THE WAYWARD BOY
Today I want to talk to the boys who neglect their mother. They are not all bad boys, but all are careless and thoughtless boys. At an early age these wayward boys go away from home and leave a fond mother to worry and fret and grieve over their absence. Some times they neglect to write home for years and years, leaving the dear old mother to nurse her lonely and hungry heart and hug the old, old memories when her boy was but a child. If any wayward and wandering young man should chance to read these lines—any wayward boy who knows of a mother waiting at home—won’t he sit down this very day and write her a few lines?
I have for a neighbor a loving mother who is wasting her life in grieving for her wayward son. He went away two years ago, and has never written her a single line. He is a wanderer on the earth, working a few weeks at one place, then jumps a freight train and rides to new scenes. About a year ago the mother dreamed an awful dream about her boy. In that vision she was in a strange land sitting under a large tree on a sloping hill, around whose base a railroad curved and stretched out for miles on either side. She looked away to the east, and saw the smoke of an approaching train. It was coming like the wind.
Then she heard the whistles of a locomotive in the west, and looking in that direction she beheld another train sweeping down the track to meet the one coming from the east.
There was only a single track. One of the trains must pull into a switch, or there would be a collision. The trainmen could not see around the curve, and were not aware of the other train’s existence. She rushed to the brow of the hill where she could look down upon the track and took off her skirt and waved it aloft to signal the on-coming trains. Neither engineer saw her, and the trains came rushing onward to their inevitable doom. As the train from the east passed where she stood she saw a man sitting on the bumpers between two red cars. He looked up and waved his hand to her. She recognized the face—it was her son Edward!
Then came the shrill whistles of the two locomotives. The engineers had discovered their danger when too late to save the trains. She stood fascinated and watched the two iron monsters come together with an awful crash. They stood up on end like two angry animals in deadly combat, and the sound of crashing, tumbling cars drowned the noise of the escaping steam. The two locomotives tumbled over, tearing and wrenching iron bars from each other as they fell and then lay with heads together like two giants of the woods who had fought to the death and lay with tooth and claws imbedded in each other’s body. A few freight cars that were standing on end fell over with a crashing sound, a cloud of dust arose from the awful wreck, a hissing sound of escaping steam continued for a few minutes, and then all was still. The hand of death seemed to grasp trains and crews, and silence settled down with an awful significance. She felt herself fainting, just as the moans and cries of human beings in distress reached her ears.
When she came to and looked down upon the wreck it was night, but lanterns flitted here and there on both sides of the dead engines, and a voice asked: “Have we found all the men belonging to the ill-fated crews?” and a voice just below where she stood replied: “Yes, all of the two crews, and the body of a hobo besides—they are all dead but two brakemen, and they are still unconscious.”
She looked down the embankment and saw the dead stretched out upon the ground and at the east end of the line she recognized her son Edward—dead and covered with his own blood.
She screamed aloud and her daughter came into the room to see what was the cause of her alarm. That was a year ago. Her boy has never written since, and she firmly believes her Edward was killed just as she saw in her dream. If he is still alive somewhere in the world, think of the joy he could send her in just a short letter—just enough to show her that he is still alive. Boys, write to your mother. She may be dreaming of you.