ents— our ears are attuned to their merry 
 chimes and our hearts respond with all the 
 joyousness of a wedding march, for peace 
 and happiness and contentment crown the 
 hour. We do not ask what the future has 
 in store, we only know that we have the 
 bride and groom in our presence, and that 
 it is an inexpressible joy to pledge them 
 anew our unfaltering devotion and our 
 eternal love. 
 
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