Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Mercedes Perry Holmes Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

MERCEDES PERRY HOLMES

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

All that was mortal of a young woman who was full of laughter and the love of life, was laid away Sunday in the land that gave her birth and where her golden childhood was spent. There is sorrow in a death like this that is akin to no other; it penetrates every heart. To be taken away in the full flush of her young womanhood, with life opening to its fullest, with a baby boy who nevermore will know that tenderest touch of a mother's hands--this is an eventuality that assaults one's staunchest fortitude, that tries one's most rockbound faith. Yet who shall say that Mercedes Perry Holmes had not achieved fulfillment, had not played out to its length the part she had been set to play in this curious drama of life? There was lilt of music in her being, a radiant sunshine in her soul, a winsome spirit of love that shed its fragrance wherever she went. And it is not lost. That remains. Only from the soul of man springs those things which are eternal in our universe. Principalities and powers pass away, dynasties crumble and fall, the structures that men rear with toil and agony collapse and passing generations know them now. But the joyousness that comes from a staunch and glowing soul, the kindliness and gentleness that is created in the secret chemistry of a human heart--this endures. It is God's greatest miracle. It is the one least considered. But at times like these it is the one rock of comfort on which the human may stand in close kinship with the divine.--April 3, 1923.