The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 10, 1898, Page 19

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 1898. ASTER Monday in Washington is an event in the lives of the children which is ahead of any other day in the year excepting Christmas and Fourth of July. Why? Because Easter Monday means egg-rolling. For many years the little ones of Washington have congregated by hundreds of thousands to roll eggs er Monday in the beautiful grounds surrounding the home of the President of the nation. There is no sign to keep off the grass and there are no restric- tions. Tie chilCren own the place. The green grass of the White House lawns is covered with children, children in- numerable, rolling eggs on the grassy slopes. If the day is pleasunt it is a sight to be remembered. The children have been looking forward to the festival for days and weeks and gre-t has been their anticipation. But genuine is the sorrow v the tears among the little ster Sunday should be cold and rainy with promise of a bad Mon- day. Yet no weather has ever been so bad as to keep every one away from the White House grounds on egg-rolling day. There are many hardy little spirits who will not be daunted by snow or cold or rain when it comes to rolling eggs. But if the day is pleasant and the air balmy and the turf warm and green, what a time the children have. Such games as they invent to be played with their eggs—rames of infinite variation and containing infinite amusement. The grounds loo.. more like a juvenile fair than anything else—an egg fair and the biddy hens around Washington must needs have been very diligent for | many days before. If the day is fair, the glorious Marine Band, the est band in the country, plays sweet music and the children dance and gam- bol to its Truly it is children’s | day in Washington. By 9 o'clock in the morning the grounds are actually taken possession of by the youngsters, little kids with wicker baskets and vari-colored eggs, wonderful eggs of green and blue and red and purple and gold and then eggs of lovely combination, and with beauti- ful figures, - uch as would make a wise hen cock her head on one side and wonder greatly what had happened to her plain white eggs. All sorts and conditions of children find their way to the President's grounds to enjoy an Easter Monday. Some of the children are beautifully dressed in silks and laces and have carry thelr eggs for them, while other little ones are dressed in very shabby garments with elbows out and toes peeping from their little shoes. They perhaps have only three or four plainly colored eggs boiled in a piece of purple or red calico. No “rench nurses accom- pany them, carrying eggs with gilt pigtures, but they can roll their eggs and themselves on the green grass and soil their frocks and trousers to their hearts’ content and they will enjoy the holiday as much as their more for- tunate comipanions. Usually the moth- ers of these little men and women come with them, tircd-faced women, per- haps, looking as though it had been many a long day since they had en- joyed such a time. Here and there are little groups of mothers and older sis- ters, talking together pleasantly, but keeping watchful eyes to see that the little ones do not get lost in the crowd or stray too far away. a good-natured crowd. The big anding around po: w that all big policemen 3 r is to keep big yeople from interfering with littie ones who are rolling eggs. And when the little people get lost now and then the big policemen are there to t.ke them In charge and 1 them not to cr-—- until their mothers or sisters find them again. And there are great rivalries among the children. Some of them arz regular little gamblers. One little fel- low gets hold of a very hard egg and he goes around pecking eggs with his ac- quaintances or acquaintances he finds and wins their eggs from them until finally he strikes some ~ther little fel- low who has a harder egg than his, and then he los a lot of egg: And some of the little scals gamble on what is a sure thing, with a china egg, sized and painted to resemble a genuine egg, or with a hen's egg run full of plaster of paris they will go around, and, of course, win all the eggs they contest for, until some sharp fe low finds out the game they are pla ing. As the day advances and the chil- dren get hungry the peanut man and the popcorn man and the candy man at the gates do a thriving business, while at noon many are the little groups un- der the trees, sittin- around on blan- kets and shawls and eating lunches, for they are making a regular -icnic of it and staying all day. President Harrison’s two grandchil- dren witnessed, with great enjoyment, the egg-rolling, from the porch of the ‘White House facing toward the Wash- ington mon&ment and looking past and across the Potomac to Arlington, the former home of General Lee, but where now are spread the silent tents of a vast host of the Unicn army who have passed across to the great beyond. President Cleveland’s two little girls, Ruth and Esther, were real little dem- ocrats. They took their own eggs and went out among the crowd of happy children, and they rolled eggs with the other children, as common clay as their associates, not the children of the Pres- ident of the United States, but the chil- dren of an American citizen. Perhaps a little extra watch was Kkept over them, but they didn’t know it and they thought that Easter Monday was the happiest day of their little lives. There was a time, however, when the children of Washi: ‘ton did not roll eggs in the President’s grounds. Not that they did not roll eggs, though. Oh no! They have always rolled eggs on Easter Monday. But they used to roll them in the Capitol grounds, down the steep terrace which was on the west front of the Capitol. Then there came a time when the Capitol grounds were changed and a big flight of steps were built where the terrace used to be, and somebody objected to the children romping on the smooth grass of the big sward and rolling their eggs. General Hayes was President then, and he heard of it, and how disappoint- ed the children were because they had no place to roll their eggs that year, and he said: ‘““Why let them roll their eggs on the White House grounds and enjoy themselvi And thus it has been ever since, from year to year. , Easter service in Washington calls'to the minds of some of the oldest inhabi- tants, the Easter Sundays before the war, when Sunday service was held in the National Hall of Congress. , The Rev. W. H. Milburn, the blind chaplain of the United States Senate, remembers the time well, for he has himself preached in that hall on Easter Sunday. Dr. Milburn’s service in the Government dates back, perhaps, far- ther than that of any man now occu- pying a public position. Before John Sherman, now the venerable Secretary of State, came to Congre before old Senator Morrill, once a leader in that body, but now bent and feeble, and be- ss, en- official duties, Doctor