The Book of Virtues

My husband bought this book several years ago when our two boys were small. But I put it up and forgot all about it. There is a wonderful selection of stories from long ago that I have forgotten but came back to me like it was yesterday that someone had read these treasures to me. Here is one that has recaptured my heart, The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The author notes:


In this poem, Longfellow suggests that if we offer something of ourselves to the world~ a good deed, a kind word, our love~ eventually we will discover its effects. It may come back to us in a form of a friend:

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

This is my mother and father at Christmas in 2008. My father

has dementia. His short term memory is gone.

I believe he found his best friend long ago. Don't they look sweet?