You may not reinstate yourself by the company that you keep, for the company of old—where is it? Vanished; changed, like yourself; resistlessly urged on and ever on by the current which there is no stemming. Hen is a “man”—he runs a grocery store. Billy Lunt is a “man”—and an M.D., to boot. “Fat” Day is a “man”—even an alderman. “Snoopie” Mitchell, aye, the independent, envied Snoopie, whom naught, you believed, could coerce, is a “man”—for sometimes you are whirled along behind his engine. They all seem to glory in their estate and its attributes. And to them, you are a “man.”
Exists only one authority to support your quest of boyhood; only one heart, besides your own, which apparently would be glad to have you again in blouse and knickerbockers; and to her you are still a boy, with the freckles concealed, merely, by that pointed beard at which she gently rails even in her pride. Mother! You can depend upon mother, as of yore. She is no older, herself; she is the same. Mother never changes. You are no older, yourself; you are the same. Let the other boys call you “man” and say “sir”; let sun and rain and snow, and pond and wood and path, deny you their one-time hospitality. To all the world without you may be a “man,” but to mother you are her “boy.”
Yet Time, forsooth, wrests even this anchorage from you. Comes an hour when, confronted by the inevitable, helpless in its grip, unreconciled even in your resignation, you dully stand by a bedside and wait—wait—wait.
Suddenly the eyes open and look up into yours with understanding. The graying, wrinkled face faintly smiles.
“What a great big boy you are getting to be, Johnny,” she murmurs, in vague surprise.
That is all. She is gone, and with her departs your last hold upon the things that were. Your morning is passed forever. It is noon. You must turn away, irrevocably the man.
THE END
THE POET
MISS KATE AND I