Milburn opened the Senate each morning with his prayer of thanks to God and his plea for almighty pro- tection and guidance in the conduct of the affairs of the nation. Fifty-two years ago It was when he made his first prayer on such an occa- sion. That was when the Capitol build- ing presented a far different appear- ance from the Capitol of to-day. That was before the massive wings of white marble were added and when the Sen- ate met in the room now occupied by the Supreme Court, and the House of Representatives in the Statuary Hall— the old Hall of Representatives where Easter service was celebrated. There were two chaplains, just as now, one for the Senate and one for the House, but they exchanged duties, so that each body of Congress had, at dif- ferent times, the services of each chap- lain. Then, too. in those old days the curious custom prevailed of keeping the Senate clock ten minutes ahead of the House clock, thereby enabling one chaplain to open both houses of Con- gress, first officiating at the House and then going to the Senate and making its opening praver. Thus one chaplain could take a long vacation, and return- ing, allow his colleague a like privilege. “Yes, there have been great changes in the nation,” said Doctor Milburn, shaking me by the hand and looking directly at me with his sightless eye~ balls, “great changes since the time when I first officlated as chaplain of the Senate of the United States. In those days, each Sunday in the Hall of Representatives, one of the chaplains held regular Christian service and no tered upon their (first minister preached to more distinguished congregations. Senators, members, heads of departments and even Prest- dents were frequent or regular attend- ants. Many 2 noted public man was found in his seat on Sunday morning as promptly and regularly as during the remaining six days of the week. 1 well remember that John Quiney Adams was always present. Great and distinguished ,and attentive were the congregations. This custom, however, of holding Sunday ser- vice in the Capitol was discon- tinued during the War of the Rebellion. The new wings of the Capitol were completed at this time and the Sen- ate and the House moved into their ele- gant and commodious quarters, and with the move the custom of Sunday service died. “I well remember, too, my first Easter service in the Capitol—over half a century ago; and a half century such as the world has never before seen; a half century in which the nation has made greater progress in many ways than all the rest of her life. Let us hope the most of it has been for the good of the world and Christianity. “You wish me to say something about Easter. Well, there is much we know about it and much we do not. ‘ihe subject and the various customs con- nected with it are involved in so many ancient traditions and legends that much Easter lore approaches very near to the domain of mythology and fairy tales. There are several events which are celeprated by the people of different lands at about the same time, and ob- servances have become somewhat mixed. “Easter Sunday, commemorative of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb,-is in many respects the most im- portant as it is the most beautiful f the festivals of the Christian vhurrfl. You will see by a prayer-hook that Zaster is always celebrated on the first Sunday following the full moon which happens next after March 21. If the full moon occurs on Sunda Easter is the following Sunlay/ The manner of thus ‘=g the time for the celebration was only settled after a long controversy in the early centuries, which caused great feeling. “The celebrat.»n of the feast of the Passover and that of Easter have been practically merged into on It is only a coincidence that the Jewish Passover festival and the Christian Easter fall on or about the same date. In the French ‘Paques,’ the Italian ‘Pasqua’ and the Spanish ‘Pasena,’ all meaning ‘Easter,” we have an unbroken lineage to the Hebrew ‘Pesach,” or ‘Passover.’ ‘We have the historical fact that Christ was crucified at the feast of the Pass- over, A. D. 32. “Now came the first trouble in the observance of anniversaries. The first generation of Christians, having been members of the Jewish ckurch, nat- urally continued to observe the Jewish festival, although it now contained a new meaning for them, and they made it commemorate 'n actual event rather than a shadow or promise. In this somewhat changed and modified per- petuation of the Jewish Pesach, or Passover, Easter was then called the Paschal Feast. The death and resurrec- tion of Christ were, of course, settled points, lut the date upon which the event was to be observed was not final- ly fixed without a long and bitter struggle. The Jewish Christians thought that the observance of Easter should be immediately following the anniversary of the exact date of the Passover, without regard to the date of the week or month. The Gentiles, however, knew that Christ had risen on Sunday, and they held that, therefore, Sunday should be celebrated as the resurrection festival, without regard to the date of the month. The church of Rome, in 147 a. D.. decided in favor of holding the observance on Sunday. “But there still remained the more difficult question as to what particular Sunday should be celebrated, and this point was not settled for several hun- dred years. Easter is not a fixed fes- tival like Christmas. Sometimes it comes in April and sometimes in March, depending on the date of the full moon following the vernal equi- nox. It was necessary. in addition to securing its zeneral observance by all churches, to have its time exactly ob- tainable, as upon its occurrence de- pends all the movable church feast and fast days through the year. The nine Sundays previous and the eight Sundays following Easter are all de- pendent upon it. “Like many other questions of creed and religion which were finally fixed and about which we do not now have to bother, it was the cause of great trouble and bitterness of feeling in the early crnturies. I may not perhaps be very generally known that there are millions of people in Eastern Eu- re—=~ and Asia and Africa who are de- vout «Lhristians—as devout as any in the world, but who do not agree with the Roman and Protestant Christians upon a point of creed which, though a comparatively minor consideration, separates them almost as widely as are Christians from pagans. “These peonle of whom I speak in- clude the followers of the Greek Church. or the Eastern Church. In the early centuries. when the center of Christianity was first at Jerusalem, and. after the destruction of that city, at Alexandria, Egypt, there was but one Christian church. Later, however, a discussion arose as to the power of the Son of God. One faction contended that the Son_and Father had equal power; the other that the Father was all-powerful. Over these two conten- tions ultimately arose strifes and struggles and fin~1lv --at wars. @JY E. MITCHELL.