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Notes for DANIEL SNYDER MORRIS:
BITTERSWEET
by Mary Edith Morris
It was a large funeral. There were many fears and many faces confronting the small child who sat through the service tightly clutching her mother's shaking hand for courage and a sense of permanence.
Her world had come crashing down with the news of the death of her adored and adoring father. He had died very suddenly and unexpectedly while away on a speaking engagement. There had very nearly been a double tragedy, for the shock had prostrated her gentle mother. They had thirty years together, sharing illness, struggle and heartache, the depth of which is known most intimately by the prideful poor. There had been a great deal of love there though, and the child had seen it demonstrated every day of her life. The were the kind of people who can make a multitude of small things into a successful marriage. Love and respect always outweighed the struggle.
He had been a colorful, even romantic man for his time and station in life set against his more prosaic neighbors. Almost six feet of rugged strength, he had a handsome, craggy face set with piercing brown eyes whose squint revealed the myopia which their owner was too proud to admit. He wore spectacles only when necessary for reading. His snowy hair and mustache betrayed his sixty-four years, but once that hair had been a warm auburn red, and had lent distinction to him in his younger days.
Although he was an ordinary day laboror, performing the hardest kind of physical labor, he was an extraordinary man. Self educated, he acquired a love of literature and was a student of the Holy Bible as well as secular literature. He could recire from memory long passages from the Bible and long narrative poems of Tennyson, Whittier and Longfellow. His favorites were, "Enoch Arden" and "Evangeline." He owned a comprehensive library, books he had gathered one by one through the years, from Mark Twain to William Shakespear whose complete works in a single volume, bore the owner's name in flourishing Spencerian hand with the date, 1885.
A picture came to her mind of her father lying on the floor, his head pillowed by an overturned straight chair, chuckling over a book of Mark Twain's. In those days before radio and television, it was his custom to read aloud from some book of history, adventure or humor for the whole family to enjoy. It must have been a strain on those myopic eyes to read by the light of a kerosene lamp, although some of the older children took turns reading so that the exciting tale need not be interupted.
He was often in demand as a speaker at various social gatherings throughout the county and state, and was well known for charm and wit, which no doubt accounted for his success as county politian. He had lately been nominated for a political office in the county and only his sudden death had deprived him of the least difficult and most rewarding job of his lifetime.
He was a lay minister in the church to which his family belonged, often filling the pulpit when the regular minister must be away. There was sure to be a lively discussion in his Sunday school class when he was teaching it. The child always felt a great pride in her brilliant father as he explained Bible passages, so that even the dullest of his listeners could understand.
He wrote as a reporter for the local newspaper, giving glowing accounts of the social affairs of the county, since the ladies were pleased to have others read of the sumptuous feasts they were able to provide. He wrote poetry for some ardent but less gifted swains, or more often about "the dear departed."
As she sat through the long service, she allowed her mind to wander to the stories he had told of his life as a soldier in his earlier years. She would miss those exciting tales of how he had joined the army at the age of twenty-four, Company M, 7th Calvary, and had been sent west to fight the Indians under Brevet-General George Armstrong Custer. He had been five miles awayunder the command of Major Reno on the fatal day of June 25, 1876, when the disasterous "Battle of the Little Bighorn" was fought. He had been with Reno next day to help bury the dead where they had fallen. There were bits on Indian blanket and feathers and a couple of brass army uniform buttons that he had brought from the battlefield, as well as some chicapins that, he explained, the Indians used as emergency rations. There are those who have said that the General thirsted for glory and at best, was a bad tactician, but the man lying there would never have been convinced of that. His was a clear case of hero worship and he always scotched any such suggestion.
One of the white scouts for the army at that time was William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who afterwards traveled the world with his Wild West Show. Four years earlier, the child had been taken by her father to meet his friend, whom he had met many years before in the west. They sat in a circle with several impressive Indian Chiefs while the peace Pipe was passed and smoked. She could see again the full feathered war bonnets they wore and the long, white, wavy hair of Mr. Cody who, as a kind and indulgent host, took the child on his own lap for the ceremony.
Her best memories though, were those of the tender times when her father, coming home from a hard day's work, kissed his wife on the back of the neck or the cheek in a truly affectionate caress, in appreciation of a loving wife, clean home and a well cooked evening meal. Their thiry years together had never dimmed his love for her. There were many times that she liked to remember now, like the ones when he broought candy home with the groceries on Saturday, sugar loaf shaped old fashioned chocolates and hard candies with flower faces in their canters and fantastic shaped ones that are no longer to be found.
He loved surprises and often brought something too lovely to be left in the stores, to the delight of his wife and children. Once the surprise was a cunning spring hat for the little girl, that had a bed of forget-me-nots in its brim, with a fat pink rose nestled here and there. How proud he was of that purchase when it drew compliments from her Sunday School teacher.
She could recall trips he had made around the country, pursuing the study of his genealogy. He took graet pride in his ancestry, which had been traced to Rollo The Dane and Hugh Capet, early Norse French kings. The first of his ancestors to come to America, one Robert Morris, was sent from Liverpool to Oxford, Maryland, as factor for Fosater Cunliffe and Sons, an English import-export company. His son, also an astute business man, and also named Robert, became Superintendent of Finance and of the Navy during the Revolutionary War and as a member of the Continental Congress for the state of Pennsylvania, signed both the Declaration on Independence, the Articles of Confederation as well as the Constitution of the United States of America; and at great personal sacrifice, pursued his duties with vigor and acumne, toward the successful conclusion of that war. Many years later she was to stand in reverence and awe before the glass case in the National Archives in Washington D.C. to read the signature of her great great grandfather on those historic documents.
As the service came to a close she was brought sharply back to the cruel, empty present, knowing in her child heart that a great portion of her life was ending.
They buried him in the churchyard, where others of her family lay at rest. He shares a resting place with veterans of other wars of our country, from that of 1812 to the present. Flags are placed to wave over them every Memorial Day in grateful recognition of their services. The churchyard was crowded that day in October 1914, but even so there would have been room for the elderly black woman and her grandson, who, not wishing to intrude, stood outside the fence to pay their respects to the man they knew and admired.
Irvin Cobb one wrote, "After all, the best test of a man ain't so much the amount of cash he's left in the bank, but how many'll turn out to pay their respects when they put him away."
And so, my father, Daniel Snyder Morris, a successful man, was laid to rest.
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